July 15th, 2010 Published by: philosophyandrew

Edublogger Review
your complaint, being as specific as possible, and we'll go from
A "mash-up" of postings from nine engaging educational there. So far nobody has actually taken me up on that.
and e-learning bloggers.
As silly as the complaints are, though, they inadvertently
raise a real issue. Most of our discrimination procedures and
When Students are policies are based on the idea that bias occurs between peers,
Homophobic or from the top down. Those are both real, of course, and they
need to be addressed. But bias from the bottom up exists in a
Source: http://suburbdad.blogspot.com/2010/07/when-students-are-
weird nether zone.
homophobic.html
By Dean Dad on July 15th, 2010
At some level, of course, students have always complained
This happens about once a year, even here in blue-state land. about professors, and always will. There's a certain degree
of gossip and static that simply goes with the job, and a
A student shows up to complain that his professor is gay, and certain thickness of skin that any authority figure – in the
that s/he is “trying to convert everybody.” When I ask for classroom, the professor is clearly the authority figure – has to
specifics, the student quickly shifts gears to clarify that “I don't have. The student grapevine is real, and inevitable, and even
care what you do at home, but you shouldn't wave it around in healthy to some degree. But to me, there's a difference between
my face.” Seeing a complete lack of response, the student then students in a class blowing off steam together and a student
asserts victimhood, alleging that the professor won't give a fair complaining to a dean. The former is a cost of doing business,
shake to students who don't agree with her. but the latter is serious.

