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Showing posts from April, 2018

What is a communication major about?

I found this article provocative: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/27/bulldoze-the-business-school It helps me to understand how I can differentiate my department's communication major from what they might get in a business degree.  
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The failing and falling of a megachurch pastor

I read yesterday the article on Christianity Today about Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Church and his removal from pastoral leadership.  That seems wise and needed, although late, which was alluded to in the article.  There were other allusions in the article that I have some thoughts about (and you people are going to read about them, to paraphrase Mr. Costanza). 1.  According to this article, he never had a full-fledged affair with another woman.  One woman accused him of it, but then recanted (a nice way of saying she was lying). 2.  What he did do was look for ways to get his ego stroked by other women.  He would meet with them (according to the article, of course) in his hotel room, on his boat, on his private jet, at his summer home), flirt, get too close, touch. 3.  Yes, you read #2 right--his private jet, his boat, his summer home.  What in the world was he doing with a private jet, a boat, and a summer home?  Was this normal for people in the church, so that they weren'

Text of my presentation at Southern States Communication Conference on Open Educational Resources

On April 8 I spoke at SSCA on the subject of Open Educational Resources.  Here is the text of my remarks. The University System of Georgia has taken the Open educational resource movement seriously over the last five years and has proactively addressed the issue of spiraling textbook costs.   First, it set a goal that its ecore program, by which students could earn a general studies associates’ degree completely online, would use only open resource (free) textbooks by this past fall.   Secondly, the USG developed a system of grants to encourage faculty, either individually or in groups, to adopt open resources.   These grants may have the faculty adopting an already published open resource, such as from OpenStax.   (is everyone familiar with that?), developing their own digital, open resource and therefore free version of the old course package idea, (that is a compilation of available resources, whether straight text for reading or interactive), or creating their own tex

50th anniversary

I was 12 when Dr. ML King was assassinated.  I remember the aftermath because of the rioting in the city in whose suburbs I lived.  That, at the time, was most of what I knew about such things.  There is a famous photo of Dr. King's associates pointing to the top of the opposite side of the building where James Earl Ray's shots came from.  My husband remarked last night that this was not what most people would do.  They would be running and hiding from any bullets flying their direction.  I surely would. Which tells me how fearless these men were.  And hadn't they already shown their fearlessness in prior marches, demonstrations, police brutality, jailings?