Connecting industry professionals to every classroom!
Nepris, 2015/08/31

Interesting concept for a website. According to the promo blurb, "We make it easy for teachers to virtually invite industry professionals into the classroom to bring real world relevance to curriculum topics, to help evaluate student projects and to engage and inspire students in STEAM!" By 'STEAM" they mean Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (poor old Humanities just can't catch a break). The site is called Nepris.

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IT unions: The wrong approach to achieving a noble goal
Patrick Gray, TechRepublic, 2015/08/31

There have been numerous reports in recent weeks about sweatshop conditions in technology companies, for example, Amazon.com, and while some people just don't care, others have advocated remedies such as unionization to address these conditions, as for example is happening at Gawker. This post is a poorly informed argument against unionization. Here are its major arguments and my responses:

• "It's impossible to take individual performance into account when attempting to set collective compensation practice" - nonsense. I work in a unionized environment where people have very specialized skills and pay and promotions are based on performance, not time served
• People opposed to the working conditions "would quickly be displaced by another person willing to make those sacrifices" - not true. In a unionized environment individuals are protected by the possibility of collective action by everybody. You aren't on your own in a union.

I am in favour of unionization. Historically, non-union workplaces feature lower pay, harsher working conditions, fewer benefits, and weaker job security. People arguing against unionization are either uninformed, like this person, or they are advocating on behalf of company owners and management. They stabilize the economy, create wider social benefits, and increase productivity.

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OpenShot: Open Source Video Editor
Christopher Whittum, Energize Education Through Open Source, 2015/08/31

This is a review of an open source alternative to Premiere or Microsoft Movie Maker. It's called OpenShot and the only real drawback is that it is only available for Fedora and Ubuntu Linux - though if you're using an open source video editor you probably already use Linux.

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