The Downloadable Classroom

If you have kids in school now then you are in the down loadable classroom. Now we are all teachers. If little Johnny or Suzy has a problem the teacher simply downloads it to the parent. The download comes in the form of emails, websites, twitters, webinars. You name it, teachers discovered the cyber world has a built in time saver--you download all your problems to the parents and you have done your job. Also, you can vent in a lovely one way vehicle called the email bomb and dress down little Suzie or Johnny's deficiencies and again the problem has been taken off the teachers desk.

Used to be a teacher had to teach. If a student really didn't get it then they had to get in there and teach...you know, convey a concept to the student who is having a hard time grasping the concept. Now. They simply let the parent know the student is having problems and would they please work with Suzy or Johnny on their science, math, social studies, reading, geography, and by the way little Suzy and Johnny talked in class, forgot their pencil, forgot to put the lock on their locker, took too long going to the bathroom, chewed gum, texted on their phone, burped, looked out the window, yawned, looked bored, laughed, scribbled on their desk and would you the parent please take care of that also?

Ok. I get it. Maybe everyone doesn't get these emails. But education has become a web based commodity and the teachers are gatekeepers. If there was not an internet then homework could not be near as elaborate and certainly any kind of disciplinary problems would be taken care of in the classroom. What the open laptop does for teachers is it allows them to vent at that moment when a kid makes them mad. They vent directly to the parent. What a luxury. How would you like to vent every time your boss made you mad or you had a problem at work. But the teachers have found a perfect get it off my desk device. Clearly the problem student is now at the mercy of Blackboard.com.

But if you are pulled into the classroom for a conference then you will be introduced to another little time saver for the teacher--the TEAM. No longer will you face off with your kids teacher--you will face off with seven teachers who back each other up. Again, think about work. You have a grievance against your boss. You meet him with seven people who back you up. I don't think so. In the TEAM world it is your word against the seven teachers. Watch out for anyone who speaks of the THE TEAM. There is no responsibility in that kind of plurality. No one is at fault except for little Suzy or Johnny and by proxy you the parent. Like the faceless void of the Internet--there is no responsibility for teaching your child.

So the only thing I can think of is to block the emails. Maybe then a teacher might pick up the phone or actually solve the problem in class. Or they might....um, five letter word, starts with a t and ends with an h....ah, I know, teach!

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Cyber Author

There just isn't enough time in the day. Not if you have a new book out. Used to be you would do a few signings and some radio interviews, maybe a little television. Not exactly a leisure pace, but you felt like marketing a book had some tempo, some sense of progression. Now there is just not enough time in the day. The online beast of publishing has reared it's head and will not go away. And he is never satisfied. Start your day at six AM. Start with your blog. I am the Editor in Chief for Speak Without Interruption http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/ and I am a National Examiner writer on National Culture http://www.nationalexaminer.com/ and I write my own column http://www.williamhazelgrove.blogspot.com/ called The View From Hemingway's Attic. This takes about two hours and then I have to get twittering. This is sending out bits of information for my twitter followers. Now we are almost four hours in and I had just finished the first wave of writing and twittering.But it is time to do a podcast of my latest essay. This takes another half hour. Now it it time to return emails. This takes another thirty minutes. Now it is time to consider bloggers who will review my new book. It is noon.
The feeling of never being able to get it all done is omnipresent. There are so many ways to go for the modern cyber author that it can just stop you from doing anything. It is a lot like being at the crossroads of a highway with ten different options. You could concentrate on getting reviews from the thousands of book bloggers. This alone could burn up your entire day. How about linking your website with other websites? Another time burner that could easily cost you hours. Of course you could look toward mainstream media and concentrate on sending books to the newspapers or television shows. Or you could get into Search Engine Optimization and spend your day bookmarking your blogs and sites and trying to determine what keywords will bring you the most traffic. Don't even think of going on Facebook or Myspace. There is the potential to get sidetracked into social networking and nothing will get accomplished.
This is something new and no one really knows what the result will be. It is all too new. We all hear of the books that become bestsellers because of bloggers picking a book and it takes off like a rocket. When my novel, Rocket Man came out I envisioned the cyber world getting behind me in exactly this way. It has worked for me, but I didn't figure on the days without end where you could literally be online twenty four seven and still not get it all done. I just hope there will be an end of some sort soon. This has been going on for six months and some day I will have to start writing again.
William Elliott Hazelgrove's new novel, Rocket Man was just published by Pantonne Press and chosen as the Best Book of 2008. http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

