[digital arts and culture conference: cfp]

The biannual Digital Arts & Culture conference takes place in California in December 2009 (http://dac09.uci.edu)

The abstract submission deadline = May 1st

This time the conference is organised around themes, here is a very interesting one:

"Theme: The Present and Future of Humanist Inquiry in the Digital Field
What contributions may literary, poetic, and aesthetic idioms of humanist inquiry -- traditionally associated with problems of lyrical expression, narrativity, linguistic subjectivity, and authorial and readerly agencies -- continue to offer to the analysis of medial practices and systems in the era of mobile, distributed, and social media? The crux of this question, we
propose, lies in the specifically historical purchase of humanist method: its ability to (re)situate new symbolic practices in complex and nuanced relation to prior traditions and atavisms of expressive language and action -- in contrast to the reductively progressivist, de-historicizing impulses of much of contemporary digitalism.

This theme welcomes exemplary close readings (literary-theoretical, formalist, narratological, ludological, etc.) of electronic literature and poetry, single- and multiple-player computer games, social media, and hard and soft medial apparatuses of the digital field. Especially encouraged are such close readings which also make general claims regarding the significance of humanist investigations of digital arts and cultures."





More info at:
http://dac09.uci.edu/call.html

[cfp: interdisciplinary perspectives on e-learning]

Special Issue of E-Learning on globally networked learning in higher education

E-Learning, a peer-reviewed international journal directed towards the study of e-learning in its diverse aspects, invites submissions for a special issue on “Globalizing Higher Education Across the Disciplines: Innovative Partnerships, Policies, and Pedagogies for Globally Networked Learning Environments,” guest edited by Doreen Starke-Meyerring.

Early national and global policy discourses around the role of the internet in higher education advanced utopian and dystopian understandings of the internet as a new global market for existing industrial-model, locally produced higher education courses and programs to be repackaged for global delivery and global trade online. As a result, hundreds of millions of public and private dollars have been spent on global internet-based higher education marketing consortia, many of which have since failed. As initial responses to digital technologies, these initiatives had largely tried to reproduce established institutionally bounded practices in digital environments, disregarding the networked nature and peer production potential of digital technologies, and therefore lacking pedagogical innovation to re-envision learning in a globally networked world.

At the same time, however, many faculty across the disciplines in higher education have begun to develop alternative pedagogies and learning environments that take advantage of the globally networked nature of digital technologies. These globally networked learning environments (GNLEs) connect students with peers, instructors, professionals, experts, and communities from diverse contexts to help students develop new ways of knowledge making and learn how to build shared learning and knowledge cultures across traditional boundaries, especially with peers and communities that have been the most marginalized and disadvantaged in the emerging global social and economic order. However, such GNLEs are difficult to develop because they require robust partnerships, must negotiate a multitude of divergent national and institutional local policies, and as innovations, face challenges of institutional support infrastructures and policies designed around traditional local classrooms.

The purpose of this special issue is to understand the current state of globally networked learning environments across disciplines in higher education and to advance insights into their development and sustainability. The special issue therefore invites both conceptual contributions that address larger questions surrounding GNLEs as well as research studies of GNLE development across disciplines, addressing questions such as these (among others):

- What is the current state of globally networked learning in higher education?
- How have GNLEs addressed issues of global and local social justice?
- What kind of disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge making do GNLEs enable that would be difficult to achieve in traditional institutionally bounded classrooms? How?
- What challenges do educators face in designing, implementing, and sustaining such partnered learning environments? How do they overcome them?
- How do national and global policies regulating higher education as well as those regulating digital technologies (e.g. privacy, intellectual property, and censorship policies) enable or constrain the development of GNLEs?
- How do local institutional policies, including policies regulating digital technologies, enable or constrain the development of GNLEs?
- What institutional initiatives (e.g., task forces, innovator networks, centres for research and faculty support, integrated support networks) have emerged to support the work of faculty innovators?
- What research is needed to advance globally networked learning environments in higher education? Schedule:

