We have a development group under the Apollo Group umbrella called Apollo Publishing. The team there has mutated over the years a number of times from publishing house to licensing house to dev center. Today, it serves pieces of all of those, and more. The most interesting: it’s a skunkworks for projects in education technology that may — or may not — make it into the classroom.

I was there yesterday visiting Colin Smith, one of the developers there working on a side RSS project for me. We got to talking about Second Life, one of my all-time favorite time sinks, and he introduced me to Second life: Second Campus. It’s the Apollo Group foray into avatar based learning.

Technorati Tags: Second Life, Technology, University of Phoenix

Robert Scoble has been talking about video blogging, and it’s got me thinking.

As to visuals Jon argues: “If I don’t have any visuals, then I should stick to audio.� Ahh, now I’m starting to get his point. He’s saying if you don’t have anything visual you should just stick with audio. Well, that’s true. But, what is “visuals.� Everything around me has a visual component.

I’ve been using audio and video in my teaching material for the last year. It’s changed the way my students interact with me (for the better, I hope) and I like to think we’re going to be getting better at delivering it institutionally.

But I had lunch today with two of the brains of the place, Bill Berry and George Love (George says he has a blog he needs to revise, Bill should be blogging, and he knows it — I hope he’s sufficiently shamed at his absence from the discussion). Our discussion wandered into the realm of standardizing media content into the classroom. So, before I get into the meat of my point, I have to give a little background.

So, I’m here in Las vegas. You have to get the image here. There’s a moving sidewalk that leads right into a funnel of double doors off of the A gates — the passage narrows considerably, which shouldn’t be a problem with normal traffic flow. But this is not normal traffic flow. This is post 9/11 traffic flow. Someone just found something terrifying in the big open area on the other side of the double doors and caused a lock-down. The doors shut automatically and this stream of people from the moving sidewalk just sort of… slammed into them. But they’re like lemmings, these people. They didn’t adjust like fluid and move around the moving sidewalk to the sides, back up the hallway. No, these people just dog-piled, letting their luggage and bodies just fall into one another. For five minutes this has been happening and it’s not stopping…

___

OK, so it’s stopped, the doors are open and no one knows what it was, just that it has to do with a security breach at the Burger King.

Say it again. A security breach at the Burger King.

That’s rich.

At long last, the release of iTunes 7.0 allows Mac users to create a new iTunes library at launch a la iPhoto. Just option-click the iTunes icon to launch and get a pretty “Choose iTunes Library” window!

Technorati Tags: Apple, iTunes

And so, the day of the clumsy RL anime mech has come. And just in time, too. Haliburton is looking for some new hardware to exploit.

Technorati Tags: Anime, Mech, Technology

The move north, I guess, is something of a novelty. According to this story, FDU from my old stomping ground in Madison, NJ is opeing a campus in Vancouver, BC to enroll Asian students. It’s funny, having been working on recruiting for a US-based institution in Vancouver, BC for the last several years, we just call them students.

I kid. I kid because they’re right. And not to be snotty, but what administrators at FDU have realized over the last four years of regulatory clearance is that it’s really, really hard to get into the states anymore from some countries — countries whose residents call Canada a nice new home away from home. The implications of the current administrations stranglehold immigration policies post-[gasp] 9/11 happen to be bearing the fruits of economic rust.

Technorati Tags: Education, International Education, University of Phoenix

I like fool.com. I’ve found it to be a great resource over the years and I think very highly of the contributors. As a reader, it’s easy to take the off-hand slights on company after company for granted — if they’re writing it, it must be true. But sometimes, once in a while, I’ll catch something on Apollo Group that is misconstrued.

Technorati Tags: Apollo Group, University of Phoenix

So, to recap: Nick was born on 4/20. I took the following week off, secure in my recent promotion to Marketing Director nary three months before for the Northwest Region of University of Phoenix. By Friday of that week, I was about ready to get back to work. That afternoon, I got the call.

“Pete?”

“Yeah.”

My boss.

“Pete, I wanted you to get the news from me before you heard the rumor next week.”

“What is it?” Nervous now.

“The Northwest region has been reorganized. It’s been split. I’m now over the Mountain region, and Oregon is in the Western region. I’m not sure I know what to do with this, but we have until June 1 to figure it out.”

“So, if I’m hearing you, at this point, on June 1, my position for your region is no longer a foregone conclusion.”

“At this point, as of June 1, none of our jobs are foregone conclusions.”

The first call I made was to a dear friend in our corporate public affairs department. I told her the situation, and told her I needed to work for her. That I still had ideas to share and exercise, that it’d be too much of a shame for me to take off when I’m just not finished.

What is it that I’m not finished with, exactly? Well, I’m not finished blogging, frankly. I’m not finished exploring the demand our students have to explore these social networking tools and technologies. I’m not finished putting people together to see what these things look like on the other side of this monumental transition that Gen Y is foisting upon us this graduation year. There are exciting times ahead, and I want to be a part of them.

