Dear reader… hit the restart button

…[UPDATED 4/5/17] Somewhere along the way I lost my blogging voice. Why? I asked myself that more than once. One factor for sure: I loaned it out too often and for too long at the behest of others -- groups, organizations, campaigns, causes, individuals. My blogger's voice lost track of whose it was. This March I took a leap and committed to the #sol17 March blogging challenge hosted by the Two Writing Teachers blog and writing community where I wrote 31 days straight, a blog post a day and commented on 9 (or more) other posts every day. 

All blogging challenges include a commenting requirement, usually a minimum of three. The additional commenting load was from volunteer to welcome and support a group of new participants because I knew the extra commitment would stay me from dropping out. It worked and was also a lesson about blogging that I had forgotten: the conversation matters as much as content. Authentic exchanges, the sifting of opinion and information, as Jacques Barzun defined conversation, what makes the content matter. Along with regular posts, I want to bring that back to my blogging.

Am I ready? I think so. I know I can but will I?

Crowdsourcing: Taylorism, tech, online temp work, #adjunct labor

Not all of the many email newsletters hitting my inbox are about education, ed-tech, higher ed, academic casuals or activism. This week, Baffler featured a salvo against the scams and schemes of the tech world, Jacob Silverman's essay "The Crowdsourcing Scam." (with more excellent illustrations by ©Lisa Haney, example below). 

The article refers to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, Uber and Yelp ~ among others, not adjuncts, but could apply just as well to the employment and workplace management practices in adjunct-dependent for-profit and non-profit institutions. The editors refer to the article as "another fiery salvo." I want to read the others too.  In a similar vein, read Deb Baker's ❝On being 'discontinued'❞ (via +George Station on G+, also re-blogged on As the Adjunctiverse Turns)

In today's fractured economy, where tasks are increasingly farmed out to low-wage and temp workers, "the result is an extreme form of Taylorism: in boom conditions, workers have more tiny tasks than they can say yes to, but they acquire no skills...they have no contact with other workers, and they have no chance to advance or unionize," Silverman writes. "Imagine a factory in which each employee wears blinders and can see only the thing in front of him on the conveyor belt."

Caveat: as someone who tries to keep up with and uses ed-tech and information technology, I'd qualify the article's network criticism as applying to disconnected networks (an oxymoron in Social Network Analysis, aka SNA) that isolate users, further divided into content/service providers and consumers, instead of connecting them.

What does #NetNeutrality have to do with #adjunct & other precarious worker activists?

…yes, today is the day…a good day to take on corporate interests, stand up for open, connected learning and keep the internet open and affordable for activism and the activist networks using it to connect activists, build grassroots networks, coordinate actions and inform/educate the public. I hope that answers the why question

As adapted from Fight for the Future's September 4, 2014, Battle for the Internet letter:

The Internet Slowdown, the net neutrality protest planned for today September 10th is taking off. As of September 4, a dozen of the world’s largest websites announced that they’re joining in a big way. Sites you know and use like Etsy, Kickstarter, Wordpress, Vimeo, Mozilla, Namecheap, Foursquare, imgur, and reddit (and surely more by now). Will you join too?

Everyone has a role in the Internet Slowdown. Click here to find out what YOU can do

Evan Greer at Fight for the Future wrote

Sunday Matinee: Blog Talk…hanging out w/#ccourses' Blog Brothers

…Click, Link and Embed, better known as Jim "EduPunk" Groom, Alan "CogDog" Levine, and Howard "Exploring mind amplifiers since 1964" Rheingold.

So what is this about anyway? Sure, there a Sunday film (maybe two), but my main purpose is to entice sign up for fun, blogging, connecting courses and with other educators. The Connected Course starts September 15, but the Pre-Course  (what the video is about) is now. Sign-up; register your blog (start one) and twitter handle; check out the blog flow on the main page -- visit/comment on a few; check out the look around

Connected Courses is a collaborative network of faculty in higher education developing online, open courses that embody the principles of connected learning and the values of the open web. 

