Southern #labor, #voting, #workplace & #education news @MikeElk @PaydayReport

…testing a new feature on newsletters. I subscribe to a number of email newsletters, which have become popular again. There are too many to share or even read all of them. Instead, plan post different newsletters related to precarious life and times, revisiting the most popular ones.  

Homemade signs displayed at Charlotte's "Day Without Immigrants" march and protest in Feb. 2017 (WFAE)​).  3 Pro-ICE Sheriffs Defeated in N.C. - GOP Moves to Cut Teachers' Raise - Tennessean Follows Payday's Lead on Nashville Construction Safety Crisis by Mike Elk with help from Max Zahn & Professor Karina Moreno Greetings from 'da Burgh, where Payday Senior Labor Reporter Mike Elk is getting ready to ship out to North Carolina for his 4th D-Day of the Teacher's Spring.

#adjunct/ion series & other #PFNetwork collections + to #NAWD2 or not

…that's the short version for readers in a hurry. There's more but that hits the main points. I bolded them for your skimming convenience.

Tom Cunniff's Ultimate Social Media Diagram, 2008

For #adjunction series and other (but not all) "informationist" projects, I collect adjunct links that I bundle as an #adjunction series. Each bundle has a web page with a permalink. Here's the most recent link bundle page in the series: #adjunction Jan2016 #4, 17 links

Informationist projects: throughout 2015 I've been referring to this blog and the associated network as an independent information network. That is my focus...among other intentions.

oh noes not more #COCAL_Updates, #archives & #adjunct ppl who just don't get it

Time to move on. That's why I did (please read my December 2013 statement). The collected Precarious Faculty pages, blogs, collections (manually curated, aggregated by algorithm or a combination thereof), and social media streams/platforms — not just this blog — are an independent information network. Obviously, that mean unaffiliated with any organization or group and working independently. Nor are areas of interest narrowly limited to adjunct advocacy. The "information" part comes from a firm conviction that being well informed -- and informing well -- are the best defenses in our mental arsenal.

But first, as I promised Joe, I'm working on the archives. It's still a work in progress, but here's where I am so far:

• The separate Precarity Dispatches Tumblr page lists all the links to public locations. There still is no Tumblr tag feed for Updates as the tag is still giving me fits. 

• The next link, the complete InoReader clip, displays all Updates with feeds from all public locations, with them most recent displaying at the top and updating automatically. Searching older posts is less convenient. 

• The rest of the links in the first section go directly to Updates collections at individual locations

• Following the comprehensive list of public archive links, the next group of links are to posts about Updates and archiving them.

Videos—Thomas Piketty & @GC_CUNY Panel…history of #money ➜ #inequality & #education

In The Economist's July 9, 2014 video interview, Thomas Piketty explains briefly how wealth and income inequality evolved and why more meritocratic access to education could address both problems.

thomas piketty on the history of money - bookforum.com / video

for a much longer video, here's an video from the CUNY Graduate Center's April  28, 2014, panel discussion,"Capital in the 21st Century" with Thomas Piketty via CUNY TV

a new collaboration on #education

…from Works & Days—Cultural Logic…HT #JoeBerry's #COCAL Updates.  No telling when or even if we will get back to updating archived updates but you can always subscribe to your own by email. Just email joeberry@igc.org

"Education for Revolution," a special issue collaboration of the journals Works & Days  and Cultural Logic has just been launched.

Works & Days, published by the English Department at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, explores problems of cultural studies, pedagogy, and institutional critique, especially as they are impacted by the global economic crisis

Cultural Logic has been online since 1997 and is a non-profit, peer-reviewed, open access, interdisciplinary journal publishing essays, interviews, poetry, and reviews by writers working within the Marxist tradition

This is the second collaboration between the two journals.

Habits of the Effectively Connected

…on #socialmedia & other online distributed networks, whether for learning, distributing information, making connections, organizing, communicating or just social sharing. 

Published on YouTube, Dec 14, 2013: Habits of Effective Connected Learners with Stephen Downes

Working and learning in an online environment is fundamentally different from working and learning in a physical environment. It becomes much more important to make connections and leverage the store of knowledge at your disposal. Relations between people depend more on cooperation and less on collaboration. Information that was valuable only when withheld is now valuable only when shared. Marketing gives way to meaning. In this presentation, Stephen Downes reviews the habits he has cultivated to thrive as a learner and researcher online, providing practical advice from network theory and a lifetime of experience.

Links: education & labor news

Not all or just about #highered per se but all relevant... even the accompanying illustration but you'll have to read to the end to learn why.

 

• Cut the pious baloney! about reactions to NLRB recess appointments (finally!)
  
