Technology & Tenure

The article by Kevin Carey from the Chronicle of Higher Ed examines sensitive issues on the role of tenure and technology in academic institutions. I disagree with the the author that tenure limits a social voice or community to speak out on issues because of obligation to an institution. If anything, tenure allows education researchers and faculty members to balance grant and fundraising along with theory building and course instruction. Tenure is necessary so that researchers pursue the latest technology tools required to meet the demands of students in the 21st century. However, academic institutions may want to adopt policies incentivizing faculty to improve instructor evaluations and develop innovative course plans to facilitate instruction. Abolishing tenure threatens to reduce the amount of progressive scholars looking to engage students with immersive technology and web 2.0 applications that permeate mainstream culture. Granting more influence to administrators over faculty presents an   environment that subjugates students to the will of an academic oligarchy.

Educational Residency

A great article by Professor Leah-Wasburn Moses at the Chronicle of Higher Ed outlines a path for teacher education programs to adopt a model of educational residency similar to a medical residency. Students require the necessary interactive experience of delivering instruction and observing student behavior in a formal learning environment. One of the solutions includes aligning college teaching programs to 2 years of liberal arts courses and 1 years of internship, or professional development with a local school. The idea alleviates problems of aligning practice and theory into meaningful course credit within a degree program. The practical experience and naturalistic or qualitative approach informs students on the schedule and balance of work embedded in teaching K-12 education. The dynamic proposal of a 3 year bachelors program targeted at specific learning contingencies to practice, theory, assessment, and evaluation conforms to the restructuring of teacher education in academic programs.

MOOC'S aren't the problem...

...people are the problem. The worst fear come true for educators centers on universities offering exclusive rights courses (MOOC's) that are intentionally selective without any kind of dynamic engagement. Video recordings of lectures are insufficient alone to justify consortium college credit. The process entertains ideas of disparity among wealth in students and permeates an elitist culture of business as usual. The article by Steve Kolowich from WIRED Campus, posted on the Chronicle of Higher Ed, examines how Southern Methodist (SMU) offers students in the fall online classes to receive credit from a consortium of colleges using the online education company 2U. The privatization of higher education represents a moral hazard which needs to be avoided at all cost. MOOC's adhere to principles of open access, not selective, exclusive rights. The abuse of instructional technology and web 2.0 applications in education may derail years of progress to advance educational technology in academic institutions.

Reflective Experience

Over the course of the semester, becoming a produser with web 2.0 tools enhances my learning experience and broadens my perspective with various instructional applications/software. Moreover, the chance to blog and collaborate with fellow peers enriches the structure of the class.  Feedback is essential for online learning and the course allows users to development a personal presence on the web for either prototypes or cultural artifacts. The wealth of free resources means a collection of research ideas form over instructional technology topics. One of my goals for the course focuses on creating a digital presence updated with web 2.0 tools. I am satisfied with the work completed for the course and it demonstrates to me how much I need to learn about the role of theory, practice, and design principles with web 2.0 tools in education.

Hopefully, as a future faculty member my work with the web 2.0 artifacts propels a research agenda that engages students with visually immersive content. My desire for games and education, as well as instructional pedagogy to reform education practices stems from the collaborative work in classes and observing the discourse of gaming as a legitimate topic of study. My fellow peers inform me how games situate into the expanded discussion on web 2.0 and instructional applications. Finally, the overall experience illustrates the importance of blogs and the outlet various modes of communication help with work/life balance. The discussion of health and human performance in the course also reminds students of the sound mind, sound body philosophy to promote inner harmony. 

Defining Success in Higher Education

One of my favorite articles in recent memory from the Chronicle of Higher Ed, written by Audrey Williams June, identifies several factors among administrators that measure success in academia. Some of the common themes, include fundraising endowments, faculty achievements, student graduation rates and job placement, networking, professional development and presence at conferences. The recurring themes of creating a team of support, instead of focusing on bringing in star faculty by themselves demonstrates a shift in culture of higher education from individual achievement to a more cosmopolitan effort focused on students needs, aligning research interests and generating a collaborative presence online for enrollment and recruitment.

