By G. Rendell. The top story of the hour, obviously, is Obama's initiative to do something (bomb?  debilitate?  degrade?  invade, but only with trainers and logisticians?  invade with combat forces?) to the nation of Syria. The ostensible reason is to punish the current Syrian regime for its deviation from "international norms". That phrase, which has been uttered by every administration official, every military-industrial-complex-funded member of Congress, and almost every apologist in the corporate media, is telling.  Not "international law".  Not any particular international treaty.  "International norms." Read more...

By Matt Reed. The Boy and The Girl returned to school yesterday.  The Girl -- who is starting the fourth grade -- reported that her teacher had every student do a “Facebook page” (on paper) about themselves.  Apparently, it’s fair to assume now that fourth graders know how Facebook pages work.  One of the questions was “favorite things,” and they were supposed to list four.  As TG put it, she listed “kittens, puppies, chocolate, and books.  You know, the essentials.”
That’s my girl.
                                                                                                                    ---
Free idea for the League for Innovation: could we put together some sort of League-ish conference entirely online?  Community college travel budgets have really been beaten down over the last few years, so it’s getting harder to send people to conferences, but we need the cross-fertilization of ideas more than ever.  Twitter is great, but sometimes the longer form is necessary.  I’m thinking something “live,” with a schedule and a roster. Read more...

By Matt Reed. How do you know when you’re an adult?
According to Coming Up Short, by Jennifer Silva, today’s working-class twenty-somethings answer that question differently than previous generations, including my own, did.
Silva is a sociologist at Harvard, and her book is based on interviews with working-class millenials in Massachusetts and Virginia over the last few years.  Her thesis -- spoiler alert -- is that the classic working-class answer -- steady job, marriage, house, kids -- has lost its relevance, since it has become economically unfathomable. The kind of reliable, well-paying job that underlay the classic postwar American working class has mostly vanished now, replaced by short-term, insecure, poorly-paid jobs that don’t provide the material basis for a stable life. Read more...

By Matt Reed. The Modern Language Association put out a statement this week suggesting that letters of recommendation have gotten out of hand. It offered a series of suggestions for reducing the burden they place on candidates, writers, and readers.
From the perspective of a hiring manager, I’ll offer a different suggestion. Yes, letters have become burdensome on all involved. Streamlining the number involved helps, but doesn’t solve the core problem.  My suggestion is simpler still: abandon letters entirely. Go with lists of people who are willing to take a call instead. Read more...

By Dayna Catropa. Gerry McGovern cited the following example about simplifying online communications in his recent article:
“A bank we worked with found that as they simplified their website, the number of phone calls dropped but the length of time per call increased. In fact, the nature of the calls changed from simple support requests to ones about the products and services the bank offered.”
Generally speaking, higher education institutions have many policies and procedures that need to be communicated to students. Read more...

By Joshua Kim. I've been spending some time with Blackboard Mobile Learn 4.0, the latest update to its iOS and Android mobile LMS platform. (Apparently they also have Blackberry and WebOS...could this be right?)
So far I'm impressed.
Mobile Learn 4.0 seems to do a much better job than previous versions of converting the web formatting to the mobile form factor. I've been experimenting on an iPhone, and I've been pleasantly surprised how functional the app seems to be for reading blog and discussion posts, watching class videos, and launching attached PDF articles. Read more...