The TLT Symposium podcast is up...

The audio podcast of the presentation on information markets that Rose Baker and I gave at the 2006 Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) Symposium sponsored by Penn State University is on iTunes<==link directly. You may subscribe to the RSS feed for the TLT Symposium series, also.

I understand that a webcast of our presentation will be available soon. The webcast should make the whole thing more understandable because the slides will be visible. Here, however, from SlideShare.net are our slides:

Rose and I are honored to have had the opportunity to make this presentation. Cole Camplese and his great crowd at Penn State Educational Technology Services did a wonderful job of planning, organizing, and running the TLT Symposium series. 

Owen's new teef...

A young boy to have choppers!

From the field...

It was great fun having a sideline pass for the Temple v Penn State game last Saturday. I spent the last quarter of the game on the sideline with my daughter, who was photographing the game as part of her assignment for her sports photography course. She is a senior at Penn State. Her major is Photography. She is in a BA program, but, today, she submits a proposal to finish in the BFA program. The BFA program in photography will provide a greater opportunity for developing a portfolio and set of skills in digital photography.

My view from the field.
In a faculty meeting now, and I just do not have enough coffee. There is not enough coffee in the world to make this interesting to me.

Temple v Penn State...

Bill Bradshaw and I went to high school together in Niagara Falls, New York. He is the athletic director now at Temple. Temple and Penn State played football today. I was fortunate to join Bill and Temple people in a suite in Beaver Stadium to watch the game. A surprise to me. I was dressed for rainy day, and I expected that I would get wet.  However, a few Temple donors did not make the game, so a couple of suite tickets became available. Here are a few pictures:

Bill and I


The view from the suite high above Beaver Stadium


So high that you might need oxygen! Those are Bill's kids.

How fortunate. I was high and dry. It was great to spend time with Bill. Oh, by the way, Penn State won 47-0.

We are interested in the closing of the Willow Grove Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base...

The mission of Willow Grove Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base is to provide, train and maintain a ready reserve military force. According to GlobalSecurity.org, the primary Navy tenant of Willow Grove is patrol squadron VP-66. Other tenants at the installation include the Air National Guard, Air Force Reserve, and one Marine Corps Helicopter Squadron. The Base is located in Horsham Township, Montgomery County, approximately 20 miles north of Philadelphia.

In 2005, the independent Base Realignment and Closure Commission voted on U.S. Defense Department of Defense proposal to shut or shrink 800 bases across the country, including the Willow Grove facility. The Commission calculated that the one-time cost closing of the Williow Grove Base would be $239.5 million, with annual savings of $79.3 million.

Estimates of the impact of the Base closing vary remarkably. The Commission anticipated the loss of approximately 1,700 military and civilian jobs from the Base and its affected supplying and supporting industries. One controversial assessment provided by Econsult Corporation, a Philadelphia–based consulting firm, prior to the announcement of the Base closing by the Commission indicated that the Willow Grove Base’s economic impact on the community was $378 million in business activity and 10,724 jobs. No matter what estimate is preferred, the Base closing is expected to have broad impact on the economy of Montgomery County.

A comprehensive forecast of the total economic impact of the closing of the Willow Grove Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base is required to assess and mitigate the closing’s particular impact on employment and training in Montgomery County. Moreover, an assessment is needed of the opportunities for reallocating the workers displaced by the Base closing to reduce the disruption of personal income streams and optimize allocation of human capital assets in Montgomery County.

Production of these economic and employment assessments is complicated by at least three factors. First, the Base will close in stages, the result of which will be a staging over time of the employment and general economic impacts. Second, the production, consumption, and demographic interdependencies in the local economy make derivation of the impact of the Base closing technical and complicated. And, third, the understanding of the ability of the Montgomery County labor market to absorb workers displaced from the Willow Grove Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base rests on a variety of assumptions and unknowns.

We hope to have the opportunity to conduct these economic and employment assessments through Penn State's Workforce Education and Development Initiative.