However, one of the glaring omissions from the article includes the role of technology in higher education departments and the importance of building a strong online/web/mobile presence to meet student needs in the 21st century. While all of the factors mentioned in the article are important and generally conform to a paradigm shift focusing more on the whole rather than the sum of its parts, in terms of faculty development and course-building, the lack of technology initiatives listed as accomplishments is alarming. If administrators measure success by revenue streams, team building and conferencing, why is technology not central to each of these performance standards?

Moreover, if administrators are serious about meeting the demands of students and providing students with skills needed in the academic workforce, then technology initiatives must be at the top of the to-do list. Establishing an online or continuing education program at a college of education remains a vital component to future success and survival. The time is now for administrators to realize the power of technology to transform education and provide faculty with the technology tools necessary for grants, research and content delivery.

Innovations for the Future

Another great article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, by Professor Steven Mintz, accurately describes fifteen innovations currently underway or in early stages of adoption in higher education including evidence-based pedagogy, collaborative instructional design process in course building, and specialty course sequences for certification. The author gets the future of education, disregarding how we feel about a changing landscape and instead choosing to focus on the virtue of collaboration among students, educators and policy makers to determine the best approach to fuse learning objectives with student demand. Budgetary constraints and the need for increasing revenues are a reality that many traditional professors simply underestimate. While it seems nice to attack the problem of politics in education, there is no escaping the fact that legislatures starve public institutions of funding, and the burden falls on the colleges to earn back the profits. If colleges of education focus on building technology infrastructure to meet students needs and integrate professional development with technology tools into FTE for faculty, then many of the tensions between technology enthusiasts and traditionalists may be subdued. The call for collaboration and cooperation of both parties is of paramount concern for the survival of higher education in the 21st century.

MOOC's - The Runaway Trains [Not]

In an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, by Professor Rob Jenkins, apparently, administrators and politicians are to blame for the rise of online course offerings and the runaway train threatens to destroy academia, or those who oppose MOOC's, technology, and change in general. I am respectful of the author's opinion, as not all faculty fully understand the potential for online courses to enhance the lives of students with various barriers from receiving face to face instruction. Many traditional or non-technology conforming faculty confuse the purpose of online courses with the reality of enrollments and infrastructure.

First off, the design philosophy of online courses began as a mechanism for colleges to grant students an education that were unable to meet at a specific location and broaden their presence internationally. In addition, online courses afford students who have full-time work obligations, care for family, or telecommuters to receive continuing education. Today, the demand for continuing education online may be found in disciplines such as Medicine, Physics, Chemistry and Engineering.

Most importantly, the goal of raising enrollments and providing more access to education in society is a good thing, and yet, opponents of technology in education consistently forget this idea. A democratic republic functions better with a more educated population. Since when did open access become a negative aspect of education? Should our goals not be to advance access to education and promote collaboration in research with technology? It is disingenuous to label MOOC'S a failure or a "flavor of the month" concept before we even have years of researching testing the benefits/disadvantages compared to traditional instruction.

The misguided fears that many proponents of traditional instruction carry stems from an impending sense of doom that technology will destroy everything that has been built from previous scholarship. Unfortunately, fear mongering and blaming politicians/administrators will become stale when online students praise the MOOC instruction for creativity, visual engagement and enhance the learning experience to fit a personalized schedule. teachers need to examine the realistic nature of MOOC's, at most it will become part of an online department within a college of education. The likelihood of MOOC's replacing courses full time are slim to none, so let's take it easy on the rhetoric and have a nice glass of reality instead.

Web Expertise > F2F Expertise

How do you judge the value of expertise on the Web? Does it differ from your notion of expertise in face-to-face settings? Why or why not?

The value of web expertise is immense for users to successfully navigate a globally connected society, and excel in jobs that demand proficiency in web 2.0 technology tools to deliver instruction in educational settings or program software in business. Web expertise differs from face-to-face (F2F) expertise in that the former requires skill in searching and navigating web pages/applications to find information whereas the latter requires command of speech, tone, and body language to convey information, knowledge, cultural artifacts or conversation. In order tor refine F2F skills, one must practice more art than science. These individuals tend to understand behavioral cues, patterns, and mnemonic devices to create a story or discourse to guide a conversation. Great orators and instructors of the Socratic method often practice these methods to deliver instruction.


