tools…using them—not being one

…this might not be a post either: call it an extended meta blogging update…planning out loud. Feel free to contribute your 2¢ worth. Let the musing begin:

Tools

I've been exploring Diigo blogging and sharing tools. Using is the best (only) way to learn a new tool. These turn annotated bookmarks into blog posts. If truly useful and making blogging/online information sharing quicker, easier — more efficient, then they will become part of the repertoire. If not, then not — and will fade from regular use. Until then, expect more Diggo blogging and auto-blogging. 

Special Projects

Keith Hoeller's links and commentary, a weekly annotated links post will include links to articles by and about Keith. I'm not the only one who has long thought he should have his own page or blog. Hardly believing he didn't, I started saving links on Delicious in 2008. The project starts with bookmarking and then blogging entries from Keith Hoeller's PT Faculty Links & Commentary on Diigo. Eventually, we'll find them a cyberspace home on the range of their own so they don't have to crash in random locations like a homeless adjunct. The Washington PartTime Faculty Association had a web page...but on a now defunct platform that disappeared from cyberspace taking all the WPFA pages with it...and there you thought nothing disappeared from cyberspace.  

Education International Newsletter—Staying united

…@eduint (EI) brings together 401 education #unions in 171 countries

Bill Lipkin reports on the AFT HigherEd Conference in Baltimore

The weekend of April 11, 2014 saw one of the best AFT Higher Ed Conferences I have ever been to. The theme was 'Reclaiming the Promise of Higher Education' and there was a strong focus on contingent and adjunct faculty issues and solutions.

President Randi Weingarten opened the Conference with one of her rousing speeches. I had to compliment her after the speech for the concentration she put on contingent and adjunct faculty and our situation in the United States. She even took the time to explain the differences between adjunct and contingent positions and the various problems connected with each.

#PrecariousFaculty Network Links (weekly)

…from Union Book, ZCommunications, the New Left Project, ETFO Voice, Association of Governing Boards, MRSC, CounterPunch, Facebook, NYU, Google Docs, Iinternational Student Movement, Jacobin Magazine, Haymarket Books,

•   Precarious Work - UnionBook ~ "Precarious Work Affects Us All" is a global union campaign to stop the rise in precarious employment and regain power and justice for working people. On this campaign page you will find links to campaign materials, background information and details on what trade unions around the world are doing to mobilise against precarious work. Globalisation is not just about how things are made, bought and sold. It's also about people. Transnational companies want cheap and flexible workers. So they have shifted from secure to insecure employment - making all jobs more "precarious". from International Metal Workers, Union Book. Tags: workplace, precarity, precarious workers, globalization, PFR, video

• An Interview With Staughton Lynd About the Labor Movement in ZCommunications »

a list of conferences, symposia & so forth

…for #adjuncts &al—adios Chicago…viva Baltimore & St Louis

April 11- 13: AFT National Higher Education Issues Conference: Reclaiming the Promise of HigherEd, Baltimore (agenda)

l-r: NFM Board Member Bill Lipkin, his UAF-NJ colleagues and board members 
Dave McClure and Lynne Cummins, with Randi Weingarten

Plus April 12! St. Louis Adjunct Symposium (SEIU). Livestream archived here.

Next on deck: Adjunct Symposium in Philadelphia (United Academics of Philadelphia, AFT), Saturday April 19th. Whether you are an adjunct or just someone who cares, come join us!