Take a course prep break: tour the #bestHEbuildings w/@michaelcollins

 

…a unplanned change of pace. Another post, short but informative, was in the works when I stumbled, over this, enchanted by the images. Serendipity struck. It will still be there tomorrow or whenever. Annotated link collections, back to class posts about syllabi, talking to students, etc, and other reflections on issues current and impending can wait too. These are the settings we once fantasized for our higher ed live. Take an escapist break before getting back to reality...best not to dwell on how much the new buildings cost.

Let the storifying begin!

links & tweeps for #COCALXI opening sessions

I'm still working on the Twitter list for following online…in the meantime check out the few I have below and on Facebook. Following #COCALXI on twitter is still the best way to keep up. 

Plenary panelists like +Sylvain Marois may be too busy to tweet. So far, the most active tweeps are +Krista Eliot, +Lee Kottner, @AFTHigherEd and @SylviaJMarques. @AAUP and Margot Young for @cupepse have joined the conversation. Chronicle Vitae columnist +Sydni Dunn is less active but will no doubt be posting articles. Either tweets from Interest Group sessions are thinner or missing identifying tags.

Back channel tweets and email are harder to track, but we welcome those too ~ anon if preferred. DM @VCVaile or @precariousfac or email vanessa.87036@gmail.com. A few disconcerting accounts of rumor mongering are emerging too but on hold awaiting confirmation.

digital bouquet: florilegium #adjunct/orium

In medieval Latin  a florilegium (plural florilegia) was a compilation of excerpts from other writings. The word is from the Latin flos (flower) and legere (to gather): literally a gathering of flowers, or passages collected from a larger work, each illustrating specific topic or themes. "The florilegium is one of the earliest recorded examples of remix culture — a Medieval textual Tumblr" ~ Brainpickings ~  and "a metaphor for networked knowledge and combinatorial creativity"

Florilegium © Robert Amesbury

A fine name indeed for  miscellany posts of snippets from a variety of links. The genre frees me from the obligation to comment but does not prevent me from doing so. It also frees me from organizing the digital bouquet. A time saver. I'm always on the lookout for easy to assemble (but still interesting) models for posts. 

Adjunct outsourcing: remains a topic of interest, although spilled pixels alone seem unlikely to change either admin or EduStaff's wicked, wicked ways: Discussions continue on recent IHE outsourcing article with 36 comments on article and more elsewhere. One IHE comment pointed readers this 2013 Cronker. Don't laugh too much, at least not in total disbelief. According to Topsy, 229 tweets, although follow up conversations sans tags would not be fully tracked. There was at least one public G+ thread ~ still ongoing and probably the best one. 

#ClassDismissed…@mmstrikesback adds #adjunctsdomatter = #adjunct #hashtagblitz

…did you catch the #ClassDismissed catalog of academic complaints, mostly faculty and with an emphasis on adjuncts? This Facebook timeline message appeared: "Please tweet ‪#‎adjunctsdomatter‬ with ‪#‎classdismissed‬.. I am having one of those epiphany moments. Another good add on option:  #studentsmatter.  Presumably, "anything" refers to education, but what's to keep you from trying unexpected combinations that could prove even more interesting. Here are recent examples (all but one with just #ClassDismissed). What tags would you add? What would  students tweet? K-12 teachers?

Seriously? We are bringing academia down? We are holding it up! #adjunctsdomatter #classdismissed.  — vocemom (@MMstrikesback) May 8, 2014

#ClassDismissed continues to be a powerful expression of endemic race and class bias in higher ed.  — ChristineKaratnytsky (@ckaratnytsky) May 7, 2014

Contingency at #MLA14

…Schedule

…of #adjunct issue sessions. Numbers are bold red and in #hashtag format to facilitate following by Twitter. Just search #mla14 + session hashtag to see tweets from/about a particular session.  Anyone can follow, no account/login required. Check the Program on MLA Convention page and lists by topic for more sessions; more links at the bottom of the page. I'll be following on Twitter from @precariousfac and @vcvaile, RT'g and posting on Facebook at A new faculty majority ~ and if you feel bad about being limited to virtual attendance and missing the meat world version, just check the Chicago weather or Google up images for Chicago + "Polar Vortex"

It's Alive! #SocialMedia Musings

Image credit: EDUniverse: It’s Alive!
A New Approach to Communications

…May 23, 2010, post rediscovered in Drafts. Let's apply digital electrodes and reconnect to find out if it's still alive. The general observations are still sound, but the links may not be. There are more drafts to check out and perhaps post, as well as back posts worth revisiting. Digital does not have to be ephemeral, posted and forgotten. Indeed, our all time most popular post, 2,489 views, a guest post by Jen Bills about the public service loan forgiveness program, dates back to 2009 ~ and still gets hits, 100+ just last month.