• Proposals indicating the purpose, rationale, and possible approach of contributions (250-500 words): January 31, 2009
  
• Submissions (full manuscripts): May 31, 2009
  
• Accepted manuscripts revised for publication: September 1, 2009
  
• Scheduled publication of issue: Winter 2010
  

Please direct inquiries and proposals to the guest editor: Doreen Starke-Meyerring doreen.starke-meyerring@mcgill.ca

Please also contact the editor if you are interested in serving as a reviewer for this special issue. *****************************************************

[social media in education - cfp]

CALL FOR PAPERS

Electronic Journal of Communication (EJC)

Special Issue:

Communication Pedagogy in the Age of Social Media

Over the course of the last few years, social media technologies such as blogs, microblogs, digital videos, podcasts, wikis, and social networks, have seen a dramatic increase in adoption rates. To date, Internet users have uploaded roughly 80 million videos to YouTube and launched approximately 133 million blogs worldwide. Because of their ability to connect people and to facilitate the exchange of information and web content, social media technologies not only provide a powerful new way to interact with one another, but they also present exciting new pedagogical opportunities.

Earlier this year, the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative released the 2008 Horizon Report, which seeks to identify new technologies capable of affecting the way we teach and learn. Among the critical challenges outlined by this year’s report is the need for universities to equip students with new media literacy skills and to develop curricula that “address not only traditional capabilities like developing an argument over the course of a long paper”, but also “how to create meaningful content with today’s tools.” (The New Media Consortium, 2008, p. 6).

Considering that these tools center around the ideas of collaboration, participation, and conversation, they should hold special interest to communication researchers and educators alike. As a result, this special issue seeks to examine the pedagogical applications of social media technologies, especially with regard to the communication classroom. Examples of best practices in social media adoption in all areas of communication education are welcome, as are case studies or empirical research analyzing the effectiveness and/or effects of incorporating social media technologies into the communication classroom. Research examining the role these technologies play in the social construction of a collective knowledge pool would also fit within the scope of this special issue.

The special issue is scheduled for publication in the first half of 2010. Deadline for completed manuscripts is April 1, 2009. Submissions should be electronic (.doc or .rtf format) and must conform to the specifications of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th ed. Place author’s contact information in an email to the editor only, not on the title page of the submission.

Issue Editors:
Corinne Weisgerber, Ph.D. and Shannan H. Butler, Ph.D.
St. Edward’s University

Send inquiries and submissions to: corinnew AT stedwards DOT edu


via: Social Media for PR Class.

[art experiments in new york]

From Rhizome:

"New York-based organization Location One's International Residency Program was initiated in 2001 to foster artistic experimentation. Each year a group of artists develop a body of new work?often involving technology?during a period of four to ten months, which is then presented in a group show at Location One's Soho gallery. The first of two exhibitions showcasing the projects of eight of the 2006-2007 artists-in-residence runs from February 14 to March 17. Reflecting the multiple practices of their creators, the pieces on view represent multiple media and aesthetics, from sound, sculpture, and performance, to political readings of the urban space or explorations of perception. Bewernitz and Goldowski's installation, 'Unveiled Presence (secret sounds 2)' (2007), constitutes one of the highlights of the exhibition. The artists were inspired by the rooftop water towers found all over New York, as well as Duchamp's 'Bruit Secret' (1916), an assisted ready-made consisting o! f a ball of twine between two brass plates containing a small, unknown object revealed only when shaken. Using a complex topographical approach, they recorded the city?s sounds in specific locations, creating a psychologically engaging vision of the secret dimensions of this otherwise well-known metropolis. Other works are also worth mentioning, including Teresa Henriques's drawing/sculpture, created with the open-source animation software Blender, or Alessandro Nassiri's video of a fictional demonstration in which the participants wear white t-shirts exposing a scarlet letter, so that, together, the participants?s shirts spell-out the expression 'coming soon.' Presenting innovative artists and works to New York?s audience, this promising group show thus continues Location One's custom of contributing to the dynamics of its art scene." - Miguel Amado