To her credit, she gets it. She gets that there’s a disconnect between our advertising and our enrollment. She gets that there is a problem when our students come to school to learn, and leave without daring to tell their peers where they are going. We’ve created a cult of embarrassment — a wall of internet advertising around us which is becoming increasingly difficult to cross. She gets that we desperately need a position designed to keep us ahead of these technologies and defining a strategy to align ourselves with them appropriately.

The best part is, she gets that I’m the guy to do it.

So, as of June 1, I’ll become the Director of New Media Communications for Apollo Group, Inc. I’ve written the job description and it’s been submitted to the job review committee for approval. And now it’s time to get to work.

I’m toying with starting another blog, maybe over on TypePad, to talk more about these things on a regular basis, particularly how they relate to our efforts to help enrollment and retention. I’ll post a link here when that’s complete. In the mean time, thanks to everyone I contacted to help get me to the other side of this change. Finding out about a potential job loss is a terrifying thing, while out on FMLA with a newborn. The prayers helped, and to those angles who coached me through this, I am forever grateful.

LinkedIn has been a sleeper tool in my bag of tricks. When I say sleeper, that’s to be read as “ignored”.

The premise is so simple: Join. Invite your peers. Meet their peers. That’s it — so simple. It’s something that the business breakfasts have been working on for years and years, networking clubs that strive to foster the face to face network to expand professional relationships. But what LinkedIn drives by leveraging some radically simple technology is volume.

I made a point to invite 15 people. Ten of them signed up quickly. Of those folks, four of them had existing networks. Of those four, two of them had been very active users, with 300+ networks each by themselves. The system did the math and determined that with my users my total network went from 1 (me) to over 20,000 in just a short week.

I jumped in and ran some searches on my second and third degree networks and found a number of folks that I already knew — acquaintances and friends — and added them to my direct contact list. Then, I searched for like minded people.

My major project was to find people who are in a similar position to mine, to start networking with them, learning about this whole new media thing, how to formalize something that has yet to be truly architected as a function of marketing and public relations. I found three people very willing to reciprocate and thus, my network is born. The payoff was quick, the experience universally positive, the scope vast.

I imagine the trick will be keeping it going. There’s a lot of energy around these new experiences and building a network like this is akin to a non-drug induced high. Once the buzz is gone, will the payoff stick?

And such is my primary puzzle; charged with building a virtual network of nearly a half of a million people, how do you create lasting buzz and value in a communication channel that is strong enough to last? At this point, I’m taking a page from Joe Trippi, that a virtual network is only as good as the inherent opportunities for real life meet-ups. As much as we say we’re a virtual society, as much as we like to think that the 80% of Americans on the net are actually using it to it’s potential, I think people want to touch one another at a very base level. We are the culture of the handshake.

There is much afoot for me at University of Phoenix now. I find the timing funny. As it happens, I started five years ago, June 4. To celebrate, I received the following email from University administration:

Congratulations

Dear Peter Wright,

Congratulations on your 5 Year achievement with University of Phoenix! Thank you for your dedication and contributions to our company. We are pleased to honor you with an award in recognition of this accomplishment.

You can order from available award selections online using your personal access number XXXX XXXXX XXXXX.

This email was computer generated; please do not reply. If you have questions regarding this notification please contact the award administration team.

US and Canada

orders@XXXXX.com

Now, let me tell you: nothing says “We appreciate you” better than “do not reply to this email.”

That was actually a couple of months ago. I had a few good laughs at it and moved on. Shortly thereafter, we had our second child, Nicholas. That part is wholly irrelevant, or it would have been, had it not been for the fact that on the last day of my FMLA I got a call from my boss telling me that my region had been realigned — my job was no longer a foregone conclusion.

I was on the verge of being reorganized. It was humbling actually. For the past two years I’ve been involved in conversations dealing with restructuring, reorganizing operations, opening and closing learning centers: decisions that impact individuals’ lives. I’d never been reorganized. Until that moment, on the phone with my boss, I realized that I’d been lugging about this arrogance right on my shoulder. That those conversations I’d been involved in that caused the loss of jobs: those had been too easy for me.

Much happened after that. Much that is as yet unresolved. As soon as it is, I’ll be posting more detail. In the mean time, I can tell you that my future looks fairly bright with the organization. As of June 1, I’ll be moving to the corporate organization as the director of new media communications. That will allow me to be doubly committed to this blog and other projects in this sphere, starting with looking for the best bloggers that also happen to be students in our organizations. I’m excited about it, but trying not to get too excited. At least not until I wake up on June second and still have a job.

Here’s an interesting piece I stumbled on this morning by Angie Herrington at the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Never too old for school

Apart from being a nice mention of my man Alan Yanda — new Associate Campus Director for our Chattanooga, TN campus — it brings up an interesting point. Here’s the quote that got me thinking, from Chattanooga State President Jim Catanzaro:

Creating more programs geared directly at preparing students for jobs, such as Chattanooga State’s new Building and Construction Institute of the Southeast, is one way to lure more older male adult students back to the college, he said.