What has changed? Changes have been more quantitative and qualitative. We have more board and regular members blogging, using Facebook, Twitter, added more social media ~ YouTube, Pinterest, Google+, another bookmarking tool ~ and changed feed readers when  Google Reader closed. Far more important than tools, we are adding connections and growing our network that is part of a larger, loosely connected adjunct / contingent faculty network, substantial and growing. 

Right Leaders of Wrong & other ed-revs

…as told in tweets by @Jessifer (Hybrid Pedagogy) on Storify. Jesse Stommel (IRL) writes...

A short conversation on Twitter about the oncoming revolution in Higher Education. 

It started innocently enough with a few sentences I threw out to the Twitterverse in the weekly hours on a Thursday. Had been thinking about friends and colleagues that are brilliant teachers and wondering why they keep getting pushed out of academia. And why some of them have come to the conclusion that academia is not hospitable to them. It's a weird contradiction -- that in many institutions of higher learning, the folks most passionate about teaching and learning often get overlooked or even aggressively pushed out. 

Read the rest at Right Leaders of Wrong (with tweets) by Jessifer on Storify. Want more, related?

Monday morning

…musing or media musings…banal, too much alliteration…TW3 recap + notes toward a do list that probably won't get done is more like it. TW3 = TWTWTW or That Was The Week That Was. This round is mostly about social media media ventures but won't always be. So here's  more about how the New Faculty Majority spends its Web 20 electrons. More about that page and the NFM Foundation another time.

Facebook analytics are by day by day overlapping 7 day chunks. The New Faculty Majority Facebook page shows 2,869 "reached" between 11/18 and 11/24. Although comments and discussion threads are more active, many visitors still choose to remain anonymous. No one really needs an explanation for why, do they?

Ana M. Fores Tamayo of  better pay petition renown has joined NewFac page admin as a content editor. Having such an active contributor is a huge boost for the page and even more help to me. I'm sure it comes as a relief to board members tired of my nagging. Is Ana aware that FB is just the gateway: micro and other blogging sure to follow? In the meantime, we're making plans to coordinates posts and issues to address. Input and suggestions, please. We'd sure like to see your posts and shared links too and plan to highlight those more.

Lost in cyberspace, Nov13: 2

… catching the rest of the way up with a quick Twitter collection, including RTs & recent Facebook shares. From here on, no than one a day, if that many, will be my limit. Look for occasional themed renditions and other experiments. PS the "Ed. note" caveat at the end of part 1 still applies.  Feedback invited. 

Change

~  is what we are working for. This time it refers to changes in the NFM social media network, that is. Changes include Already Done, More2Come and Works In Progress.

The main Already Done has to do with our twitter stream. Where once there was just one, now there are three.

When I was the lone NFM tweep, it made sense for my user name, NewFacMajority, to identify 100% with NFM. Now Prez Maria Maisto tweets under @MariaMaistoNFM. Other board members are giving it a try too.

So which/who was/is/will be the "the" voice of NFM?

#newfac12, now to sum it up

So far rave reviews, Not that much out yet from those in actual attendance. Organizers are probably still collapsed in a heap somewhere recovering.

I'm stilling gathering materials, waiting for organizers to report to board and definitely not up for a long post but could not resist the word play. Besides, I should address the subject, throw a figurative mortarboard in the air, hail farewell in passing and sum up however briefly before moving on. Undoubtedly there will still be much to report on and materials to put before you.

Team Digital Footprint held its own Social Media Smackdown  ~ Bigfeet every one of them too. And there you thought this was convo not a sporting event.

click to view larger version

Brian Croxall logged the most tweets, followed by Karen Kelsky (The Professor is In). Brian overcame early twit-throttling by improvising a GoogleDocs alternative worthy of haystacker or mooc rat

Lee Bessette liveblogged, tweeted and set up an archive for #newfac12 tweets that includes graphic analyses.

New contenders, John A Casey Jr and Josh Boldt (NFM member and chapter organizer), held their own, with Josh earning the distinction of blogging both the first Summit and the first post-summit posts, also cross posted to The-Compost and Facebook

Check out the #newfac12 stream on Twitter and Topsy ... and wait for the next installment...

In the Middle: The Best MLA is the One I Didn't Attend: Tweeting the Conference

JJ Cohen writes,

Because I'm on fellowship leave, and because I'm committed to an extraordinary amount of travel in the semester ahead, I didn't attend the MLA conference in Seattle.

