A rare weekend post to announce that I’ve been awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Instructional Technology at Utah State University. Thanks to everyone for their help, encouragement, and support. And this is more than a passing thank you. I mean sincerely: Thanks to the Mike, Cathy, and Phoenix at the Hewlett Foundation for funding my work Thanks to Elizabeth at the National Science Foundation for funding my work ...
Via Alec Couros, via D’Arcy Norman. Apparently, I am a Gauntlet Adventurer: I am a Gauntlet Adventurer. I strive to improve my living conditions by hoarding gold, food, and sometimes keys and potions. I love adventure, fighting, and particularly winning - especially when there’s a prize at stake. I occasionally get lost inside buildings and can’t find the exit. I need food badly. What Video Game Character Are You?
There’s an interesting thread on IT Forum regarding the purpose of doctoral education. I figured as long as I was answering the “what’s the purpose” question I may as well post it here as well. ...
If it makes sense to mobilze the army and everyone else to come to the aid of the poor and unfortunate after a natural disaster (like Katrina), why doesn’t it make sense to mobilze this level of support for “them” the rest of the time? Is it because, barring a natural disaster, it’s their own fault and so they don’t deserve any help? Is it that we would really rather not help at all, but what with all the images on TV it would be political suicide not to help? Seems rather duplicitous to be helping now. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying we shouldn’t be helping now. I’m saying we should be helping more often. Helping, of course, is what open education is all about.
METADATA RECORD Name: John Arnim ?? Wiley Release Date: June 22, 2005 @ 1:00pm MDT Size: 19.5 inches x 6 lbs 15 ounces ...
With our fourth child about to be born (literally any day now), yesterday I received word from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation that our most recent grant proposal has been formally approved. This will provide us with 18 months time more in which to evangelize open education, support universities as they start OpenCourseWare initiatives with our eduCommons software, training, and evangelsim support, make publishing open educational resources easier by integrating and improving our OLS and eduCommons tools, and migrate USU OCW from our research center into the university’s Faculty Assistance Center for Teaching. ...
I don’t know when I’ve laughed so hard recently. Today I received a check in the mail from ProQuest for $16.11 US. Upon inspection, this check represents my royalties on copies of my dissertation that ProQuest sold during 2004. Apparently, they sold 24 copies of my dissertation, making a cool $700 in the process (22 downloads and 2 paper copies), and I get $16 bucks. Don’t people know they can download my dissertation for free??? It’s the #2 return on a Google search for wiley and dissertation. And who would pay $40 bucks for my dissertation? Well, it certainly cheered up my Tuesday afternoon at any rate… If I save up my money, and they sell 25 more this year, I might even be able to afford to buy my own copy of it!
I keep reflecting on Teemu’s recent comment… The aim of reaching everyone is immoral. It seems to be a project of expanding the banking concept of education where “knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing.” Going back several blog posts to the original statement, it seems that much of the stir was caused by my (perhaps unfortunate) use of the word “education.” Some will say that “education” is evil because it is traditionally forced on people who don’t want it by people who feel like they need it.* But if I did not mean that we need to work so that the “education forcibly imposed on poor, helpless individuals by an evil empire” will reach out to everyone, what did I mean? If educators and instructional technologists aren’t the pawns of Satan, what is that I imagine them doing? To put it simply, I imagine them empowering or, more simply, helping. I think our primary task is helping. ...
So, I’m still hearing from people about my scalability comments. Just to restate: there’s nothing evil about scalability itself. Scalability is about reaching lots of people, and reaching lots of people is an important intermediate goal. My only concern is that we might stop there - we might stop when our business plans and technology allow us to reach 90% of people and say “we’re finished!” Now, reaching 90% is obviously better than only reaching 45%. But why don’t we reach the other 10%? Not enough money in their “market”? Worse yet, have we just forgotten they exist? Do we think that reaching 90% is really reaching everyone? If educators and instructional designers aren’t the champions of learning, who will be? ...
Lots of folks responded rather strongly to my suggestion that talking about and focusing on scalability is immoral. As usual, I appear to have done a poor job articulating my feelings. :) The focus on scalability scares me because it only focuses on reaching lots of people, on reaching large numbers of people, on reaching the majority of people. The amount of commitment necessary to reach all as opposed to many seems qualitatively different to me. I’m afraid that the focus on scaling, and talk about how great and worthy reaching the majority of people is, will allow instructional technologists to feel like they’re off the hook for reaching the few, the small numbers of people, the minority. ...