October 2nd Class -- Phi Theta Kappa and Room Change

I have arranged for Phi Theta Kappa to lead a class on how to use both Starfish (for advising) and College Fish (scholarships, transferring, etc) and to introduce their honor's society.

It will be held on Thursday October 2nd and the room will be changed to Room 205 (a computer room).

Upcoming Dates and Essay Requirements

We will have optional workshops for your essays on September 23rd and 25th. I will not be taking official attendance on those days.

On September 30th, your essay is due. At least 900 words, at least 3 academic sources, with sources cited in the essay and in the works cited at the end. You must correct spelling and writing mistakes in your essay before turning it in for credit. Make sure you read the links below:

Argument Essay

Identifying academic sources

How to Cite Sources in an Essay

This fully completed assignment is worth 5 credits.

Proposal Assignment

A minimum of 300 words (you can write more) on a proposed topic for a research, argument essay. Must include discussion of what the topic is, why it is important, different viewpoints about it, and at least 3 academic sources discussed in the proposal (why are they good sources for your essay) and cited at the end of the proposal.

How to write an essay proposal"

Argument Essay

Identifying academic sources

This completed, printed assignment is worth 2 credits and is due the next class September 18.

The Increasing Importance of Soft Skills

Something you might consider is that your education is not just the acquisition of concrete knowledge/facts/training, but it is also expected to instill certain "soft skills" that comprise a professional demeanor and these are key to getting and keeping most professional jobs. This can be seen in recent reports about the increasing importance of "soft skills" in grade evaluations at the college level, which are a result of employer demand. My Humanities colleague Becky Womack recently shared a few examples of this trend in the nation and in the KCTCS system:

Fain, Paul. "Grading Personal Responsibility." Inside Higher Education (December 13, 2012)

Dudik, Sarah. "BCTC's Advanced Manufacturing Technician program welcomes largest incoming class." Bluegrass Community and Technical College (August 5, 2014)


Madisonville Community College students will be graded on something new in 2014
By Jess Raatz, 14 News

​Madisonville Community College professors will begin grading students on their personal effectiveness skills.

These are skills needed in the workplace, including promptness, appropriate technology usage, and communication skills.

College officials say employers have been telling them some recent graduates were having issues with workplace etiquette.

Professors say the new initiative has been a year in the making.

"We are going with the idea that everybody at this college is a teacher because they're a role model for our students. So every interaction that our students have with our staff on campus serves as a guide towards professionalism," says Professor Felecia Johnson.

Professors say 10 percent of a student's grade will now be based on these workplace skills. (Source KCTCS News: August 18, 2014)

Bibliography/Works Cited Assignment

8 citations in perfect MLA or APA format -- the subject you are researching is "Propaganda"

1 Documentary
2 Books
2 scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles
1 essay from a website

The assignment must be free of mistakes to receive full credit - due 9/16, typed, in class.

Transfer Advising Available at Newtown

A Transfer Advisor from the Transfer Center will be available every Tuesday in suite 103G to advise students interested in transferring to any 4 year school! Students may schedule an apptointment or walk in!

Douglas Rushkoff: "They Say"

Read this from the beginning to the end and write a response in which you explain Rushkoff's argument (how he is trying to persuade you) and how he does this through his writing style (rhetoric).

Here is the essay: They Say

Minimum 300 words and cite it at the end of your response like this:

Rushkoff, Douglas. "Introduction: They Say." Excerpt from Coercion: Why We Listen to What They Say NY: Penguin Putnam, 1999: https://www.bookbrowse.com/excerpts/index.cfm?fuseaction=printable&book_number=227


If you are interested in learning more about a particular author (like when you are using their ideas in a paper or project), you might want to seek them out online:

Basic google search of the author

Rushkoff on Twitter

Rushkoff on Facebook

College Fish Webinar, Tuesday September 9 (3-4PM)

College Fish Webinar TUESDAY September 9, 3 to 4 p.m.

Here's an awesome opportunity to learn how to use College Fish, the FREE online program to help students successfully complete community college and transfer to a university AND find scholarship opportunities!

This is a LIVE online webinar (it's on the computer)! Students may register through the link below and then enter the webinar (just as a guest...no complicated things to submit)!

Students may participate in the webinar on their own computer at home OR join us on campus in the AT Building in Room 203. If you choose the on campus option, email the Instructor and we'll save you a seat (lucinda.baker@kctcs.edu)! Receive two points for this extra credit "good-for-you" opportunity! To receive the extra credit, mention your name and that you attend BCTC in Lexington Kentucky (on the webinar, you'll have the chance to introduce yourself by typing comments and questions).

Register FREE below!

College Fish Webinar

Open Source with Chris Lydon on "The End of Work"

[As we research possible majors and jobs/careers, we should take some time to reflect on the rapid technological changes we face as a society and how these changes could affect our working lives. This is a podcast (audio) -- pay attention to how as each new speaker is introduced they question what has been discussed before in the episode and challenge us to see the issue in new ways.]

Derber, Charles, et al. "The End of Work." Open Source (July 31, 2014)

Ray Kurzweil, best-selling author, futurist, inventor, Director of Engineering at Google, and author of The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity is Near,

Andrew McAfee, director of the Initiative on the Digital Economy at MIT, author of The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies.

Charles Derber, B.C. sociologist and author of The Surplus American.

Sarah Jaffe, journalist and host of Dissent‘s labor podcast, “Belabored.”

The jobless economy: a fully automated, engineered, robotic system that doesn’t need YOU, or me either. Anything we can do, machines can do better – surgery, warfare, farming, finance. What’s to do: shall we smash the machines, or go to the beach, or finally learn to play the piano?

First, some numbers.

There’s a trend in the economy that came up big in our show on Thomas Piketty’s inequality tome. Between 2000 and 2014, the median U.S. income has actually dropped: from $55,986 to $51,017. Over the same period corporate profits have more than doubled. The workforce participation rate in May of this year was 62.8%, the lowest since 1978. The level of investment in equipment and software bounced back to 95% of its historical peak just two years after the same recession that trashed all the jobs that have been so slow to come back.

One of the questions of that inequality story — big gains at the top, stagnation (or worse) at the middle and bottom — is how much is owed to the technology part of the capital, and really the automation of jobs formerly held by human beings. We know that the number of American ‘routine jobs’ dropped by 11 percent between 2001 and 2011. And a new study by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne at Oxford University suggest that 47% of U.S. jobs might be vulnerable to loss by automation, with telemarketers, sewers, watch repairers, umpires, models, and cooks likeliest to go.

We start the conversation there, at what McAfee and Brynjolfsson call the “Great Decoupling,” the possibility that machines are beginning to destroy more jobs than they can create (in the short term, at least).