Ed Bilodeau

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This weblog had moved: http://www.coolweblog.com/bilodeau/

# Notice (Oct 19/05): So ends my stay here on Blogger. This morning Google implemented an anti-spam 'feature' that forces me to answer a challenge phrase when I want to post to my own blog. No notice of the change, nothing. Worse is that it doesn't even work! I type the phrase, submit, "An error occured", post deleted. Damn you, Google. Chances are I will revive my blog somewhere else, sometime soon. I'll post the new coordinates here as soon as they become available. (BTW, I'm unable to post anything to my RSS stream, so I'd appreciate it if readers could spread the word and ask people to take a look at this notice)

Update (Oct 19/05, ~noon): After a frustrating few hours (and not just trying out alternatives to Blogger), I've decided that this is a good time to take a break from all this. A day? A week? Who knows. But I need to step away from it before I pass a heavy magnet over the whole mess.

Update 2: According to this post, the reason I'm seeing the CAPTCHA (challenge phrase) is that Blogger has classified my blog as spam. Thanks. User for five years and now I'm spam. I searched the Blogger site, but there is no mention of how to get the spam flag turned off. There is also no way of contacting anyone at Blogger. Wow. Spam they say I am, so spam I must be. Maybe it is time to take a break.

Monday, March 21, 2005

Ed Frauenheim: Poor knowledge workers? :
"'Unlike blue-collar workers who may declare themselves 'unemployed,' the knowledge workers I know shun that appellation,' he writes. 'They're never 'unemployed.' They're 'contractors' seeking gigs, or 'business owners' seeking clients. If a job comes their way, great, but in the meantime, they're 'working.' In a real sense, they are working, because they're trying to provide a service in exchange for money; but they're 'working poor' trying to survive, just like displaced factory workers.' "

Although the job market isn't a component of the learning environments I am interested in (i.e. higher ed), it is the larger context within which the learning takes place. It provides, in many cases, an important motivator for students, and it interacts with the learning environment as incoming information, explict or through the actions/beliefs/behaviors of teachers, researchers, and practitioners as they participate in the learning process.

Unless you plan on isolating your learning environment entirely from the real world, you'll need to be aware and consider the job market the students are expecting to join.