Last Thursday was my final day of New Faculty Indocrination at (University Name Withheld, in the interest of continued employment), and I realized that many of the new educational theories that were being promoted during that time can be applied, with great effect, to how we run this blog. My hope is that you will find the following new guidelines an aid to you as you attempt to carry forward this blog’s mission of Actualizing Reader Experience.
1) Post Summaries
Prior to submitting a post, please submit a brief summary of your intended post. This will generally be 8 or 9 pages, and must include the following: when you intend to publish the post, the primary points of your post, a detailed correlation of how each of those points relates to the mission of the blog (Actualizing Reader Experience), and a catalog of “objective and measurable reader outcomes”. Please also include the blog mission statement, the blog integrity policy, and your own policy for reader assessment.
This post summary must be received at least 6 months prior to posting, and will be reviewed by both the Blog Posting Committee (Paul T. Reisser, Chair) and the Blog Posting Summary Committee (Aly Hawkins, Chair). Any errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation, or content will result in the summary being rejected. If your summary is rejected, you will receive notification with 3 months, detailing the reasons for that rejection, so that you can make changes and resubmit.
2) Emerging Church Worldview Integration
This blog began as an exploration of the Emerging Church Movement. Recently, we’re expanded to cover a multitude of other topics, including Music, Apple Computers, Art Review, Nostalgia, and Blasphemy. While we recognize that these are all signs of a healthy, growing blog, we want to make sure that we stay true to our original mission. Therefore, 30% of the content in every post must consist of “Emerging Church Worldview”. One of the distinctives of this blog is our unique Emerging Church Worldview, and we firmly believe that every topic we post on should be overtly saturated with this distinctive.
For example, say you have decided to post on the fact that Apple has released three new commercials in their humorous “PC vs. Mac” series. After giving the link, you might include the following statement:
“One of the reasons why Apple is embraced by the Emerging Church Movement is because of its strong identification of design (form) with function (content). Both Andrew Jones and Ryan Bolger have examined the premise that the ECM constructs worshipping communities that follow that same value.”
Or, say you’re posting a movie review for Snakes on a Plane (Review? How about just one word: Samuel L. Awesome!). You might include the following in your post:
“Snakes on a Plane might be the first movie to have a cult following prior to its actual release. This is due in no small part to its immediate embrace by the blog-o-sphere, and subsequent use as a meme. The Emerging Church Movement also uses blogs. Samuel L. Jackson decided to take the role when he …. “
See how easy, and non-forced, that is? We hope this new standard for Emerging Church Worldview Integration will be a positive and uplifting guide for you as you prepare your posts.
3) Strengths Based Posting
One of the challenges of this blog is our desire to embrace a readership with a wide range of personal strengths and non-strengths (formerly called “weaknesses”). We recognize that each person is unique in their mix of personal attributes, and we want to make sure that the content we are presenting is accessible to all people.
In order to maximize the accessibility of the content, each post will be submitted three times: once as an analytical, fact based piece; once as an emotive, relational piece; and once as a pictograph. For example, the news that Pluto is no longer a planet would need to be blogged about in all of the following ways:
(Analytical) “Pluto does not meet the orbital standards established by IAU for a planetary class object, and is therefore now a member of the class ‘Dwarf Planet’.”
(Emotive) “A group of scientists didn’t feel like Pluto should be a planet, so they all decided to start calling it a ‘Dwarf Planet’. How do you feel about this?”
(Pictograph)
This way, the content is accessible to people with a wide range of comprehension strengths!
4) Comprehensive Posting Assessment
A significant portion of the Google AdSense income from this blog will be diverted to fund a new “Comprehensive Posting Assessment” team. In order to fully implement these new guidelines and strategies, we need a method for assigning numbers to the effectiveness of blog posts in each of the areas mentioned.
We’ve rounded up the finest statisticians, software engineers, PHP programmers, and graphic designers, and asked them to design a system of assessment for determining how effective each blog post is at achieving the “reader outcomes” listed in the post summary.
We’ll have more details later on what this assessment looks like. Since most of the people on the assessment team have never really seen a blog before, the first few months will be spent orienting them to the language and culture of the new media. We’re confident, though, that their comprehensive understanding of both math (including prime numbers!), and of the technology that hosts the blog (php, apache, etc.), will make them very effective at developing an assessment strategy.
In Conclusion …
Thank you for taking the time to review the new blog policies. I know we’re all on the same page when I say that Actualizing Reader Experience is our number one priority here at Addison Road, and I’m confident that the best way to improve reader experience is through detailed micromanagement of every aspect of the posting process.
Either that, or I would somehow have to just recruit good writers, and then let them write.
Nah.
Anybody wanna make me a t-shirt with the “Pluto (not a planet)” picture? Or a set of 20 for the End of Summer BBQ?
Can we change the mission of Addison Road from Actualizing Reader Experience to Reading Actualized Experiences? That might be closer to what we’re already doing, and slim down the bell curve of change. (Not that I’m opposed to change, especially if the process is being monitored by qualified experts, evaluated for improvement and recorded in hard-copy triplicate for posterity.)
And if anyone is making the T-shirts, count me in. I’m analytically non-strengthed, so this is perfect.
Reading Actualized Experiences is too hard and quantifyable. Actualizing Reader Experience is much softer, and harder to understand. This makes it the perfect mission statement.
When I actually understand this post I will laugh and laugh.