I've tried a number of different responses over the years, with In my cultural studies days, I learned that discrimination was
varying degrees of success. really about power. But in these cases, the bias is among the
disempowered. That doesn't make it any less real, but it does
There's the basic “well, you know, we don't discriminate. If put many of our policies in an odd light.
you have a concern with the professor, you should talk to her
directly.” There's a certain legal clarity to that, but it doesn't I've read that student bias frequently surfaces in course
seem to defuse the anger. Since it essentially replaces one evaluations, where students will punish non-traditional
accusation with another, it doesn't do much to build trust. gender performance. Alpha males and nurturing females do
well; nurturing males and alpha females get punished. But
Then there's the “Columbo” approach. “Help me understand. this is both more specific and more severe than that. There's a
How, exactly, is she trying to convert you?” This works a little difference between 'liking someone a little less than someone
better, since frequently “efforts to convert” amount to little else' and 'going to her boss to get her fired.'
more than “acknowledging the existence of gay people in the
historical record.” When I've allowed students to try to piece (For the record, no, nobody gets called on the carpet here for
together a bill of particulars, I've seen them slowly retreat in 'suspicion of gayness.' I recognize that there may be regional
embarrassment when they realize that there's really nothing variation in this.)
there. Sometimes it's nothing more than a short haircut on a
woman. (I'm also struck at how frequently the accusations are It has also occurred to me to wonder if I get more of these
false, but that's another post altogether.) complaints since I look 'safe' -- a straightlaced, short-haired
white guy. There's no real way of knowing, but I've been
Once I even decided to roll with the absurdity to see what discomforted by some of the assumptions the complainers
would happen. “What solution do you propose? Should I write exhibited when they tried to bond with me.
a note to the professor asking her to stop being gay? Would
that help?” The student's eyes were the size of dinner plates Wise and worldly readers, have you seen (or do you have
for a moment before he backed down, even laughing a little a suggestion for) a more graceful way to handle the next
at himself. In retrospect, this approach probably assumed a student who takes grave offense at a visibly (or apparently) gay
little more common cultural ground than was wise, and I professor?
haven't tried it again, but it worked pretty well the one time I
used it. I don't recommend it, given the potential for ruinous
misunderstanding, but it made a hell of a teachable moment.
The United States of Alabama
Lately I've been experimenting with the “put it in writing” Source: http://howtheuniversityworks.com/wordpress/archives/260
approach. It's only fair, I explain, that a professor being
complained about has the right to respond. Please write out
1
July 15th, 2010 Published by: philosophyandrew
By Marc Bousquet on July 15th, 2010 It’s a pretty big picture, and one that clearly doesn’t yield
Only way to please me to partisan analysis: the scary stuff is what Democrats and
turn around and leave Republicans agree on. Obama’s ed secretary Arne Duncan
made Tennessee sole winner of the reviled Race to the
and walk away Top competition because of the state’s willingness to do
to both K-12 and higher ed what he’d already done in
–Alabama Getaway, lyrics by Robert Hunter Chicago: turn schools over to private and for-profit managers;
silence teachers, students, and parents; strip down the
Many who learn that the University of Alabama-Birmingham curriculum; increase the direct voice of commercial interests
(UAB) amputated a $650,000 state appropriation, not to in administration at every level.
mention a flow of grant money, just to rid itself of a labor center
(and Glenn Feldman, the accomplished historian who directed Likewise, the UAB business school dean (Klock) responsible
it) will focus on regional differences. One early commenter for pushing first practiced his hatcheting ways here in
to Peter Schmidt’s report for the Chronicle blamed “Dixie” California. It’s not a regional issue at all or even restricted to
culture, saying that this is what happens to someone who higher education workplaces.
“bucks the system in that part of the country. The more the The many things that should concern us about Feldman’s
South changes, the more it remain the same.” experience in Alabama are all things happening in schools at
As a veteran of the Southern-gothic, All-The-Kings-Men every level across the country:
style politics of one right-to-work state university with close + Administrator pro-business bias
administrator connections to UAB, I guess my first impulse
+ Consolidation of administrator power
was at least similar: I can still remember the liberation I
felt when I left my tenured position at the scandal-ridden + Declining faculty power and declining faculty solidarity
University of Louisville (UL), where concerned faculty were + Abuse of credentialing (UAB has demanded that full-
run out of town for questioning the wall-to-wall administrative professor Feldman go back to school and earn a year’s worth
solidarity that protected a dean embezzling his federal grants, of credits to retain his tenure)
a scheme of extreme work-study that has turned thousands
of students into the serfs of UPS, and claims of “research-1″ + Ever-closer ties between corporations, politics and the
status for a campus with a six-year graduation rate hovering campus
around 30 percent. + Business influence on curriculum
As just one small instance of my own experience: the + The culture-struggle practice of administration, designed to
aforementioned embezzling dean tried to shut down the produce compliant subjectivities and expel dissenters
academic labor journal I founded (then being edited by one
+ A growing legal web that muzzles faculty governance speech
of my graduate students and my friend and colleague Wayne
at public institutions
Ross, one of the many who left UL– in his case moving on
to Canada’s answer to Cal-Berkeley, the University of British + The abuse of standards of civility and collegiality to
Columbia). That little act of nastiness wasn’t even one of the paint an understandably upset victim as unreasonable, a
30+ official faculty complaints about that one individual that tendency in which I have to say that Peter Schmidt’s reporting
the UL administrative Borg was covering up. But what drove unfortunately participates (though to be fair to Schmidt I
us away was in most cases not one act; there were dozens of haven’t seen the documents he characterizes).
acts that each dissenter experienced, some raising to the level In general, though, on this subject I agree with the complaints
of grievable offenses, others just making life hard. of commenter “thomasjefferson”:
‘Sweet Home USA’ for Business “Let’s see. He was a tenured, full professor at UAB for 14
But despite that temptation, my second impulse is more years. They shut down the labor center of which he was
analytical. The point isn’t any minor differences (even director and then they tried to set him up for termination by
differences of degree) displayed by scandal-plagued politicos trying to get him to take 18 grad hours in a subject in which
and jet-setting higher ed “leadership” in Alabama, Kentucky, they’re planning to shut down the department. And he’s not
and Tennessee over the past decade. The real point, as happy about that. I wonder why?”
commenter Ellen Schrecker points out, is the similarities–that And with commenter “mchag12″:
labor and labor scholarship continue to be under assault across
the country. “The relationship with the faculty at public universities is
just becoming untenable as faculty are treated as line items
I’d go further than Ellen with the similarities–it’s a question to be dispensed with at will by high paid administrators.
of the turn toward steadily more anti-democratic practices of What would you do, azprof, if your department was slated
education administration more broadly. Not to mention the for demolition and your university actually asked the state
related notion that politicians are, effectively, the “managers” legislature to defund it? Back out of the room shuffling and
of the public sphere that we can trace to Democrats Clinton bowing and repeating thank you, thank you? If you think you
and Gore, right on down to their intellectual heir and Wal-mart are safe, you’re not.”
admirer currently occupying the White House.
That last line by mchag says it all.

2
July 15th, 2010 Published by: philosophyandrew

Some of our work Title

Source: http://www.elearningpost.com/blog/some_of_our_work/ Your comment:
July 15th, 2010

Glad to have worked with some very talented illustrators and Enter email to receive
animators. Here is a sample of our work at PebbleRoad. replies:

Unprintable Content (Video, Flash, etc.) Your comments always remain your property, but in posting
them here you agree to license under the same terms as this
Page 1 of 1 pages site ( Creative Commons ). If your comment is offensive it will
be deleted.