I followed the event at a distance through friends on FB and the occasional text message or phone chat. I know a few people who are on the job market, and a delegation of GW English faculty were conducting interviews for our Romanticist position. And maybe that says it: the MLA convention is easy shorthand for the US academic hiring process in literature, since in hotel rooms at that conference most of the interviewing is undertaken.

This year, though, I also experienced the unfolding of the meeting via Twitter.

In the Middle: The Best MLA is the One I Didn't Attend: Tweeting the Conference

Same here and we're not alone. Lee Skallerup tweeted and Storified MLA12 and  AHA2012 without attending either. Brian Croxall tweeted both but attending just MLA12. Haystackers in Seattle and Chicago kept the back channels busy. Later, John A Casey Jr, who presented at AHA, posted thoughts on the current conference system, its frustrations, high costs and possible changes:

Yet another way that non-elite faculty are prevented from full participation in the discipline they help sustain.

Among the many changes that I hope will take place as the discipline of English is forced to evolve or disappear is a reexamination of the annual convention model....changes are all desperately needed.  Maybe regional conferences affiliated with national ones could pick up the slack.  Or perhaps a lot of the work needed could be done online.

In any event, if we want all the members of the profession to have a say in its future, we need something better than the traditional annual convention.  The premium for attendance is too steep.

'tis the season ~ of annual meetings

How to "attend" them (sort of) on the cheap? One answer is social media, especially Twitter. Although both get blogged and covered by "academic media," e.g. Chronicle and Inside HigherEd, Twitter does it better.  Plus you can follow simultaneous sessions as well as both Seattle and Chicago, impossible IRL ~ even if we could afford it.

Strategies:

• Search hashtags: #mla12 and #aha2012
• Narrow focus by adding session hashtags
• Use a social media search tool such as Topsy 
• Set a Google alert
• Identify a blogger or active tweeter who is covering the meeting, especially sessions you are most interested in. Brian Croxall is always a good bet. "Active" would be an understatement.

Storified by Lee Skallerup:

• The Fight for Public Higher Education #s167 #mla12 
• Jobs for Historians: Approaching the Crisis #aha2012

Of course, CHE and IHE accounts and post mortems will still be pored over and commented, but they are no longer the whole story for those not in attendance. Add the reflections of academic bloggers. Real time coverage fleshes it out.

Forget about the "cachet" of "being there ... only matters if you let it. Not being left out of the conversation, invisible and silenced when so many communication tools are at hand counts for more.

Consider too the cachet of being greener...

We interrupt this blog to bring you a tweet review

It's been quiet here, hasn't it? I haven't been blogging but I have not been totally idle on the New Faculty Majority social media presence and content curation/management front. I'm spending more time and posting more directly the the NFM Facebook page, followed by dipping into the twitterstream more often.

To better coordinate NFM cyberspace manifestations, I've been experimenting with embedding Tweets as ‘Clickable’ in a(n edited) screenshot image: aka Tweeter's Digest Condensed Tweets. This tool (I may try another tomorrow or another day) captures screen images one at a time (in reverse chronological order, unfortunately) and embeds links so you can follow them directly from here. It can also include tweets from other accounts I follow. That strikes me as far more interesting than posting just @NewFacMajority tweets. Next time, ditto the rest of the social media lecture ... and now on with the Twitter Show

Following #MLA11 and #AHA2011 from afar

Not there, LA or Boston? No problem. Subscribe to twitter feeds for #hashtag searches or a "daily" paper.li for the feed (or create one if none available). The main page of the MLA site is running a live feed. Many presenters and some panels are tagged. Every hashtag generates an RSS feed. As I type, presenters and attendees are diligently blogging and tweeting both MLA and AHA conventions. Tweets can and often do include links, some to blog posts. 

This model holds for just about every conference, regardless of acronym but depending on prevalent communication technology habits and saturation.

EWU Notes & Updates

EWU's United Adjuncts will demonstrate again by the Michigan Avenue entrance and want to get a big crowd. We'll keep you posted. If you would like to support United Adjuncts by attending this demonstration, please contact ewuadjuncts@gmail.com.     In the meantime, UAFA (United Adjunct Faculty Association) urges all adjuncts with abrogated summer contracts to apply for unemployment compensation as soon as possible.  Bring the letter informing you that the University considered you no longer employed by the University to the unemployment office as proof that you have been laid off. More unemployment information is available on the NFM Unemployment Initiative web page United Adjuncts are organizing with the Illinois NEA. Nevertheless, those concerned adjunct issues nationally have suggested that the AFT Convention now in session issue a statement censuring EWU for its labor practices ~ and discussed at length. Indeed, where is it written in stone that one higher ed union cannot go on public record disapproving of how an institution being organized by another higher ed union? If cross-union support is not S.O.P., it should be. The AAUP issued a statement (although I have not heard of further action such as official AAUP censure).