Just kidding. I get it. I do. And it’s funny funny funny. School administration is the same the world ’round.
Greenville College is still trying to micromanage their decade-long mission of “Servant Leadership” within their staff and students. Guess which student reacted the WORST to it? [raises hand]
Cerise
Reading Actualized Experiences may be hard and quanitifiable (and therefore, apparently, not mission-y) but it only requires two things: people who can read, and words about someone else’s experiences for them to practice on. By my calculations, that’s one less guideline, one less assessment team, and two less committees than Actualizing Reader Experience. Who cares about our readers’ experiences, anyway? We just need them to read. To hell with their experiences.
Aly, you have clearly missed the point of the new blog guideline. Why would we want less assessment?
Well… personally, I’d like to Experience an Actualized Reader sometime.
However, you’ve omitted some important points of institutional change that will aid in the development and communication of your vision for the future of Addison Road.
1) You can’t just form committees and taskforces to DO things. First, you need a taskforce to study the problem, call in experts, do research, and then make recommendations about what should actually be done, with suitable input from all stakeholders and community members. You’ve completely omitted the step where the taskforce reviews the practice of OTHER BLOGS that have similar missions. Your approach is entirely too insular.
2) It’s very suspicious indeed that you’ve appointed established community leaders in powerful positions where they can control the content submitted by others. Best practices research would indicate that it would be better to select relative outsiders (in the spirit of peer review) who have just enough knowledge about Addison Road to understand its background, but who will have clearer vision when it comes to evaluating successes and learning experiences (there will be NO failures).
3) You’ve completely omitted any missional objective with reference to diversity. In the modern post-modern world, that’s entirely unacceptable. You made a token reference to various learning styles, but failed to provide a mechanism for incorporating those who believe in the Submerging Church. You can’t just pretend that everyone wants to Emerge, or that Emerging is automatically the Right Thing To Do. There are a variety of missionological perspectives that must be honored in their own traditional contexts, without forcing everything into the mold of Emergence. Those of us who follow the teachings of the Convergent Church find this all to be something less than an Emergency.
But I digress.
4) Finally, your pejorative reference to native Americans was not missed (as if everyone doesn’t know what php means!), nor your reactionary, luddite approach to true quantitative evaluation.
Perhaps you should consider a career in something easier than higher education…. Have you thought of perhaps seeking a career in music?
I’ll be watching this blog very carefully.
Silly me … I thought I was seeking a career that was involved in both. 7 days of indoctrination have pointed out the error in my ways, however.
I would like one of the picture ts as well. Bobby probably would too. It would make a snazzy band tshirt.
I sat on the faculty senate when I was doing my masters at said university. I remember how all of the indoctrination worked. Phil were you on there then? I am not sure any of the music faculty ever showed up…
On a completely different note, while looking for a video of Bobby and me bungee jumping I came across a video of me conducting and who should my fantastic piano player be? None other than Michael Lee. In the mirror I could see Aly, Ted Tyman, Mike Pryor, Heidi Arneson and Jeff Domansky.
The emergents would not have accepted me as a conductor. There is a reason I went on to College Student Development.
Michael ECM Lee, how ECM on earth ECM do you find ECM the time ECM to create ECM such drivel? Don’t ECM you have a wife ECM and child to ECM entertain? Your fertile ECM mind is almost ECM a little ECM scary. But ECM fun to track.
And it’s ECM Paul C. ECM Reisser.
Think of it all as re-education camp. Someday you can write a book: The Azusa Archipelago.
In the meantime, I’ll try to smuggle in contraband reading material now and then.
Keep working on that tunnel.
Terry, as I’ve often said, the secret to doing many things is to do them all in a very half-assed manner.
Wow! I get to oversee the content and grammar of Addison Road? I’ll change my middle initial to “T” as in “T-Rex.”
First order of business: No more of this jammie nonsense! How’s that for an objective reader outcome?
If there’s no jammie nonsense I’m not here. Paul, take it the heck back, brother.
Cerise
Ask and ye shall receive…
I just ordered mine!!!
Does anyone else feel like Pluto (Not a Planet) is a great band name?
Some of us wish we were shaped less like planets.
I am so thankful to have read this post because I am re-writing my Advanced High School Choir Syllabus to fit the UC System requirements. Now I have guidelines. In the event that the brilliant children in my choir do not fit the politically correct profile for a UC school, they will be ready to emerge at at private Christian college in the so/ cal area. I am deeply in your debt (though no payment is forthcoming). And by the way, good luck in your new endeavour.
I am offended at your lack of sensitivity to diversity. I hereby insist you re-submit your post after careful scrutiny by the Diversity Council. Your comments should be translated into in several languages (including Vietnamese and Ebonics) and posted with the dates for the upcoming Winter Solstice and Kwanza. Congratulations, however, for offending the entire pigmy-eskimo population in one fell swoop
Mike, this is truly exemplary…of something. Give yourself a year of “full-X” and you’ll be asking the diversity council questions like “wow….what kind of sun tan lotion do you use?” (my wife was asked this question once…in Palm Springs)
mw
I think I may throw up - I have so many syllabi to re-write and others to assess - and all must be MICROMANAGED and OUTCOMED!!! (can I use that as a verb?) — AND DIVERSIFIED! aaagh. I can’t wait to evaluate Mike’s Faith Integration Outcomes in Intro to Music Technology — I wanna see some serious Jesus in there, my man!!!
My intro to music tech courses have 38% more jesus than before!