However, the emergence of pervasive technology in mainstream American culture requires that educators, government agencies, and businesses excel in web expertise to collaborate, meet, transact business, publish information and scholarship, as well as transform access to healthcare with digital records. The value of web expertise may eventually surpass the value of F2F expertise based only on current trends in our culture. Sooner or later, every school and student will be digitally connected and the possibility of open access to courses in the future suggests students will need digital literacy and web expertise far more than F2F expertise. While the skill of F2F expertise always has a place in the arts and theater, the sciences/government/businesses need to adapt to the technology revolution and place an emphasis on Web expertise more than F2F expertise.

College 2.0

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation recently invested $850,000 to the Chronicle of Higher Ed to support websites that help students and parents make sound decision on college admissions. The article here provides an overview of the websites, College Completion and College Reality Check. College Reality Check informs future students and parents on the financial requirements of school and what the data means for jobs after college. College Completion offers users the chance to see graduation rates of schools and compare metrics with other college programs. Students may engage in produsage by creating different plans and metrics while collaborating with peers through Facebook and Twitter on what colleges have the best bang for the buck. Both of these interactive websites represent tools suited for the digital age in which users can create comparisons of schools and map a framework for graduation. Many students feel overwhelmed with the many nuances of college, and these two web 2.0 tools offers students a chance to make the best financial decision and what job sectors are hiring graduates from their respective programs. The more informed students and parents become about their educational future, the better we become as a society with an intelligent and informed electorate. Progressive web tools like this will have an enormous impact for future generations, I wish this existed when I were entering school almost 12 years ago.

MOOC's on Hold

A new article in the chronicle of higher ed reports that San Jose State will not be offering MOOC credit courses for students come fall semester. The news comes after reports of leaked data from a slide show presented that students for the 3 trial MOOC math courses did better than students who did not enroll. The group responsible for the leak is the California Faculty Association, a group determined to end private influence over course instruction and technology tools in education, views this move as progress for further evaluation on data and implications for future use of MOOC's in universities. Given the difficulties of the Udacity platform to facilitate instruction, and that certain stduents in the trial had limited access to the platform, the break may seem like a good move. However, further research into MOOC instructional techniques might ease faculty tensions with technology and open course instruction.

Games and CoP

One of the ways to get involved with produsage in mainstream culture involves the gaming community. Currently, the community is experiencing a paradigm shift from a vertical structure of creator-->producer-->designer-->consumer to a horizontal structure of Free2play, interactive simulations and online worlds with currency, trade and financial gain at stake. Consumers move seamlessly from one role to another as game players, but also treasure hunters with new games like Diablo III, that house a real-live auction for players to sell in-game items for real currency. Even games that take advantage of Paypal and bitcoin have created enormous digital wealth for the gaming community. The table below is a Trajectory path for someone playing the game Diablo III.

Trajectory	Gaming CoP
Periperhal	·       New gamer, arcades, LAN centers, trading card players, plays a few times a week (Usually starts in adolescence)
Inbound	·       Gamer participating in a game, plays 7 days a week, joins a clan/guild (teens/college aged)
Insider	·       Guild leader, auction house trader with guild assets, purchases items and manages digital currency for the guild (young professionals/middle agers escaping the wife/husband/kids)
Boundary	·       Social gamer, plays mobile games but no interest in community or gaming identity (the angry birds crowd)
Outbound	·       Someone who retires from games and moves on to sudoku

Intellectual Property Rights

The issues of copyright and intellectual property rights concerns me greatly with the amount of content stored on the web which we now know is being spyed upon both domestically and most likely abroad. At this point, all information required to falsify a person's intellectual and personal identification may be accessed through limited security barriers, we're supposed to feel safe, but this is an illusion. People in my family have been targeted by identity thieves, and it cost us many hours and effort to fix the fallout. The consequences of lying to American people and ineffective government oversight, combined with secrecy from the American public, is a recipe for disaster.

Now, I am unsure if using storage like Dropbox for important thesis and future research ideas or data is a good idea. The only advantage now for cloud storage appears to be a vacuum for Homework and Notes, and even then with the possibility of someone hacking Dropbox could have an incalculable amount of damage to property rights. Already, the Supreme Court in June 2013 ruled on patent rights and involving genes.Thankfully, the human genetic code cannot be patented. However, this is merely the beginning of many future battles involving property rights and online content, which we may need to tread more carefully, especially involving present and future publications.