Adjuncts on the march

 .... at #USSF 2010

Above ~ front of the crowd at Opening Day March, Twitpic. Coming soon: more USSF 2010 pictures on Flickr

Wayne State (UPTF), Chicago COCAL and other adjuncts are somewhere in the marching crowd at the US Social Forum Opening Day March. 

Raye Robertson (The Adjunct Voice) and NFM board member Jen Bills are in there too. Are you? Let us know. Tell us about it. 

Not there? Follow the Forum with streaming video on the web, on the radio (Amy Goodman + Democracy Now ~ broadcasting from Detroit) and on Twitter ~ both at @USSF and by searching the #USSF hashtag

NFMUCI: Day 1 Twitter

About adjunct unemployment, that is. The short version: plenty of action and spreading links around. I'm taking a clue from the Digital Humanities blogging community and blogging the tweets or rather the ones from searching "adjunct + unemployment," which yielded the biggest haul.


Most but not all are via yesterday's Chronicle article, which include 21 comments as of 1st day's end, with surely more to come today. As for the article and commenters, supporters and trolls, I'll have more on that later as part on ongoing NFMUCI coverage. 


Now for visitors - and tweeters - to get past the article and to the Unemployment Compensation Initiative website. NFMUCI is short for both initiative and url, http://nfumuci.org as well as hashtag. 

Confessions hits the beltway

Beltway Blips covers the Twitterverse reception of "Confessions of a Tenured Professor"  by NFM Board member Peter DG Brown. Coverage (including my tweet on those same tweets) is ongoing, updated as new tweets appear ... Visit, vote, share, link.... let's keep this going viral and in the mainstream social media, not just buried in the academic press. If I'd blogged the article as planned and expected when it came out, we'd have missed this. As good as the article is, and good it is, the reaction, commentary, comments, blog posts, tweets, shared links, and so on complete the story... Please join the conversation by adding your comments.


insidehighered.com - 4 days ago

InsideHighered: Confessions of a Tenured Professor 

—

I must confess right off that I did not become a contingent labor activist until I turned 60, a mere six years ago. Until then, I was a fairly typical senior professor, passionately involved in teaching my students and interacting with my tenured colleagues on a variety of faculty governance 

REACTIONS (four pages so far)


Just  few among many blog reactions, these collated by Beltway Blips

Bad Feminist Bitch. Ph.D. — Thank god for this must-read piece in IHE today. I very seldom keep up with academic news any more, but an old Internet friend posted the link on FB. It happens that she herself is also an unemployed adjunct, but I probably only clicked it because in my head she's filed under the category "mommy" rather than "academic"--I met her online via a mommy forum--and "mommy" is where most of my identity lies these days. ...

Why Does Academia Treat its Workforce So Badly? Megan McArdle :: The Atlantic — A piece on adjuncts in Inside Higher Ed has been attracting a lot of attention among academics of my acquaintance.  Its description of academic life is shcokingly brutal--shocking even to me, who knows enough PhDs to be acquainted with the dismal facts: ... 

[my note: the Atlantic piece includes copious comments, some must read and others more likely to infuriate. Review them and add your own]

Academic Labor Market Exploitation Outside The Beltway | OTB — ... This might seem a ridiculous question, given that most people think professors are overpaid, underworked prima donnas who can never be fired.  But she cites Peter D.G. Brown’s recent Inside Higher Ed piece explaining that, if it was ever the case, it’s not longer true: ...

@NewFacMajority >> Tweet Cloud

What have I been up to and tweet @NewFacMajority? You could take a look for yourself, but here's the short version: look at the tweet cloud for the past month's posts

words (ordered by most used)

• 
  
• adjunct
• education
• academic
• faculty
• blog
• voice
• highered
• time
• teaching
• blogs
• student
• college
• universities
• post
• students
• adjuncts
• university
• system
• statement
• social
• survey
• tuition
• academia
• times
• remember
• workforce
• future
• broader
• weve
• site
• call
• california
• school
• acad
• union
• adj-fac
• online
• contract
• humanities
• goes
• tenure
• free
• read
• brief
• public
• hurt
• huffpo
• uvenus
• worker
• collecting
• quality
• ross
• stage
• hard
• stop
• blogroll
• parent
• news
• professors
• crisis

cloud