Our goal is to build an inclusive and expansive network of teachers, students, and educational offerings that makes high quality, meaningful, and socially connected learning available to everyone.

#adjunct realities: crossing domains, navigating networks

PoSR graphic ©1978-2014 Sally A Applin & Michael D Fischer 

…or why I keep having such a hard time keeping up on this blog I now have three fat posts in drafts. The quick catch-up one got fat in a hurry thanks to Vegara v. California, #WeAreNNMC,  #yesallwomen, and a fund-raising campaign for Mary-Faith Cerasoli that is suffering side effects of retaliation and bullying (yes, sometimes #adjuncts abuse other adjuncts ~ power relationships trump solidarity and humanity here too). With the bullying/retaliation and a uses of twitter post, that makes three.  Any one of the so-called quick catch-

Such is our polysocial reality, mine in particular navigating and crossing back and forth across interest domains and social media. Turns out too that PolySocial Reality (PoSR) is a cross-disciplinary sub-domain that

How to get to trust/cooperation…networks for #adjuncts & others

…that also include the subset urging solidarity driven groupthink as the only possible antidote to divisiveness, In this Whole Self Leadership article, Kate Griffiths explores what it takes to move from a place of fear to a place of trust by suggesting a five step process that allows cohesive communities to form....and asks "how do we build cohesive communities?" 

Together at last!

Getting together. this?

#Adjuncts are steadily building networks, using technology to improve communications and share information. Is that enough? What are our options? Could Alternative (Academic) Worker Organizations, not unions as we know them, but something else ~ as yet undetermined, be a possible solution for adjuncts nationwide or regionally? Alternatives are especially important in regions where union organizing is, to repurpose a polite euphemism, problematic? "But what about us?" comments to a recent post on NFM's Facebook page about increased adjunct organizing activity reminded me of the too often overlooked plight of adjuncts. After sharing Bill Lipkin's good advice about focusing on local campus action, I recalled a few articles at New Unionism (also on Facebook here and @newunionism) and started looking for more.

Going to #CCCC? Call for networking

#adjunct/#contingentfaculty, put your networks to work!  Seth Kahn posted in Con Job: Stories of Adjunct and Contingent Faculty Seth Kahn For anybody who's a current CCCC member and will be in St. Louis on Saturday morning--the CCCC Labor Caucus has submitted a resolution calling on CCCC to establish a Contingent Faculty Travel Fund (see resolution text). I have a hunch we're going to need to muster as many votes as we can. So PLEASE, if you're in town and a CCCC member, attend the Business Meeting and VOTE.  And please, even if you're not a member, canvass members to attend and vote (because that's how networks roll...)

The Real Life Social Network

A really nice presentation (224 slides but moves right along) from Paul Adams, who works with the Google User Experience team, on the true nature of social networks. The main point is that we do not have one amorphous group of "friends" or contacts, but rather, several distinct groups. We belong not to one network but to many.

If you don't have time for the 224 slides in this presentation, here's the actual data Paul presents. The ideas and numbers presented are also, in my not so humble opinion, relevant to adjunct organizing efforts.

The Real Life Social Network v2

View more documents from Paul Adams.

The Future of Work

this bit of research on the Gartner site; while it dates back to August has some interesting speculation about the Future of Work.
“People will swarm more often and work solo less. They’ll work with others with whom they have few links, and teams will include people outside the control of the organization,”
“In addition, simulation, visualization and unification technologies, working across yottabytes of data per second, will demand an emphasis on new perceptual skills.”
-       Tom Austin, Vice President and Gartner Fellow
Gartner points out that the world of work will probably witness ten major changes in the next ten years. Interesting in that it will change how learning happens in the workplace as well. The eLearning industry will need to account for the coming change and have a strategy in place to deal with the changes.

via upsidelearning.com

So much of this applies as much to teaching and learning possibilities.
"De-routinization" of work (or teaching) could return to autonomy to teachers, already implied in Downes. Work swarms and teaming fit in at PLENK 2010 but seem less likely candidates for the entrenched academic mind.
And on down the list. Just because it could happen doesn't mean it will though.

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