http://www.pantonnepress.com/chapter1.pdf

Cyberland

Once upon a time you wrote a book and then you put it out there and did some readings, some media, then hoped for the best. Those days are long gone. The cyber author is a twenty-four-seven author. You have to always be blogging, twittering, facebooking, texting, writing, skyping, inquiring, answering, expanding, linking, digging, buzzing, posting, releasing, and it never never stops. You could chain yourself to your computer twenty-four-seven and still never get it all done. Basically you are spitting into the wind. There are now a million hotdog stands and you have to make your stand different. It is not that the world will come to an end if you don't promote your book it is the nagging feeling that after all this time and effort you really should give it your best shot. Besides, EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT. This more than anything else puts the bags under your eyes, burns your retinas, and makes you wish for a world before a cathode ray ever burned upon the land. Computers are empowerment but they are also slave drivers. It is the stock you just cant check enough, the email that will never cease to tantalize--why my life could change with one email! It might, but it probably wont. It doesn't matter. It is that possibility over the far horizon that pulls us back to the screen. A funny thing is that if you put a computer in a field, then it just becomes a piece of plastic: a glorified communicator in the Star Trek mode. The reality is that the cyber landscape has nothing to do with the physical world. It may codify, initiate, create, but eventually some human with some thing will have to work on the bits and bytes or it is worthless. Someone will have to deliver your groceries, deliver your car, publish your book. Without the person on the far end then the computer is just a sophisticated game playing you the user. If you really break it down the cyber world is television for creatures who get bored very quickly. Hmm..the office, home is boring...I wonder what the rest of the world is doing in CYBERLAND. The sad question is certainly one we all deal with when we emerge from our homes or offices and see a beautiful sunset or a frozen pond or the peace of a sunrise--what did I miss while I was away?

The Death of the Old Economy

We are living through massive change: nothing short than the death of the old oil based economy and everything that goes with it. Our twentieth century economy is woefully inadequate for twenty first technology that moves at lightning speed. The old economy depended on backroom deals and snuggling up between trading partners. That was left behind when a keystroke can sell millions of stocks and there is no time to correct the problem. The old economy was put together by old white guys who made sure they got theirs first and then gave away what was left. The problem is the world demands more now and via the internet they are going for it. This brings us to the next problem--there is not enough of the pie to go around in the oil economy. The wealth bottlenecked at the top does not trickle down and makes for bad judgement. Bad judgement worked in contained economies like the United States where everything could be rigged for the company. Not so in the global ethernet economy. The consumers will not behave. They will not be coerced. They have too much information and the media is telling them that things are not right and their gas guzzling cars and bloated homes have no value anymore. So they shut down. Immediately. A real product of the wired info age. The big exececutives can no longer lie and have the media disseminate the product. Even the richest oldest white guy Warren Buffet couldnt bluff everyone back into buying. They are watching in real time their 401Ks and stocks goe down and they will not be fooled again. A lot of people have pulled out and the ones that stayed are not buying. So we are seeing the auto companies fail and all their concommitent parts. The oil economy is dying. We know now we must have fuel efficent cars and no one wants to drive anymore. A new economy will eventually emerge that will be fully wired, cyber based, and not dependent on foriegn oil. And it will boom. It will be so efficent it will make this old oil based capitalism look like something from the stone age. But until it comes, we are going to live through the death rattle of the twentieth century fossil fuel plutocracy. It will not be pretty.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
http://www.myspace.com/rocketmanbook