Taking a mental health break from spending 24-7 thinking about college marketing. Back soon.

It’s time for a pep rally folks. It will be opinionated, so if you have thin skin put on some fire-retardent clothing. First off, a little sharing (which we’re all about here at Whole Wheat College). Last Spring I went to Orlando for the php|tek conference. It was the first time the conference was being [...]

Richard Blomgren, the Dean of Admission here at Warren Wilson College, participated in a radio program “The State of Things” that focused on higher education in North Carolina. From their site: The State of Higher Education: From the pages of the New York Times to the cover of Time, colleges and universities in North Carolina [...]

The new students are arriving this morning. I wore one of the shirts that have been given out to peer group leaders and the residence folks. As I was walking across campus from my house, I tried to make that extra effort to be helpful and personable. I remember my first day (eight years ago [...]

So there are two conferences happening this fall and I need to pick one. One is in Philly and one in Rochester, both are aimed specifically at web professionals in higher ed. They are: Stamats Interactive Marketing Strategies & Higher Ed Wed Dev 2006: Collective Intelligence They both look pretty good, although the Stamats presentations [...]

Well here’s what I’ve come up with after tinkering with it all day. I’m not sure I’m sold on it yet, but it seemed to make the bossman pretty excited about the possibilities, and that is always a plus. Now to let it sit on a shelf for a bit and mull it over. If [...]

From ‘A Softer World’

There is an argument made against privacy that says someone who isn’t engaged in criminal behavior has nothing to hide. This method of thinking allowed the US government to slowly sap away our civil liberties in the wake of the 9/11 attacks–many have just accepted that trading privacy for security is acceptable and used the “nothing to hide” argument to rationalize what was, essentially, a decision based on fear. However, limiting the government’s ability to intrude in our private lives is easy compared with attempting to control how personal information spreads on the internet via gossip. Rather than spies or wiretaps, gossip is often gathered by those we trust and spread online by people who don’t understand or appreciate the potential for the damage it can do. In reality, privacy is about much more than concealing wrongdoing.

Internet-based abuse (‘cyberbullying’) and privacy / relationship issues are still massively misunderstood. The complexities of online sociality are probably the biggest ‘generational divide’ between modern teens and adults. To help put it in perspective a bit, here are some numbers…

I HAVE A MYSPACE ACCOUNT!!1!