Multilitteratus Incognitus

A little humor for your Wednesday. Dedicated to all those that are starting a Thesis or Capstone project (or thinking about it anyway) :-)

I was reading this article on insidehighered.com the other day. All I have to say is BRILLIANT! (OK, maybe I am getting a bit carried away here) While the article doesn't point out much new information (for me anyways - sorry, I don't mean to sound like a snob), it manages to point out that a lecture is not an inherent ability that you are either born with or you are not. It's is a skill, an art dare I say, that you cultivate, and the longer you practice this art, the better you become at it (especially if you are inclined to take constructive critique). This isn't all that different from when I was learning to prepare presentations as a young(er) graduate student. Did my first presentations stink? Of course they did! But as time went by, and I spent more time thinking about content, layout, information outside of my powerpoint deck, and I practiced, I got better at it! Lectures are the same way too :-) I liked this particular quote from the article: Bad lecturers vio...

Here's some weekend humor for you, courtesy of PhD comics

I had a good laugh when I read this over at the PowerPoint Ninja . The author goes though a list of the different types of bad PowerPoint presenter types (although I find that sometimes these types intermix). It's no surprise that I've survived a number of bad PowerPoint presentations. The most annoying ones are the Reader, the Apologist and the Wanderer. This tells me that they've spent NO time actually preparing for their presentations (well all the types tell me that, but the most egregious ones are the ones I mentioned). There are two blog posts on the topic over at the PowerPoint Ninja. Have at 'em, they are entertaining (unless you suffer from PowerPoint Presentation PTSD). For what it's worth, when I teach people PowerPoint I try to teach them more about presentation technique rather than teach them about flashy bulletpoints flying all over the screen.

I came across this article on Mashable a few weeks ago about the traits of a good community manager. Granted this article is concerned more with commerce rather than academia, however I do think that the traits do translate one-to-one in academia. I encourage people to go to mashable and read the article. Here are a few of my thoughts on it. 1. Love your job Well this is a d'uh for almost any job (otherwise you will be a miserable sob hehehe). I found the comment that a community manager should be very approachable quite pertinent. Community managers are the community's front face, the maitre D' in a sense and if you don't like the snooty Maitre D' in this restaurant you will probably go somewhere else. 2. Empower the community and promote others (as well as self). This quite important in a community of practice. People are veritable fountains of knowledge, they just don't know it. Encouraging people to participate unlocks that knowledge for the benefit of t...

Here's a nice little comical flow chart for all you students who don't know how to refer to your professors :-)

I was reading an article called Knowledge Overload over at Inside Higher Ed about a month ago. It was quite an interesting article. I've personally experienced information overload in the last few years by discovering new blogs and information sources and it was interesting to see an academic perspective. I won't really go into the whole article, you should head over and read it if academia and academic publishing interests you. However this quote was quite interesting: The irony in all of this is that it is academic career and advancement requirements, more than faculty preferences, which are driving the current pattern of academic dissemination. New doctorates, eager for a place on the tenure track, work like crazy to get into the right conferences and journals. Recently hired faculty know that tenure rests on getting the right hits in the right journals and, maybe, getting their dissertation published as a book. Tenured faculty know that merit and final promotion – indeed, ...

I was over at Library Journal a short while a go and I came across this article about the " debate " over the MLIS (Masters of Library and Information Science) at the most recent ACRL conference. Personally I didn't know there was an open debate among professionals - just those among us that don't want to get one but want to work in fields that are traditionally staffed by librarians. Apparently there is a debate. The person in favor of the MLIS for information professionals argued that the MLS was necessary because it fosters shared values—values essential to the transition to the future of the digital library. Library schools, Bishoff said, rightly “focus on educating rather than training.” Personally, from what I've seen, most MLIS programs fall short on both training and educating. Shared values can be fostered without plopping down $30k for another graduate degree (considering that most librarians already have a Masters degree). I think that the mo...

I was reading though my feed reader the other day and I came across this post . The author and I agree on many points, and I have elaborated more with my face to face colleagues on this issue. I had brought up the issue of blogs, wikis, bookmark-sharing and other potentially useful. The response I got was similar to this: Well, the new release of Blackboard now includes the ability to do Blogs, wikis, and most of what you are talking about. Well OK, yes they can do it, but there are (at least) two problems with your logic. 1. those blogs (etc) are closed, so you can't get access to them from the outside. In addition once the course is over students also lose their access to THEIR work! With uploaded documents you can always retain a copy, with a blog or wiki this isn't an option. 2. you dunce! you are paying for the privileged to use something that is FREE! I agree with this sentiment: Maybe LMS vendors are taking advantage of the people/organizations who don’t have the technic...

In the past number of months I've been reading the Brazen Careerist, and I've seen a number of blog posts that can essentially be boiled down to this: "I could have learned what I learned in college on my own!" Now I've also seen a blog post on the UMassOnline Blog about the debate over three year colleges, and I see more connections. There are a few things that people should understand about college, but generally don't. First it seems that higher education is pushed on unsuspecting high school kids as the only respectable option. Trade schools seem to have gone by the wayside, thus college is billed more for its ability to to get you a job once you graduate (which may or may not be true) rather than the ability to expand your mind. I don't blame people on Brazen careerist because I was once like them, until I realized the value of higher education for me. I was in the sciences. Technically what I learned what a marketable skill and I could use it to g...

I saw this over at the PowerPoint ninja a while back and decided that it would be a good resource to post on here for all the PowerPoint n00bs. It's the PowerPoint Design Triangle - similar to any good-ol' project management/competing attention type of paradigm (gah! I used that word again!) Have a look - it's worth at least five minutes of your time :-)

I was recently reading through the post titled IDs - It's time for some seriously tough love when I came across the following closing statement: When you look at the job titles, you see things like content analyst, technical writer, screen writer, video producer, project manager, budget manager, evaluator, test-writer, statistician, graphic artist, web designer, content author, scripter, coder, analyst. LMS manager. Trainer. Teacher. They are coming from design schools, art schools, multimedia departments, computer science departments, engineering, video and film, media and advertising. Business schools. They don't seem to depend so much on learning theory. Does anybody else see anything wrong with this picture? Especially as games, Web 2.0 and new media are purported to be the future of elearning, and this is what IDs typically design? Are IDs really still as relevant as we want to think we are? I think that the Instructional Design field is probably suffering from the same ...

I was recently reading Jay Cross's article on the Chief Learning Officer on Getting Rid of the Training Department , followed by his post on New Roles for former trainers . The following quote summarizes the whole thing quite nicely: When my colleagues and I advocate cutting back on workshops and classes, we don’t suggest firing the instructors. Rather, we recommend redeploying them as connectors, wiki gardeners, internal publicists, news anchors, and performance consultants. I agree that training, old style training, is mostly dead. Old style training was based on the fact that all learners come in with the same basic knowledge. This may still be true when new products are deployed and people need training on those new products, however most types of training that I've seen have been more along the lines of boutique-style-training (I think I invented the term a few years back when I started as a formal trainer). Most people don't start from point A in their knowledge of ...

Here's a little April Humor for you