• Jeff Bryant writes about Why accountants should not run schools (or set education policy)
  
• Disrupt Education (stay informed about changes coming whether you like them or not): Opening the Language Learning Classroom to the World 
  
• Bob Samuels takes apart Yudoff's defensive mythbusting about UC
  
• Best of the Ed Blogs: Misunderstanding & Misrepresenting the “Costs” & “Economics” of Online Learning
  
• Jonathon Rees at More or Less Bunk writes about Why there is no history department at the University of Phoenix
  

Reading Room: In defense of public education

Public education, higher, middle and lower, is under siege. I'm old enough to remember reading "Why Johnny Can't Read" (Time, 1955), but the current fever pitch reaches new levels: rants, critiques, conflict and conflicting solutions multiply. Johnny still can't read, yet there is still no agreement on the why or the how. If that was a problem in middle school, imagine Johnny in college now because, ready or not, everyone is supposed to go.

New this round are two game changers.  One is disruptive innovation in the form of advances in communication technology, learning analytics and sophisticated algorithms for learning software touted as capable of supplanting teachers or at least reducing the number needed. The other is the economy shrinking education funding. See the connection?

Enter conflicting solutions and the players bearing them ~ the tech team vs the traditionalists or New School vs Old School.

Update to issue 17 of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

Higher ed concerns and issues are interconnected with and cannot/must not be separated from those of K-12

The current issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor has been updated with two new field reports.

Issue No. 17 of Workplace “Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions” is guest edited by Howard Stevenson of Lincoln University (UK).

The new field reports include:

The NEA Representative Assembly of 2010: A Longer View of Crisis and Consciousness
Rich Gibson

Abstract
Following the 2009 National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly (RA) in San Diego, new NEA president Dennis Van Roekel was hugging Arne Duncan, fawning over new President Obama, and hustling the slogan, “Hope Starts Here!” At the very close of the 2009 RA, delegates were treated to a video of themselves chanting, “Hope starts Here!” and “Hope Starts with Obama and Duncan!” The NEA poured untold millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours, into the Obama campaign. In 2009, Van Roekel promised to tighten NEA-Obama ties, despite the President’s educational policies and investment in war. What happened in the year’s interim? What was the social context of the 2010 RA?

Resisting the Common-nonsense of Neoliberalism: A Report from British Columbia
E. Wayne Ross

Abstract
Faced with a $16 million budget shortfall, the Vancouver school trustees, who have a mandate to meet the needs of their students, have lobbied for more provincial funding to avoid draconian service cuts. The government has refused the request, and its special advisor to the Vancouver School Board criticizes trustees for engaging in “advocacy” rather than making “cost containment” first priority. The clash between Vancouver trustees and the ministry of education is not “just politics.” Rather, education policy in BC reflects the key features of neoliberal globalization, not the least of which is the principle that more and more of our collective wealth is devoted to maximizing private profits rather than serving public needs. British Columbia is home to one of the most politically successful neoliberal governments in the world, but fortunately it is also a place to look for models of mass resistance to the neoliberal agenda. One of the most important examples of resistance to the common-nonsense of neoliberalism in the past decade is the British Columbia teachers’ 2005 strike, which united student, parent, and educator interests in resisting the neoliberal onslaught on education in the public interest.

via blogs.ubc.ca

Posted via email from Academentia

Around the Web: Educating & Getting Educated

There's news out there, academic injustice, shifting paradigms, dragons, windmills, but my mind is somewhere else today. The news will still be there tomorrow, the same or different. 


I'm forever collecting links, more now with blogs to feed: my rss reader overfloweth with higher ed, ed tech and adjunct/contingent issue stories, my social bookmark files with links. It's time to share, but my "I'm reading" widget choices are for local Mountainair NM readers and anyone dropping by my community blogs. Not a lot of shared interests, trust me. So then... another account for another widget? In another lifetime maybe.

At the recent AFT convention, keynote speaker Bill Gates told the assembled educators that "teaching is complex." D'uh. Baby, you don't know the half of it. Bye bye one room schoolhouse, rote learning, recitation, drill to kill and Dewey. Online ed or distance learning, Edupunk, DIY education. ed tech, LMS or learning management systems, self-paced study, Constructivism, Connectivism. 


Got 'em bookmarked or on my reader ~ but where to start, how to organize the process in less than overwhelming... by topic or topical relevance... annotated or bare bones?


I'll start with this already briefly annotated collection of education links from Omnivore, The Book Forum blog:

But is she qualified for a full-time position?

It's no longitudinal study about adjuncts' effects on retention or transfer rates, but in this article the country's Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan, a long-time adjunct, provides some compelling testimony and at least one illustrious example of such unquantifiable "quality of education" factors as dedication, concern, and all-around excellence.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/21/ryan