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Twilight Zone parody points out the coming reality… »

When we talk about working from home or freelancing, being a telecommuter or entrepenuer, new realities present themselves. Killingmylobster creates a youtube video that shows a possible future. You may recognize some familiar types here. Four minutes and well worth your time… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8vJgYQU_lY . What do you think?

A New Direction »

This post began as an assignment for an online english composition course at the University of South Florida. The class was entirely online and required class members to use online tools (SoundCloud, YouTube, etc.) to create different types of media.

I have become so convinced that the online presentation of content is the new paradigm in education that I have decided to experiment with this blog as a curation tool for lifelong learners, independent scholars and anyone who wants to learn. My intention is to spotlight material that is available for free for anyone with access to a web browser.

This is my project presentation; consider it a working white paper.

22 April 2012
Self Learning as a Lifelong Process

The distribution of education, the idea of the University, the nature of dissemination of information, is coming under pressures threatening to dissolve basic assumptions regarding the process we call education. In many cases the model for distribution of education and information has broken down. The Internet and the web of communication that now ties most of the planet together allows for redistribution of material, technology, and knowledge that is unprecedented in human history. The redistribution of knowledge is challenging the assumptions underlying higher education: the guarantee that a graduate possesses a basic skill set and the value of credentials awarded by the university.
Two thirds of college seniors graduated with loans in 2010, and they carried an average of $25,000 in debt. They also face the highest unemployment rate for young college graduates in recent history at 9.1%. Those statistics come from the Project on Student Debt. At the same time new data released by the US Department of Education shows that 8.8% of student loan borrowers had defaulted in the two-year period from 2008-2010 (“Project on Student Debt”).
That’s just for a Bachelor’s degree; if you continue on in academia the costs just get higher. Even with the many scholarships and loans available, many potential students will simply never have the opportunity to receive a university education. Their financial and living situations do not allow them to participate in the usual academic process.
The de-institutionalizing of education allowed by the Internet is creating industries, notably in the digital sector. Most of the new jobs created in the next ten years have not been invented yet. The rapid rate of change is making the idea of a “career” impractical as people become more mobile, changing jobs and even careers many times during a working life; “the new reality is multiple gigs… constant pressure to learn new things and adapt to new work situations, and no guarantee that you’ll stay in a single industry” (“Four Year Career”). The University System is not constructed to react to such rapid change. These are the new rules of disintermediation and revolution: “Our institutions are out of date; the long career is dead; any quest for solid rules is pointless… you can’t rely on an established business model or a corporate ladder to point your way (“Generation Flux”). This sounds like chaos. But it simply means old structures are breaking down while new structures have not yet been formulated or at least stabilized.

This is our time of challenge: to live in interesting times, when old structures crumble and new ones have yet to be established.

More tomorrow…

testing, testing… it’s time for action! »

please disregard. testing to make sure all lines are open…

and now-

It’s time for Action!

2000 Short Stories »

2000 Short Stories free to read, tag by author, title’etc. Check it out. The story a day option sounds interesting…

http://www.americanliterature.com/sstitleindex.html

Spoken Word »


Add Reflections to your page

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Imitation of Carver 2 »

Contemplating Carver,
Lines breaking and reforming
In my head as I slow cook eggs,
Browning in butter, sizzling in the skillet.
Steam rises from my coffee cup, the red one on the sideboard,
Lilly’s muzzle dripping as she raises her head
From her bowl, snuffling.
She smiles, red tongue lolling in black furred face.
On a quiet morning
The slow whirring of the fan,
The rattle of the jalousie panes,
White noise from outside to inside my head.
“Put it all in, make use”, he whispers
As the toaster pops.

Carver speaks to me in a quiet, intimate voice. I tried to recreate that voice as I made breakfast, freezing a moment in time to use as material for a poem in imitation of Carver’s style. I experimented with the line length several times, moving phrases back and forth in an attempt to use space to create a sense of rhythm. I used images designed to evoke the senses. Line Seven,
“From her bowl. Snuffling,…” is the line that gives me the most trouble. I’ve changed the punctuation here to “From her bowl, snuffling.” I begin to see how spacing and punctuation can make a dramatic difference in the poem’s effect on the reader.

Imitation of Carver »

Sunday Night
Raymond Carver

Make use of the things around you,
This light rain
Outside the window, for one.
This cigarette between my fingers,
These feet on the couch.
The faint sound of rock-and-roll,
The red Ferrari in my head.
The woman bumping
Drunkenly around in the kitchen…
Put it all in,
Make use.

From Bishop, Thirteen Ways of Looking for a Poem: A Guide to Writing Poetry, Addison Wesley Longman, 2000,p.21

An Imitation of Carver a draft
Thomas Westmoreland

When I was eleven,
I spent summer in the library,
Reading the Brittanica.
I felt rich, gaining knowledge, drinking hour
After hour from closely typed pages.
The world was stuffed with wonder, popping out
Before my eyes.

Now, I carry a computer
That carries the Brittanica inside.
I feel rich, the grand achievements of great men contained
Between the screen and the keyboard.
They wait for my query, and respond to my command.
I can be anywhere, and see the constellations from Australia.
I cave dive in the caverns of Japan.
I speak with friends, continents away, but with me always
And discuss the great questions that occupy our minds.

The world and I are connected,
My keyboard is worn from my wanderings.
The words of wise women whisper from its speakers.
I am rich, and filled with wonder
Driven to distraction and creating strange connections.