What is it about the “Echo Boomers” that we don’t understand? How do demands on time, work, education, and technology define this generation, and what are we doing to help? This week, Mark Alexander of University of Phoenix joins us to take on the next generation and the fantastic challenge this poses on institutions to step up and meet their needs.
Ep 12: Mark Alexander on Teaching Gen Y
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Robert Scoble has been talking about video blogging, and it’s got me thinking.
As to visuals Jon argues: “If I don’t have any visuals, then I should stick to audio.†Ahh, now I’m starting to get his point. He’s saying if you don’t have anything visual you should just stick with audio. Well, that’s true. But, what is “visuals.†Everything around me has a visual component.
I’ve been using audio and video in my teaching material for the last year. It’s changed the way my students interact with me (for the better, I hope) and I like to think we’re going to be getting better at delivering it institutionally.
But I had lunch today with two of the brains of the place, Bill Berry and George Love (George says he has a blog he needs to revise, Bill should be blogging, and he knows it — I hope he’s sufficiently shamed at his absence from the discussion). Our discussion wandered into the realm of standardizing media content into the classroom. So, before I get into the meat of my point, I have to give a little background.
So, I’m here in Las vegas. You have to get the image here. There’s a moving sidewalk that leads right into a funnel of double doors off of the A gates — the passage narrows considerably, which shouldn’t be a problem with normal traffic flow. But this is not normal traffic flow. This is post 9/11 traffic flow. Someone just found something terrifying in the big open area on the other side of the double doors and caused a lock-down. The doors shut automatically and this stream of people from the moving sidewalk just sort of… slammed into them. But they’re like lemmings, these people. They didn’t adjust like fluid and move around the moving sidewalk to the sides, back up the hallway. No, these people just dog-piled, letting their luggage and bodies just fall into one another. For five minutes this has been happening and it’s not stopping…
___
OK, so it’s stopped, the doors are open and no one knows what it was, just that it has to do with a security breach at the Burger King.
Say it again. A security breach at the Burger King.
That’s rich.
Threats of terror and cultural bifurcation in our country call to question just how diverse a nation we really are. Are We The People really able to understand one another for our differences and move forward together, or are we embroiled in a demographic quagmire at home, work, and in the media?
Ep 11: Charlita Shelton and Race and Diversity in America
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At long last, the release of iTunes 7.0 allows Mac users to create a new iTunes library at launch a la iPhoto. Just option-click the iTunes icon to launch and get a pretty “Choose iTunes Library” window!