“Now the specialization of the work force is such that we shouldn’t be turning out so many people with general degrees,” Dr. Catanzaro said.

For years, we’ve gone round and round with traditional education about the value of the practitioner degree. Particularly apparent in our doctoral programs, practitioner degrees have come under fire for — as far as I can tell — not being Ph.D., churned out of traditional academe.

But Catanzaro has a good point here. The gist of a practitioner education at all levels of higher eduction is preparation. Our own research tells us that people are changing careers three and four times in a lifetime. We’re not talking about job changes here — moving from selling widgets to selling gadgets, or trucks to tractors — we’re talking about wholesale life changes: you were a nurse, now you’re a plumber, next you might be an accountant.

With this change in our social economy, education has to play a new role. I’m a firm believer in traditional eduction, the traditional college environment, for those who can take advantage of it at the right point in their lives. I was 18, I went to college, I did the five-year plan and graduated with just shy of 200 credits. It was a wonderfully powerful experience for far more than the academic perspectives; College was my opportunity to develop socially, to learn how to interact with the world, to live with people that were not my parents and do develop the skills I’d later need to manage a productive life.

But that group, that selection of teens able to afford to take the time and money and put it to a dedicated educational experience for four or five years is shrinking. If you’re one of the growing cadre of adults who missed college for some reason, you have very different needs from your education provider. You need to know that what you’re getting out of the classroom is what you’ll need to function in the world, in your career, in your life. And since you’ll probably change careers a few more times for retirement, you also need to know that you can count on your institution to change with you.

The future of education is far more like “The Matrix” than it is “Animal House”. It’s a future in which you’ll come to school for appropriate and timely programming, to acquire the skills you’ll need to succeed at that moment. You’ll move on to master them through application and then come back, when you’re ready for more.

Ten years ago, I worked with a fellow who’d graduated with his MBA from Harvard in 1968. He was a powerful guy — high-dollar consultant — and I was is his pitchman. I used to think of him as the role model I’d always wanted to be, polished and professional and wearing that alumni status right out on his sleeve.

But the MBA has changed in the last 30 years and today his skills are stale, and a degree (even from a prestigious institution) has a shelf-life of applicability. Those who get it know that life long learning is less about the latest buzz-words than it is about survival. Those who don’t get it are living through the greying pages of a yearbook.

I wrote that last piece on Brian Mueller and, with all the good stuff I’ve been hearing about him as our new CEO, I can’t resist posting a link to this video of Steve Ballmer doing the “Dance Monkeyboy” thing, some of his own special breed of motivation. This has been the legacy of Microsoft for some time now, easily since 2000, and you have you ask yourself: is he like this … on a dare?

Technorati Tags: Brian Mueller, Leadership, Microsoft, Steve Ballmer

This isn’t a surprise to anyone by any stretch, but it’s an interesting reminder of just how dramatic the changes around this place are right about now.

PHOENIX–(BUSINESS WIRE)–March 29, 2006–Apollo Group Inc. (Nasdaq:APOL) announced that Brian Mueller has been appointed to its board of directors.

Mueller has been with the company for 19 years and is currently its president. In his career with Apollo Group and University of Phoenix he has held many positions, most recently as CEO of the University of Phoenix Online campus.

Dr. John Sperling, acting executive chairman of Apollo Group, said, “We are pleased to appoint Brian to our board of directors. He is an excellent complement to our board and we look forward to the contributions and guidance he will provide as we continue to grow and expand.”

Members of the company’s current board of directors are John Sperling, Peter Sperling, John Norton, John Blair, Hedy Govenar and Dino DeConcini.

The campus directors and regional vice presidents just got back from a meeting in Phoenix discussing the future of the organization with Brian and his team as we all move forward with this long-overdue integration between Online, the ground campuses, and Axia College (come April 1). These are shake-up meetings, designed to make people feel just uncomfortable enough to take action, to force change in the way we perceive the delivery of eduction. He — Brian — comes to the table with an interesting reputation. From people who’ve worked for him directly I’ve heard the following:

“If he wakes up with a brainstorm, it better be implemented by 1:00.”

“He’s a mercenary…. Very good, but very determined.”

“Tough love. Exhastive, tough love. If he doesn’t love you, tough.”

But the real response came from a campus director I trust and respect dearly, who hasn’t had much contact with Brian and was skeptical about his role in the organization, She came back from the meeting and said, “I don’t care what you say about this guy. I don’t care what people call him. This time around, people are following him. He’s a leader, and we’re following him. We’ll get through this.”

Makes me want to do that much more today. Nice feeling.

Technorati Tags: Apollo Group, Brian Mueller, Education, University of Phoenix