You Can Get College Credit Automated Spam-checking is in effect. If you are a registered
user you may submit links and other HTML. Anonymous users
For Working The Cash cannot post links and will have their content screened - certain
Register At Wal-Mart words are prohibited and your comment will be analyzed to
make sure it makes sense.
Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/07/you-can-get-
college-credit-for-working-the-cash-register-at-walmart.html
By StevenB on July 15th, 2010
On education
Hundreds of thousands of Wal-Mart employees now have an Source: http://www.elearningpost.com/blog/on_education/
extra reason to consider pursuing a college degree. Through July 15th, 2010
a partnership with the online American Public University
(APU), they can qualify for free college credits that are “The school was broken down into advisories, with a teacher
awarded for the knowledge and skills they've gained in certain and a group of students who spent four years together. Each
job categories. But is working in a job, say, as a cashier really adviser, parent, and student developed an individual learning
worthy of college credit? plan. The school had broad goals of reading, writing, applying
If a student can show how the experience translates into math, empirical reasoning, communication, and personal
knowledge and skills that others might learn in a college class, qualities. Every student would have his or her own way of
then yes, higher-education experts say. Read more at: reaching those goals with high standards. The teacher—also
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2010/0713/ acting as adviser—would help the student identify his or her
College-credit-for-Wal-Mart-work-Should-doing-a-job- interests and then find a mentor and workplace to help make
count-toward-degrees the learning real.”

Google Charts Now Plot Latest Issue of EDUCAUSE

Functions Quarterly Now Available
Source: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=52877 Online
July 15th, 2010 Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/07/latest-issue-of-
Another Tony Hirst post that costs me a half hour or so, educause-quarterly-now-available-online.html
this time exploring Google charts. Basically. what Google has By StevenB on July 15th, 2010
ndeveloped is a chart-making topol that allows you to simple The newest issue of EDUCAUSE Quarterly is now available,
send them a URL to insert a chart into your page. Like this: and the theme for this issue is cloud computing. Virtually
every feature article and the usual columns deal with cloud
computing. There is also one article that focuses on mobile web
development for the university and library. There are some
good tables on the distribution of functions for mobile library
sites. Read more at:
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/
EQVolume332010/
EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/206524
Too cool! Here's the Google chart API .
Tony Hirst , OUseful Info , July 14, 2010 2:51 p.m.. [ Link ]
[Tags: Google , Cool ] [ Previous ][ Next ] Paper puts up a paywall for
Comments comments
Source: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=52876
Comment July 15th, 2010
You are not logged in. [Login]
A new business model: charging readers who want to post
comments. It strikes me that this would work well for high-
3
July 15th, 2010 Published by: philosophyandrew
traffic websites. And at 99 cents a comment, you couldn't really
say it is inaccessible to the whole population. Would it be The LIS Standard Moves
equitable, though? Probably not - but newspaper letters to the Forward
editor have never been equitable. And with real names posted Source: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=52875
as well, it would certainly reduce the anonorage that fills July 15th, 2010
most online news comment sections today (Anonorage =df.
"anonymous rage" or "anonymous garbage", meaning hate- With Blackboard supporting the IMS Learning Information
filed vitriolic commentary from an extremely partisan point Services (LIS), writes Michael Feldstein, things look good
of view, as found in newspaper websites or the in the prattle for the specification. "By the time Blackboard finishes their
of talk radio - this is the world's first use of the term). More: implementation, we'll have the first tier of LMS applications
Sun Chronicle / The Wall / Editors' weblog / Electric Frontier all standards-compliant and will be hopefully filling out the
Foundation . ecosystem with up-and-coming LMSs and some non-LMS
Roy Greenslade , The Guardian , July 14, 2010 2:32 p.m.. [ systems that could benefit from the same type of integration."
Link ] [Tags: Accessibility , Web Logs ] [ Previous ][ Next ] Michael Feldstein , e-Literate , July 14, 2010 12:44 p.m.. [
Link ] [Tags: Information , IMS Project , Blackboard Inc. ]
Comments [ Previous ][ Next ]
Comment Comments
You are not logged in. [Login]
Comment
Title You are not logged in. [Login]

Your comment: Title

Enter email to receive Your comment:

