Wednesday miscellany⁓what I'm #reading…#ccourses #NassuaAFA #adjunct #labor #moocs & more

…yesterday was to have been a post day but turned into Disconnectivity Day for area telephones and internet via their fiberoptic cables. I would have missed #AdjunctChat but with the experimental all day "facilitated by us" format, I was able to make part of it and brought up +Laura Gibbs' idea about an instructor Learning Commons hub that she introduced on #ccourses. It keeps growing too.

As for blogging, today it is then ⁓ and a jumble at that. With the draft pile is growing, I should finish off a few before starting another post (potential draft for the pile). Meh. I'm still in recovery mode from yesterday's stress and in the meantime...

I've been reading...

Reflections on 50 Years as an #ADJUNCT

‘I make a difference every day’. That is a slogan of the American Federation of teachers (AFT), and that is my goal every of my life. Who am I? I am an adjunct, a proud a dedicated adjunct, who makes a difference in the lives of students every day. I spent seven years in College becoming educated in my field so I could go out and teach others how to make the world a better place and how to have a successful career. Fortunately I was able to go to College on merit scholarships and did not have to amass a large student loan debt, as most students do today. I studied and worked hard, I read a lot, I took part in student demonstrations, and I kept up on current events. I was very optimistic and felt I was on a crusade to help change the world with a career in academia

That was fifty years ago. Today, I am a realist, and the reality is scary. While in graduate school studying History and Political Science, I taught myself accounting, figuring it would come in handy doing taxes for me and my family and friends. I never thought that I would make a living and raise a family as a controller rather than a professor. For thirty-five years I worked in private industry, while teaching one or two courses at night in a local college. When my sons were grown and married, my wife and I decided that it was now time for me to follow my real goal and go into college teaching full time. Ha! 

What Is a Gift?

…from a post that is not about adjuncts, precarious knowledge workers, NTT faculty, or whatever we call ourselves this week ~ but very relevant. Compare "gifts" as used here to similar gifts, perks, favors offered adjunct: more pay but not equity and the gap still widening, adjunct appreciation days, awards, being "lucky" to get hired at the last minute, impossible schedules, etc). From Keithpp's Blog:

As the holiday season fast approaches, it has come to our attention that some of our colleagues, managers and co-worker need help understanding the concept of “gift.”

The Glorious Future

Can't beat University Diaries on this one so I'll just share, even if it's 2nd hand sharing of shared links (3rd hand by the time tweeted @NewFacMajority and auto-posted to NFM's Facebook page. So be. What matters is the sharing and the reading.

The Glorious Future: "William Deresiewicz, in The Nation, talks about the future of university education where nearly all [proposed university reforms] involve technology to drive efficiency."

Point/Counterpoint: from there UD goes on to include: Update: From Robert Nozick’s obituary in the Harvard Gazette, "Nozick’s teaching followed the same lively, unorthodox, heterogeneous pattern as his writing. With one exception, he never taught the same course twice."

around a university

Swerve and take a brief break from Academe's mean streets. The Grove as whiteboard jungle seems out of character until I remember Athena's less than scholarly weakness for hot-blooded warriors. These shady streets are jumping and jiving with teach-ins, demonstrations, protests, March Actions to Defend Public Education, an epidemic of toxic House Bills, Wisconsin shenanigans, Washington union enforcers, inappropriate teaching overloads, collective bargaining fighting for its life, occasional triumphant negotiations, dangerous memes, academic mobbing, scapegoating, and more of the same, seemingly without end.

 

From a conference on "The University We Are For", James Clifford on the Greater Humanities. After shootings in Arizona and at Virginia Tech, how can colleges know when, and in what way, to intervene in a troubled student's life? Live like a grad student forever: Oxford academic Toby Ord recommends living on as little as you can and giving away the rest. The rise of clickers is starting to change how college professors run their classrooms. No talking in class: Campus liberals sacrificed free expression on the altar of political correctness. 

Should computer “languages” qualify as foreign languages for Ph.D.s? It is worthwhile to pause and ask why so many educators are committed to the suspension of religious identity in the classroom. Now you see it, now you don't: Why journals need to rethink retractions. Does Harvard's "affirmative action for the affluent" screw the proles? David Leonhardt revisits the value of elite colleges. An interview with Robert B. Archibald and David H. Feldman, authors of Why Does College Cost So Much? 

The Useless University: The ancient tradition of pursuing knowledge for its own sake is slowly, quietly making a comeback. A look at how online courses are still lacking that third dimension. The question of what can be taught or what cannot is an intriguing one, especially around a university. A review of Lessons Learned: Reflections of a University President by William G Bowen.

via Omnivore, the Bookforum blog

The expression comes from the akademeia, just outside ancient Athens, where the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning. The sacred space, dedicated to the goddess of wisdom, Athena, had formerly been an olive grove, hence the expression "the groves of Academe"... and all the out of date but still longed for associations that go with it.

Posted via email from Academentia