Produsage 1

Travel 2.0

One of the best ways to overcome periods of stress is to plan an extended travel trip, whether it be exotic or local, its important to experience low stress environments. Never before has traveling been so easy with the advent of web 2.0 tools like CouchSurfing.Org that helps travelers on a budget find reputable places to stay at houses when funds are exhausted for travel and food. Many customers of this website are young hipsters, college students and budget enthusiasts looking for a new experience in travel. Couple this handy tool with Urbanspoon, Zagat, Yelp and connect with friends on FourSquare, Facebook and Twitter to maximize your ultimate web 2.0 vacation.

Let me know what you think about these neat travel sites.

Web 2.0 & Stress Management

Like many of my fellow graduate peers, we experience periods of high stress when family, work and personal life events occur at the same time. Some good, some not so good. While doing a Google scholar search, I found an article on stress management techniques suited to engage individuals with web 2.0 tools. The authors, Åsa Smedberg and Hélène Sandmark (can be found here):http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:386481/FULLTEXT02 highlight several areas of need in stress management healthcare including a conceptual framework for treating patients with web based programs. The authors outline multiple design principles needed to engage patients with healthcare programs suited to the information age mirroring many instructional design principles in education. Specifically, the authors suggest incorporating multimedia to engage patients through synchronous and asynchronous communication, with an emphasis on visually immersive content to treat patients. In addition, the authors emphasize continuous and iterative support therapies for patients and suggest having more collaborative platforms (wikis, blogs, conversation threads) where patients and medical professionals express motivational issues. Also, embedded feedback and self-report measures help doctors track patient progress. Overall, a good read when feeling that mid-summer malaise.

Knowmia - The Digital Teaching Tool

A great web 2.0 tool for produser's everywhere, this handy iPad app affords teachers/students/educators/enthusiasts the ability to create and access video lesson plans that can be shared from YouTube, Edmodo, Google+, Twitter or other collaborative content sites.  One of the new tools on the market, established almost a year ago in August of 2012 by the same individuals who developed the flip camera. The blog post responsible for highlighting this app can be found here: http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2012/08/knowmia-create-share-and-watch-video.html#.Ud8jDkG1Hh4 by the author Richard Byrne. The app provides a great benefit to students who need to review learning concepts and enhances the personalization of the learning experience for students needing digital access to course content due to time/geographic/course/personal constraints. In addition, all information students enter when signing up for access on the site is confidential and any collaborative comments made to lesson plans are identified by a pseudonym. I am going to create a lesson plan for the produsage assignment this week, hopefully it will be a success!

Blogs & The Classroom

What uses might a collaborative wiki or blog have in your chosen (current or desired) work environment? How would they support learning and/or performance? What would be the design and implementation challenges if management tried to do this? What would be the design and implementation challenges of a user-initiated effort?

As an instructor and technology enthusiast, blogs are used by students in the class to reflect on their learning experiences with new technology tools and share their thoughts as to how technology empowers individuals to achieve their academic goals. Students read about various assistive technology tools like Dragon software, which provide individuals with the ability to speech to text. Students understand the value of technology for special education research and practice. Other highlights of using blogs in the class include students recognizing strengths and weaknesses of ability with technology and demonstrating proficiency with basic computer literacy concepts. Students create web pages, wikis, blogs and videos throughout the course culminating with an interactive final project presentation using PowerPoint. The only challenges associates with blogs is managing the reading and assessment from a grading perspective and matching blog topics to learning objectives. With guidance on the conversation, this keeps the discourse focused on educational topics whereas, if students were initiating the blog assignments the content may not always be educational.

Reddit

In addition to videos, games and communicative technology, the way in which we browse, comment, communicate, share and elicit information continues to evolve with user-led content creation sites like Reddit. This site is a platform for online communities such as citizen journalism where users post the latest breaking news, and form sub-threads, launching new communities designed to narrow the focus on a particular topic while broadening the scope of discourse. Each thread has a set of rules for users to negotiate before participating, and some threads inform users of content which may be inappropriate giving rise to the popular NSFW tagline. Popularity of each topic is determined by user participation, up-voting or down voting, similar to Google's Page Rank system. The collaborative filtering of content by users helps spawn thousands of communities within one domain, often providing some individuals their entire selection of information in one space. Think Walmart for the online prosumer of knowledge and collaborative media.