replies:
Enter email to receive
replies:
Your comments always remain your property, but in posting
them here you agree to license under the same terms as this
site ( Creative Commons ). If your comment is offensive it will Your comments always remain your property, but in posting
be deleted. them here you agree to license under the same terms as this
site ( Creative Commons ). If your comment is offensive it will
Automated Spam-checking is in effect. If you are a registered be deleted.
user you may submit links and other HTML. Anonymous users
cannot post links and will have their content screened - certain Automated Spam-checking is in effect. If you are a registered
words are prohibited and your comment will be analyzed to user you may submit links and other HTML. Anonymous users
make sure it makes sense. cannot post links and will have their content screened - certain
words are prohibited and your comment will be analyzed to
make sure it makes sense.
IHEs Need Longer Orientations
To Cover A Host Of New End To Stimulus Money Means
Issues Even Tougher Times For
Higher Education
Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/07/ihes-need-longer-
orientations-to-cover-a-host-of-new-issues.html
By StevenB on July 15th, 2010 Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/07/end-to-stimulus-
money-means-even-tougher-times-for-higher-education.html
A generation ago, college orientation was a perfunctory affair, By StevenB on July 15th, 2010
lasting little more than a day. Now, universities are putting
more emphasis on this annual ritual than ever before, hoping Most state governments depend on federal stimulus money
that time and energy expended during the summer will boost to keep public colleges and universities afloat, a new report
student success and avert problems during the school year.The says. But these funds may be drying up as the new fiscal
expansion is needed, say administrators, to address a range year begins. Thirty-nine states used stimulus money to
of topics that didn't exist or weren't discussed much a decade support higher education in the past year, compared to only
ago: illegal downloads, sexting, plagiarism, credit card abuse 14 states the year before. Experts say it won't be long before
— along with more concern about alcoholism, eating disorders stimulus dollars disappear for good, forcing state colleges and
and other mental health issues. Read more at: universities to raise tuition, cut enrollment, or lay off faculty —
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/ct-met- trends already apparent at institutions across the nation. Read
teen-college-orientation-20100712,0,1115326.story more at:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/college/2010-07-11-
college-funding_N.htm

4
July 15th, 2010 Published by: philosophyandrew

The United States of Alabama Title

Source: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=52874 Your comment:
July 15th, 2010

The accusations are getting stronger and there's a sense Enter email to receive
we're approaching an end-game for education: "the scary stuff replies:
is what Democrats and Republicans agree on. Obama's ed
secretary Arne Duncan made Tennessee sole winner of the Your comments always remain your property, but in posting
reviled Race to the Top competition because of the state's them here you agree to license under the same terms as this
willingness to do to both K-12 and higher ed what he'd site ( Creative Commons ). If your comment is offensive it will
already done in Chicago: turn schools over to private and for- be deleted.
profit managers; silence teachers, students, and parents; strip
down the curriculum; increase the direct voice of commercial Automated Spam-checking is in effect. If you are a registered
interests in administration at every level." Marc Bousquet , user you may submit links and other HTML. Anonymous users
Chronicle of Higher Education , July 14, 2010 12:33 p.m.. [ cannot post links and will have their content screened - certain
Link ] [Tags: United States , Schools ] [ Previous ][ Next ] words are prohibited and your comment will be analyzed to
make sure it makes sense.
Comments
Comment
You are not logged in. [Login]
Open Education Resource
Foundation Annual Report
Title
2009
Your comment: Source: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=52872
July 15th, 2010
Enter email to receive
replies: The Open Education Foundation (ie., WikiEducator) has
released its first annual report. It's an interesting glimpse
Your comments always remain your property, but in posting into the Open Community Governance Policy. "All meetings
them here you agree to license under the same terms as this are conducted openly and transparently in the wiki using an
site ( Creative Commons ). If your comment is offensive it will an asynchronous implementation of parliamentary procedure.
be deleted. All voting is conducted by open ballot. This radical
transparency provides an effective voice for minority opinions
Automated Spam-checking is in effect. If you are a registered and respects diversity, while mitigating against the weakness
user you may submit links and other HTML. Anonymous users associated with 'group think'." Various Authors , Open
cannot post links and will have their content screened - certain Education Foundation , July 14, 2010 9:46 a.m.. [ Link ] [Tags:
words are prohibited and your comment will be analyzed to none] [ Previous ][ Next ]
make sure it makes sense. Comments
Comment
Sunbelt Software unveils You are not logged in. [Login]
ClearCloud, an anti-malware Title
DNS Your comment:
Source: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=52873
July 15th, 2010 Enter email to receive
I've been using Google's DNS for some time, replacing replies:
Rogers badly flawed DNS that spams me by sending me
to Rogers Yahoo search pages. New ClearCloud offers an Your comments always remain your property, but in posting
intriguing alternative - a DNS service that won't resolve URLs them here you agree to license under the same terms as this
for malicious websites, the sorts of sites that would harm your site ( Creative Commons ). If your comment is offensive it will
computer with viruses and malware. It's a good idea (if not be deleted.
abused) and looks like it will be free. Lee Mathews , Download
Squad , July 14, 2010 10:53 a.m.. [ Link ] [Tags: Google , Automated Spam-checking is in effect. If you are a registered
Yahoo! , Spam ] [ Previous ][ Next ] user you may submit links and other HTML. Anonymous users
cannot post links and will have their content screened - certain
Comments words are prohibited and your comment will be analyzed to
Comment make sure it makes sense.
You are not logged in. [Login]