Well, with 2019 here, and 2018 gone I've bid adieu to Academia.edu. There isn't one thing that really made me quit, but a variety of factors that really combined to make the network feel "sleazy".  When Academia.edu kicked off it felt like a good idea: a social network for academics to see what each other is working on, to share pre-publication versions of their work, heck even ask for feedback

Learning Together Online: Research on Asynchronous Learning Networks by Starr Roxanne HiltzMy rating: 3 of 5 stars Not very many people talk about ALNs (asynchronous learning networks) these days. Even the journal for ALNs has been renamed to "Online Learning". Still, this was an interesting historical dive which provided some interesting background on early online learning which still

I was holding off on posting this just in case I finished another book before the new year, but it seems like I will need to spend this week actually doing some writing for the dissertation proposal (can't let all this fine reading go to waste!). On the one hand I am surprised at how much I read, and on the other hand I am not.  This doesn't even include all the articles I read.  I keep

Today we're looking at my year in review at Publons (a site which helps you track the academic peer reviews you've done).  This site is a little more interactive (you have to mouseOver in order to see some stats.. Here are some of the MouseOver stats:Total citations of reviewed manuscripts --> 3 (average for field 7.4)Total citations of authored manuscripts -->2 (average for field

Very odd to be getting an alumni relations birthday wish, appreciated nevertheless oh great algorithm!

Invasion of the MOOCs: The Promise and Perils of Massive Open Online Courses by Steven D. KrauseMy rating: 4 of 5 stars This was an interesting collection of essays by people (who I think) met through an xMOOC (EDCMOOC) and decided to put their experiences together. It was interesting to take a slice of MOOC history and read some initial reactions to this phenomenon. Although, calling EDCMOOC

Exploring the Theory, Pedagogy and Practice of Networked Learning by Lone Dirckinck-HolmfeldMy rating: 4 of 5 stars I liked this particular book on Networked Learning. It provided a nice balance between theory and actual practice. I think I am addicted to this Networked Learning thing.  I have a three more books on my to-read list on GoodReads, and I bookmarked the proceedings for

The Design, Experience and Practice of Networked Learning by Vivien HodgsonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars Continuing my reading into the presentation I want to do this April, and working on my readings for my dissertation proposal, here is this book.  This was quite interesting to read, and it definitely went by faster compared to another Networked Learning book I read recently. The edited

The other day Publons, a service in which people can get credit for performing peer reviews for academic journal articles, sent me a link to my year-end-review.  Just like other year-end-reviews, I don't really treat it as a report card, but rather  as a "huh!, ain't that interesting!".  I think the old saying of you get out of something what you put into it is quite true with these

This has been making the rounds on social media this week: a fictitious article mocking presidential candidate Donald Trump by writing an academic article in Trumpspeak.  We've got the best data. Premium stuff! Pretty funny ;-)

This is a cross-post from my other blog. Seemed like a topic I'd also talk about here. I was reading this post on InsideHigherEd the other day by Joshua Kim.  The post, A plague of directors, which was a bit comical; the mental image that came to mind was one of plague carrying zombies with name tags that said "director" - yeah, I know, sometimes my imagination runs wild and comical video games

Well, in addition to having lots of extra time to do homework for my EDDE 802 Advanced Research Methods course I've also had a little more time for gaming, given that Massachusetts has been pounded by snow, snow, and more snow over the past 3 weeks.  Back in the Fall, when I had xbox live for free for a few months I got Battlefield 2: Bad Company for free.  I had been resistant to even getting

The other day one of my long time friends and colleague posted on Facebook a quick pondering: is LinkedIn the right place for academics? The underlying thought is that LinkedIn is very instrumentalist and positivist in how it represents someone. Essentially what this means is that we setup profiles that represent a reality that we want to market to others, and we want to pass on that reality (our reality)

This past summer I borrowed quite a lot of books from my school's library. Since I am a staff member the loan period is quite generous, so I could take out a box full of books and have them due back in October. Pretty sweet. So I decided to look at my GoodReads list and get as many books as I could find at my school which has the generous loan period.  After reading quite a few books from

Well, happy Friday to you all!Here's a news story from Inside Higher Ed. Long story short - two Cornell University employees are having an affair with each other and send each other naughty emails. They are both married to other people. Well, one of those emails got sent to the universal directory - everyone in the university! Man, that's got to be embarrassing! I mean people feel sheepish when they