Video Produsers

One of the best ways to become a produser involves creating movies with a simple tripod, green screen and editing tool. In this video, I wrote, directed and produced the movie as part of a school project. This exercise represents my first foray into acting and it was an absolute blast. Not only did I get a chance to create an original product but also experience the work involved in creating the final cut. By engaging in video production and sharing with my peers on YouTube, I am able to express my own creative content. Even as a video amateur, YouTube offers an excellent community for cultivating new collaborative projects for users engaged in video design.

Smart Phones (For the User by the User)

One of the challenges for smart phone users transitioning from one smart phone interface design to another (IE, Apple iPhone users to Samsung Galaxy s4) is adapting to new software and features. Users who are accustomed to auto-correct features (iPhone) may find it difficult to type and text when presented with a stock keyboard (Galaxy s4) that lacks auto-correct. While this issue seems somewhat negligible in the grand scheme of  overall phone usability, it presents a problem to users that want to customize their phones to meet specific needs. Thus, what can users do to overcome the
the lack of uniformity of smart phone designs?

Google play market represents a solution for users who want to download apps, develop apps, and market them accordingly to earn profit but also engage in a community of practice to improve resources available to users. Given the desire for users to customize their phones, users have become produces and designers of the smart phone app community. The rise of this community changes the smart phone market, in that users no longer buy phones for firmware or software but instead its hardware capability like weight, aesthetics, and likability. Online communities and forums have become a one stop shop to troubleshoot problems, improve design features and enhancing the overall smart phone experience.

Produsage

Currently, I am a produser of games and gaming culture given my involvement in creating multiplayer (multiuser) maps in games such as Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Portal 2 and Starcraft. Sharing these maps for others to MOD (modify and remix for a new collaboration of a map) defines my role as both a user and producer of content meant to be distributed through a large community of gamer networks. These networks range from internet fan websites to game interfaces like STEAM and Blizzard Maps required to access community maps for other Portal 2/Starcraft produsers.

My earliest experiences as a produser hearken back to playing M.U.L.E. from the Commodore 64 gaming system. The game afforded players the chance to amass wealth by colonizing and terraforming resources of an alien planet. The game while visually challenged, offered the first experience of multiuser content given that each user had to adjust their strategy and resource management based on other player's decisions in the games. One of the best paths to victory included a collusion feature in which players would set abnormally high prices for goods in demand, forcing players to adjust accordingly and make equally dubious partnerships to counterbalance the terms of engagement.

While most of my professional career focuses on games and education, social media produsage interest includes creating some podcasts, videos, and blogs for creative practice. Many of the themes in my creative projects focus on technology use in education, the rise of mobile device usage by students in the 21st century and the need for instructors to meet the demands of students that lust for instantaneous access to content.Some of my future goals include designing a course curricula that aligns learning objectives with gameplay, mobile devices and web 2.0 tools as well as developing community networks for students to collaborate/reflect on work to better facilitate course content.

The 3 M's -- MOOC's, Money, & Media

Another great read from the Chronicle of Education by Sara Grossman: http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/moodys-says-moocs-could-boost-a-universitys-credit-rating/44519

The author describes the role of MOOC's as a mechanism to lift a University's credit rating on wall street by raising profit margins and social marketing media campaigns targeted at incoming students. Additionally, MOOC's offer students a chance to take courses for credit at other campuses while still earning hours for a major degree. Yet, there are drawbacks to this kind of content delivery system and one of the potential downfalls may hurt smaller liberal arts colleges that cannot sustain any kind of enrollment decrease. These colleges lack the kind of infrastructure and resources needed to establish a distance education program, let alone adapt instruction to meet the needs of online students. Also, concerns about the quality of MOOC's and how the courses compare to face to face classes or blended courses in terms of assessment, transfer of learning, and feedback remain unpredictable. The article stresses the financial impact of MOOC's and university profit margins as an economic plan for the future and suggests the volatile nature of MOOC's longevity could see massive changes in the university operations and rankings.

