All those topics that i wish i had time to pursue more earnestly.

Around the Corner v2 – MGuhlin.net – Librarians are obsolete:
A few folks–David Warlick (2cents) and Chris Harris (InfoMancy)–are
complaining about how librarians have been left out in the cold, found
to be obsolete/irrelevant to a world that can do its own research, work out information literacy
on its own, and really, come on, do we REALLY need those grumpy librarians?

You know, I bet librarians are laboring under the same draconian policies teachers are…basically that there are too many OTHER duties in addition to being a teacher-librarian to engage a classroom full of students in learning information problem-solving a la Big6/Super3, that there just isn’t time in the day to engage in the levels of reflection required by the Read/Write Web.

So, School Libraries Work…but are the people who advocate for technology instead of people…well, do they even care what people are going to help students use that technology? If teachers and librarians can both teach Technology Training in a 2.0 World, why should anyone think they have to pay extra for a librarian?

What’s the value-added of a librarian?

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SO there is a huge debate about the value of librarians now? is there? buy laptops fire librarians? is that the real answer? I think not. However, i do no think that librarians and archivists have an easy argument when so many different fields now make strong claims to performing all but their most mundane tasks.

about gng
| global nomads group:
Using interactive technologies such as videoconferencing, GNG brings young people together face-to-face to meet across cultural and national boundaries to discuss their differences & similarities, and the world issues that affect them.

Global Nomads Group programs aim to:

Increase young people’s knowledge of the world and its people

Increase collaboration and dialogue between students of different cultures and nationalities

Highlight critical world issues ranging from HIV/AIDS to global warming, to war

Provide an educational framework in which students can become active leaders in their own education

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This is a great idea…

Nine Shift : Education: The Gallaudet protests :
The issue is also about the biggest educational struggle in this early century: the switch from making every student “normal” to understanding that every student is not normal, in other words, unique.

And once again bloggers kept the issue alive. Bloggers, those journalist advocates for a niche, a slice of people. One of the leading deaf bloggers is Ricky D. Taylor, or Ridor, at RidorLive.com.

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non-normality is the key to actually understanding and structuring learning these days.

Sacrificing the joy of learning:
A couple of days later, I came across this article by Roger Schank; blaming the laziness of college professors for the focus on arcane subjects:

Universities dictate curricula to high schools to make professor’s lives easier. If everyone takes physics and calculus and most never use it, well, professors claim it was good for the students anyway when in fact it was only good for making sure professors didn’t have to teach it in college. As long as professors don’t have to teach the basics it is okay that high school students are forced to study stuff they will never use in their whole lives. We have ruined an entire generation of high school students who don’t like learning and think the subject matter is irrelevant because professors only want to teach the good stuff.

We sacrifice the joy of learning for an entire generation so professors can have an easier time teaching incoming students.

I have 18 years of formal education, 25 years of work experience, have never used exponential equations outside of school, and don’t remember how to do them today. What are we teaching, and why?
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I don’t buy this argument. The idea that mathematics is irrelevant at the level of exponential analysis is just silly. How is one supposed to understand the compound interest of checking and loans if you cannot do the math? Are you willing to say that people should be left to the will of the bankers and related businesses to do their calculations?

On another level, we aren’t really talking about teaching irrelevancies for the sake of them, we are actually talking about the teachers inability to choose textbooks that are meaningful to the students and parents… Frequently they choose textbooks that are too abstract, that lack real world word problems, and are very hard to relate to. It is not that the concepts can’t be constructed to be otherwise, it is that people have grown accustomed to seeing the ideas in a very 1950’s timeless formalism. If the materials are actually presented as parts of real life then you’d not have the issues of the professors at all, because perhaps… students would actually remember and use their learning instead of forgetting it before college…
I could go on and on about this… but I’m not going to.

Frequently Asked Questions – Men Make Dinner Day:
Q.Is there a NATIONAL MEN MAKE DINNER DAY parade?

A.Not yet.

Electronic Literature Collection, Volume One:
\]

Electronic Literature Collection, Volume One
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60 works of electronic literature, under cc license.. in one volume. good deal.

Reality Bites: Worst Game Evar:
This is not a game, it is work. Games are supposed to be immersive and fun, SecondLife fails miserably at this. Most disappointing game ever, waste of downloading/patching time.I don’t care if Linden Labs sees this blog post and finds it offensive in some way, but instead of figuring out how to make it a COMMERCIAL success, they first need to make it enjoyable. If it wasn’t for school, I would have uninstalled it after five seconds.

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A nice critique of second life from a student trying to finish an assignment in world… I think he is spot on that it is closer to work… but then… what isn’t work, in nyc… play is some of the hardest work you’ll find.

Clifford Geertz – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Clifford James Geertz (born August 23, 1926 in San Francisco, died October 30, 2006) was an American anthropologist and served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.

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Clifford Geertz passed away. I first saw it at savage minds

so… there is this thing… called National Novel Writers Month. (its november) The goal is to write a 175 novel by the end of the month… that is the goal, 50000 words. I have another project or two to done in the same time… and they amount to about 50000 words. Is it possible to write 50000 words of academic prose in a month? yes, will it be any good? some will, some won’t, but if i manage to finish these drafts, I can then go on and revise them for months…. So, here is what I’m thinking. I’m going to do NaNoWriMo. I’m just going to post my word count to my blog each day. The goal is to add 50000 words of academic prose by the end of the month. It will be a challenge, it won’t be a novel, but it is 30 days of writing, some of which i’m traveling, but eh…. They key is to write, each and every day, averaging 1500+ words per day. Editing is of course, extra.

So from Nov. 1 to nov. 30. this blog will only be posting the wordcount and the wordcount of that day. I have three projects that i need to work on, but I’ll only be posting the totals. There will probably other little descriptions of what I’m doing that day too.

(part of this is also to break through the lack of confidence that i tend to have in my writing, i need to get past the ‘good’ bit and get to the ‘done’ bit)

so 50000 words… one month…