Unsuck That!
As education becomes more business-ified, the chances that you will encounter business-speak have increased. You may even receive unwelcome Hamster Advice in the workplace. Luckily, the Internets make it easy to translate Hamster-Speak.
The website Unsuck It helps you translate exactly what a top-level Hamster is saying to you. (The low-level Hamsters are usually out back either a) working or b) taking a baseball bat to the printer or c) stealing beer and taking a ride down the emergency chute, and yes there is truth in “Office Space” and the adventures of Steven Slater.)
For example, type in the phrase “monetize,” which is a biz biggie, and you’ll get “Turn into money or make profitable.” (As in: “How can we ‘monetize’ the humanities?”) Go for “deliverable,” and you’ll get “Piece of a project.” As a Hamster Bonus Translation, I find a “deliverable” to be the part of a project for which you or your team are directly responsible.
But the best feature of Unsuck It, by far, is the “I’m Feeling Douchey” button, which will reveal other pearls of wisdom from the Hamster World. My personal favorite is the term “content creation,” which really means “writing.”
Hat Tip: Lifehacker
Post Academic 
on September 1, 2010 on 6:37 pm
This language is definitely creeping into education. The latest rage is for what is being called “value-added” teaching to assess primary and secondary teachers’ performance. This is just the “No Student Left Behind” teach-to-the-test system, but overlaid with the economic, technocratic language preferred by Democrats (the Republicans prefer the sentimental language).