Educational Insanity

In response to Scott McLeod’s 140-character book review contest, I submitted an entry that summarized/synthesized two books in less than 140 characters.  I wrote:

ORGANIZING (EVERYBODY AND/OR EVERYTHING) IS DIFFERENT NOW.

That’s it.  Put together “Here Comes Everybody” and “Everything is Miscellaneous” and that’s what you get.

For those who read the books, those 57 characters should make perfect sense.

For those who’ve read either or neither, it should be fairly self-explanatory.  But, if not, basically, HCE is about how Web 2.0 lowers (and in many cases, eliminates) the transaction costs of organizing a group of like-minded individuals to achieve a common goal.  EIM is about how the digitizing and tagging of information means that old organizing schemes developed for physical information (e.g. the Dewey Decimal system) have given way to digitzing+tagging+aggregating.

That’s it.  Class over.  Thanks for coming and you can now go read something that actually requires book-length treatment.

Everything is Miscellaneous

Originally uploaded by Travelin’ Librarian

Today is the deadline to submit my annual review. August 20 is my deadline for submitting my tenure portfolio. I will write about how I’ve played the game and published in peer-reviewed journals and done service by sitting and chairing various committees…blah, blah, blah. But, I also intend to make the case that the time I’ve spent this year blogging, twittering, networking, etc. should “count” for tenure consideration. Ernest Boyer wrote about the “Scholarship of Application” (and, BTW, Western Carolina University formally adopted Boyer’s ideas into their tenure criteria last year). Others, including Richard Lerner, have written about “Outreach Scholarship.” These ideas certainly blur the distinction between the academic holy trinity (teaching, research, service).

Well, Boyer, Lerner et al. never contemplated the read/write Web or RSS or online social networking. So the question I’m pondering is how might we conceptualize the role of higher education faculty where everything is miscellaneous and everybody is coming?

I’d appreciate any help you can offer as I ponder…