The Future of Online Courses

A great read from Steve Kolowich at The Chronicle of Higher Ed: http://chronicle.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/article/Universities-in-Consortium/139919/


The author examines the future of MOOC's and online infrastructure at research universities by citing a paper from a Consortium [https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/716121/cic-online-learning-collaboration-a-vision-and.pdf] comprised of Provosts from BIG TEN schools that warn of certain dangers associated with the rapid growth of business vendors like Blackboard and Coursera dictating educational instruction delivery systems. The author reports on the pitfalls of non-researched technologies listed by the Consortium, in which hype of new technologies like Coursera and MOOC's "allows the inmates to run the asylum" and create problems over intellectual property rights as well as access to information sharing.

While technologies like MOOC's provide greater access to content for students all over the world, the question of logistics for teachers to manage classes of thousands of students creates problems with feedback and personalized assessment for growth. Still, the battle over technology use in academia appears to have an arduous journey as schools decide how to balance a growing demand for online educational courses and institutional control. The advancement of technology use in education represents change to the system, and with this change, resistance will be inevitable. However, greater control over intellectual property by universities and sharing resources among schools in conferences helps students in these networks, but as educators we must consider all potential students. The importance of open access courses with education in some capacity, must be a part of future academic programs.

Education Merging with Mainstream Culture

While searching the web for useful educational technology resource sites about web 2.0 tools, I stumbled upon Discovery Education:http://web2012.discoveryeducation.com/web20tools.cfm

Apparently, the Discovery Channel offers tutorials, video guides and instructions for students, administrators, parents interested in learning with Web 2.0 tools. Moreover, the website provides useful information about internet safety, media literacy and a blog that examines innovative assessment measures teachers may use with web 2.0 tools.

The most interesting aspect of finding these tools available to educators and students from a mainstream culture TV Channel/Web presence like Discovery stems from the fact the companies are beginning to understand the potential profit of providing tools and resources to educators looking to engage students with immersive and collaborative technologies. Today, it seems apparent that education, mainstream media, technology, cable, broadband are beginning to merge into a giant global sized mass, with various apps and tools designed to meet specific demands. We have tools for communication, organization, professional development, teaching, learning, video productions, social networking, literacy and assessment. This is merely a representation of the larger whole, with other disciplines outside of education, harnessing the same web 2.0 technologies to facilitate instruction and streamline data input (scanning medical records online in the cloud storage, testimonies and wills, as well as taxes, all filed electronically). Almost every major discipline has a demand for web 2.0 technologies and now even Mainstream Media companies appears to be merging with professional domains. The inevitability of culture, technology, entertainment and education merging together appears to be happening sooner rather than later.

Games, Social Media, and Education 2.0

While earning my Masters Degree at the University of Florida, my coursework afforded me the opportunity to explore in depth some important technology tools needed for teaching online and blended courses as well as conditioning myself to stay current with the latest technologies used in mainstream culture. My prior experiences with web 2.0 technologies includes creating blogs, wikis, podcasts and videos with some green screen production involved as well.

This blog started as a Master's course journal and developed into a work space to explore video production, hobbies and commentary about the future of technology in education. I would classify my role in the realm of web 2.0 technologies as an educator that participates in mainstream technology tools/devices/games to understand the experience of today's adolescent culture and how interacting with the latest technologies shapes our view of the world seen through a gaming/technology enthusiast perspective. With the continued growth of the gaming industry and the need to engage students with interactive technologies, the role of games, mobile devices, and web 2.0 tools will become more important as society shifts away from the digital divide (digital immigrants vs. digital natives) to the global digital community (every person born into the world of web 2.0 and beyond).

As educators in the 21st century, we need to provide students with technology tools that are engaging, fun and collaborative while grounding our pedagogy with theory and research. My goals for this class include developing a greater web presence for professional development and general fun with participating in online communities in addition to reflecting on my peers' work as well. My experience with many web 2.0 tools allows me to have fun with the class and continue to generate ideas for future dissertation work. The course also provides me a chance to reflect on teaching my students with web 2.0 technologies and why these technologies are so important for both personal and professional growth.

Web 2.0

As a doctoral student at FSU in the Instructional Systems program, my research interests focus on games, education and pedagogy. This summer my work with Web 2.0 tools will help me expand my social circle for professional development. Moreover, developing a Digital Vita may become a necessary tool for future education jobs. Its good to be back!