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Post MLA Thoughts-Part 1 The JobmarketJanuary 7

For those who follow my account on twitter you already no doubt know that between Christmas and New Year’s Eve I was in San Francisco at the Annual Meeting of the Modern Language Association. Those who read this blog also know that I am critical of organizations and institutions (yes almost all of them), especially in higher education as they are oft slow to change and seem to fight for the position of “most irrelevant.” Having said that I should also admit that this was by far the most productive and enjoyable of the three MLA conferences I have attended. (This despite catching the MLA cold which several people seemed to have.) And in the MLA’s defense there were some, at least in my mind, really positive changes, that signal at least a willingness to embrace the literacies of the 21st century (much to the dismay of the Mark Bauerlein’s of the profession.) Rosemary Feal (MLA’s Executive Director), blogged the convention, prior to the meeting the MLA attempted to crowdsource fund graduate students, the MLA offered a feature on the website prior to the convention which allowed you to print out an individual program and calendar from the panels you select (okay you couldn’t exp

Rent-a-TextbookDecember 20 2008

The cycle goes something like this: textbook companies make a lot of money selling books to college students, used bookstores cut in on profits by buying and selling these books to students, textbook companies raise prices to recoup profits and publish new editions every year attempting to muscle out the used book market. But, then enter the internet . . . where alas information yearns to be free (yet is often frequently held in chains). Earlier this year The Chronicle reported on Textboook Torrents a site which sought to liberate information from the textbook industry and supply it free (illegally) to students, to which the publishers responded by issuing legal notices to get the site taken down.

Never fear poor students . . .the internet has responded and now you can Rent-a-Textbook. This seems to me to be a better option than torrenting, not only because it is legal but because you get the physical copy. (I’ll admit the user interface on a book is pretty good, preferable in many cases. When was the last time your book ran out of batteries?) I am sure the cat and mouse game of textbook publishers and exploits will continue for quite some time, but ultimately this information is going to follow the music model and get really cheap (think iTunes). Let’s just hope the textbook industry learns faster than the RIAA. (Okay, probably wo

The Best Holiday Gift I Am Likely to Get—New DevonDecember 19 2008

DevonTechnologies has just released the beta version of DevonThink 2.0. And yes, this is likely the best thing I will get for the Holidays. Whether this says more about me and my geeky/scholarly loves, or about the people who will give me gifts I leave to you. (Actually my brother and I instituted a ban on gifts to anyone who was alive for the Ronald Reagan Presidency, instead we give stuff to charities . . . but I digress). At any rate, I am wonderfully excited about this release, for as much as I use Devon the interface was somewhat lacking and it needed to catch-up with the current informational trends (tagging). I am happy to say that the interface has much improved (it supports coverflow). Devon also says that the search functions have been improved. But, what interests me most about the new features is the side drawer which allows for easily adding information to multiple and separate databases.

Necessary ReadingDecember 17 2008

If you are not reading Mark Pesce’s blog The Human Network you really should start. But more importantly if you are in education you should carve out some time to read a recent series of posts he has published which all focus on education. Actually I suspect that these are the published versions of a series of talks he gave at a recent Australian educational conference. At any rate I find Pesce to be one of the more provocative thinkers on the internet and matters of cultural transformation. I am not sure I always agree with what he suggests, but this is also one of the reasons I find him worth reading.

While all of the posts are connected, and a similar theme runs throughout, each has a slightly different angle. Start with Fluid Learning the first in the series, then check out The Alexandrine Dilemma and Crowdsource Yourself, ending with Inflection Points. Seriously most of what I read on the web I read once, tag it, and thus file it for later reference if I need it (and usually never think about it again), in this series I read each piece at least twice, some three times. They are that good.

Dear Language and Literature Faculty—Give it Up for the Grad StudentsDecember 9 2008

I received an email yesterday, as I am sure many of you did, from the MLA (actually the email was from Rosemary Feal but I digress) requesting help funding graduate students. What interests me about this email is the direct appeal to “grassroots” funding rather than trying to find big donors. I realize that I am fairly anti-institutional (institutions of all kinds) and have been critical of the MLA in the past for not moving into the digital sphere fast enough but this seems a step in the right direction.

Attending MLA, not to mention being on the job market can be an expensive endeavor, forcing poor underfunded graduate students to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars when all is said and done. While I think much could be done to reduce the cost (hello electronic submission, and don’t ask for a transcript unless you really need it), this is a short term fix. As it stands, according to the email there were two hundred applicants who the MLA was not able to fund with a $300 travel grant to attend the conference. The solution is simple, microfund, if 6,000 tenure track faculty each gave $10 all of the grad students who applied could receive the grant. (A grant which for most would not even cover airfare I might add.) So, please consider clicking this link and helping out some poor job seeking grad student. Do it for the grad student you used to be, or do it just to demonstrate the power of th