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He Said She Said

(This is a text summary of the He Said She Said podcast from January 17, 2006. This is a weekly podcast that deals with a wide range of topic on Education and Educational Technology. The show’s host is Rob Reynolds and he is joined by Susan Smith Nash. The He Said She Said podcast is available every Tuesday evening on Xplana Radio.) Continue reading ‘Social Networking in Online Communities in Education’

My father grew up in a family of poor Texas sharecroppers just before the Depression. If you aren’t familiar with the term, a sharecropper famed land provided by a landowner who also gave the farmer shelter for the his family, equipment, seed, and credit for living expenses until the harvest. The sharecropper paid the landowner back with his labor. Once the crop was planted and harvested, accounts were settled and the landowner received three-fourths of the crop yield. Of course, that only covered the expenses for the land and equipment. The farmer also had to pay back the living credit which often was equal to or greater than the entire amount the farmer had earned on his crops.That’s probably why my father used to tell me that, in business, it’s always best to be on the side of money or power. My father didn’t necessarily follow his own advice but, if he had, he probably would have become a large book publisher. These publishers, like the landowners the sharecroppers dealt with, possess a valuable commodity and, historically, have represented to only avenue for getting a book published. Their model has been similar to that of the landowner: Continue reading ‘From Sharecropping to Suburbia — The Shift in Publishing’