BlueJeans Videoconferencing

There is a new kid on the block for videoconferencing, one that looked quite promising, called bluejeans, at bluejeans.com.  Easy, flexible, fully featured, and

You're currently using Mac OS 10.5.8, which is quite old.

Try one of these:

Mac OS X Mountain Lion

Windows 7

Sigh.  My system, which works quite well for everything I do otherwise, is no good for this.   So for 80% of my students, they will have to upgrade for me to use this?

What are these people thinking when they develop these things? 

Teaching, Writing, Consulting - AND Keynoting...

Another paid gig one gets when one is an "expert" in a field is a "keynote" address, for which organizations pay very well.  My guess is "keynote" is shorthand for content, the speaker who has something to say, as opposed to the group housekeeping and awards announcements that make up meetings otherwise.  I've been doing several of these in the last year, but this one came with ribbons!

Breakout Search: Adjunct Professor

It seems Google has found another "breakout" search term, that is one with a suprisingly high inquiry level, Adjunct Professor and related searches. Check it out here...

What Happens When Out of Stock On Amazon

How flattering.  Used copies on offer at Amazon.com for up to $800 some odd dollars.  What happens is if you are out of stock, which happened recently for me while I was printing another run, those with used copies jack up their prices hoping to find someone desperate.    Now that I am back in stock, the prices will come a-tumbling down.

Ideogram Etymology

This fellow is teaching physics at Beijing Normal, but it is his passion that is getting him renown:

For 20 years Richard Sears has been devoted to making the etymological information of Chinese characters available online for people to trace them back to their original form, when they were first carved or written on bamboo slips or silk more than 2,000 years ago.
Although the 62-year-old launched his website in 2002, it elicited little response from Chinese netizens until last year, when two Chinese newspapers published his story.
That led to Chinese bloggers praising his work, as well as bemoaning the fact government-funded cultural promotion agencies had been unable to create such a good website for people fascinated by Chinese characters. Each character on his website comes with three former variations - the seal script, bronze inscriptional and oracle bone inscription - and an illustrated guide on its etymology.

And next he needs to extend his reach worldwide by teaching his methods and having his students help in in the task.

The University as Co-op

Comes a report on Mondragon University, in the Basque...

Nor is the cooperative university model a solution to all education’s ills. It’s private and charges tuition (a little more than $7,000 a year),

Hey, those are exactly the figures I show in the biz plan for Seattle Teacher's College!

What is being done now is to collapse education into vocational training, teaching into a fee-for-service form of employment, and research only as a profit generator. The faculty are being put on term contracts and administration is now a career with big salaries and great distance from the places where value is actually being produced. The overall result is the consolidation of a two class system: elite education for economic and political elites and vocational education for the masses.

So when will this take off?  Who knows....

MOOCs In Retreat

Comes an article in slate that covers what we covered a few months ago...

As of this month, that prediction is looking overblown. After a year in which almost every big-name university in the United States rushed to get in on massive open online courses, or MOOCs, the backlash is in full force. And no wonder: The idea of free online video lectures replacing traditional classrooms not only offends many educators’ core values, but it threatens their jobs. Worse, the early evidence suggests the model may not work very well: A partnership between San Jose State and Udacity this spring ended with more than half the students failing. In the same spaces where advocates not long ago trumpeted the MOOC revolution, critics now warn of the “MOOC delusion.”

The idea that MOOCs would replace anything was absurd,  the medieval model of sage on the stage will live on like the Pub and the Trade Show Booth.

The MOOC will never be anything more than a study group, and will not come into its own until is figures out how to take the top 5% (one in twenty) and let them lead the other 19 in studying the material.

People keep trying to ascribe to the web powers just not there.