Retrenchment, Day 35
09/06/23
This is day 35 of my retrenchment; 243 to go. Yesterday I wrote to the student governments at both BSU where I work and at Mankato, where I'll be speaking at the end of the month. It may seem silly, but now that the thought has occurred to me that students could be uniquely effective advocating for themselves on issues like reducing textbook costs, I really want to test that theory and see how effective they can become. We wouldn't have had the legislation in Minnesota that led to the Z-Degrees without a lot of lobbying by the statewide association of the two-year students, LeadMN. The four-year students have their own organization, Students United, which has said it supports decreasing student expense, but hasn't really acted yet. I wrote to them this morning, to see if a former professor could become a member, If I took some courses? (It's weird that we never think of professors as students, don't you think? But that's a different topic for a different day)
The other thing that will be happening today is the first system-wide Academic and Student Affairs Technology Council meeting. This will be a 3.5-hour meeting beginning at noon. It'll be interesting and a bit more relaxing to attend as a participant rather than as Chair today. I'll also be curious to see how things are going at the other colleges and universities. I've been very focused on Bemidji, for obvious reasons. The Council has members from both the colleges and the universities, as well as spots for representatives of the two student groups. It will be interesting to see whether student reps attend. If not, I may volunteer to get in touch with each group and encourage them.
Yesterday I also bought another domain so I can build a website more directly addressing the Open Ed work I want to do. It's going to be called DisruptedED.net, and I'll be working on getting it set up over the next week or so. I'm going to choose a slightly more modern, video-friendly theme when I'm building it than the one I used for DrDanAllosso.com. That one was the one I used a decade ago, so I used it out of nostalgia and because I'm reusing a lot of the content I had posted before (for example, I've added blog archives that go all the way back to 2009). This new one will probably focus a lot more on audio and video, since I do a lot of that nowadays. It will begin with a section on OER, a duplicate of this retrenchment series, because I think that's relevant to the theme of how education has been disrupted; and finally a section on note-making and writing. I imagine I'll add more over time. I'll announce here when it's ready to visit.
Link to YouTube: https://youtu.be/C21LSZvghW8
The other thing that will be happening today is the first system-wide Academic and Student Affairs Technology Council meeting. This will be a 3.5-hour meeting beginning at noon. It'll be interesting and a bit more relaxing to attend as a participant rather than as Chair today. I'll also be curious to see how things are going at the other colleges and universities. I've been very focused on Bemidji, for obvious reasons. The Council has members from both the colleges and the universities, as well as spots for representatives of the two student groups. It will be interesting to see whether student reps attend. If not, I may volunteer to get in touch with each group and encourage them.
Yesterday I also bought another domain so I can build a website more directly addressing the Open Ed work I want to do. It's going to be called DisruptedED.net, and I'll be working on getting it set up over the next week or so. I'm going to choose a slightly more modern, video-friendly theme when I'm building it than the one I used for DrDanAllosso.com. That one was the one I used a decade ago, so I used it out of nostalgia and because I'm reusing a lot of the content I had posted before (for example, I've added blog archives that go all the way back to 2009). This new one will probably focus a lot more on audio and video, since I do a lot of that nowadays. It will begin with a section on OER, a duplicate of this retrenchment series, because I think that's relevant to the theme of how education has been disrupted; and finally a section on note-making and writing. I imagine I'll add more over time. I'll announce here when it's ready to visit.
Link to YouTube: https://youtu.be/C21LSZvghW8
