Jess

[digital storytelling project: students & elderly]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:08:00 +0000

The Charlestown Digital Story Project teams UMBC students with residents of Charlestown Retirement Community to create digital stories. Drawn from the life experiences of the residents, the stories combine narration, animation, photos and music in short movies to be shared with others. Residents work closely with student partners, acting as author and creative director of their individual story. Each student brings their own style and talents to the project, helping to create some unique examples of intergenerational storytelling.

Over thirty stories have been produced to date. In 2007, the project was recognized with a

Bronze Telly Award.

The project is organized by the New Media Studio with funding from Retirement Living TV.

See a video about the project here.

There are also links to the stories on the above link.

[multimodal narratives :: nonfiction]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 21:02:00 +0000

Enjoying some downtime over the holidays and catching up on fun reading. While doing so I came across a variety of new media narratives. This one, Storm Stories, uses photos and videos with a focus on user-generated content.

Also have a look at the Wisconsin State Journal's Down to a Whisper on the loss of Native languages. There are images, video and the most interesting bit is the option to listen to Native languages; choose paragraphs, sayings or even just vowel sounds.

Time's person of the year, Barack Obama. Are you connected?

[literate cities]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:12:00 +0000

Six key elements are analysed in this study to dechipher which city is the most literate (American cities only) in 2008. These include: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment and Internet resources and are then compared to the population rate (but only in cities greater than 250,000).

Somewhat oddly, the study does NOT include "reading test scores or how often people read, but what kinds of literary resources are available and used."

"Cities that ranked higher for having more bookstores also have a higher proportion of people buying books online, the analysis found, and cities with newspapers that have high per-capita circulation rates also have more people reading newspapers online. Likewise, cities that ranked higher for having well-used libraries also have more booksellers."

The author of the study, Dr. John Miller, makes a very interesting observation:

"While it is too early in this study to draw conclusions, it is nevertheless striking that newspaper readership rates in the US’s global economic competitors are significantly higher than in the US. Since literacy is generally regarded as a barometer of a nation’s social, cultural, and economic health, perhaps these findings are cause for national concern."

According to the USA Today report, "Preliminary results of a related study examining international literacy paint a less optimistic outlook for the USA. It notes that in per-capita paid newspaper circulation, the USA ranks only 31st in the world, far behind other countries, including Aruba, Liechtenstein and Japan."

[haptics and hypertext]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:14:00 +0000

"Reading is a multi-sensory activity, entailing perceptual, cognitive and motor interactions with whatever is being read."

Anne Mangen at the National Centre for Reading Education and Research, University of Stavanger published a paper in October on haptics and immersion in hypertexts such as M.D. Coverley's Califia (2000), C. Guyer and M. Joyce's Lasting Image (2000) and there is reference to afternoon.

Mangen's article is interesting in it's approach, taking a phenomenological one. She explains: "If we take the main purpose and motivation for our reading to be that of becoming immersed in a fictional world, then the text will have to provide the necessary setting for such a phenomenological sense of presence – by way of whatever modality telling the story."

Though people do seem to equate turning the pages of print books with clicking a mouse Mangen notes that these two activities are quite different: there is an "ontological" difference.

"The feeling of literally being in touch with the text is lost when your actions – clicking with the mouse, pointing on touch screens or scrolling with keys or on touch pads – take place at a distance from the digital text, which is, somehow, somewhere inside the computer, the e-book or the mobile phone."

Mangen goes on to explain that the demand to click/interact in certain hypertext stories actually undoes any possible sense of immersion (a la Marie-Laure Ryan).

"The links in a hypertext fiction present themselves as an experiential potential, a latently accessible actualisation of something currently unavailable, which becomes readily accessible with the click of a mouse. The sensory–motor affordances of the computer make it very easy to rekindle our attention, getting access to something beyond our present experience. As such, text or icons that yield (i.e., hot spots) afford haptic interaction with the computer. We experience these as links to be clicked on, and such
affordance is necessarily incompatible with phenomenological immersion."

Though I agree with a large part of what Mangen and others argue, I do wonder whether there is a different kind of reader, perhaps emerging in line with this turned-on, 21st century, tech world, a reader who actually becomes more immersed the more physical the demand of reading becomes? I know reading some narratives like Donna Leishman's Red Riding Hood (mentioned in this blog before) which requires a greater degree of haptics (compared with afternoon et al), I found myself more "in" the story, actually moving my own way around. Perhaps gamer-readers won't find this cross-modal situation distracting, though Mangen notes that as a "psychobiological rule" we tend to allow motor senses to overpower cognitive ones.

Read the full article here (if you have access):
Hypertext fiction reading: haptics and immersion, by Anne Mangen in the Journal of Research in Reading, Volume 31, Issue 4 (p 404-419).

See also this article that is freely available: Storybooks On Paper Better For Children Than Reading Fiction On Computer Screen, According to Expert in ScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 2008).

[cfp: interdisciplinary perspectives on e-learning]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:50:00 +0000

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. *****************************************************

[ether pad]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:41:00 +0000

According to the creators, EtherPad is "the perfect way to collaborate on a text document and keep everyone literally on the same page."

So I had a little play around with it and my first question was "how is etherpad different from google docs?" After a bit more research and reading of the faqs it seems a few other beta users have wondered this very question and the creators are quick to point out that "No." EtherPad is different from googledocs:

"Google Docs is a suite of products that do many things, from word processing to spreadsheets to document management. One thing that Google Docs does not do is real-time collaborative text editing. We think this is an important use case, so we built EtherPad with real-time collaboration as the focus.

For example, with Google Docs it takes about 5 to 15 seconds for a change to make its way from your keyboard to other people's screens. Imagine if whiteboards or telephones had this kind of delay! In contrast, the EtherPad infrastructure is built to carry your every keystroke at the speed of light, limited only by the time it takes electrons to travel over a wire (such as an "ethernet" cable)."

The aspect of real-time updates is something I've noticed first-hand when working with people on google docs (hi Sue! hi Kate!) and EtherPad lets you see changes/revisions/additions as they happen. This has interesting possibilities for classroom use too.
Thanks to my brother for the tip.

[infusing semantic web into operational data systems]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:36:00 +0000

Patrick West, Peter Fox, Deborah McGuiness and Stephan Zednik from the High Altitude Observatory present their project on integrating data and the semantic web.

From their
"As part of our semantic data framework activities across disciplines from solid-earth, lower, middle and upper terrestrial atmosphere and solar atmosphere to integrative subjects such as climate response and space weather, we have collected a set of experiences: technical, collaboration and social that relate to how easy or hard the infusion process has been. We cover both the semantic web and knowledge infusion as well as underlying service infusion such as catalogs and OPeNDAP data servers."

Interesting points:

It's easy to identify experts in each field and goo idea to get groups together to provide community support and external buy-in

Tricky to conduct face-to-face meetings which are imperative to share expert knowledge between disciplines/fields
Require a general ontology too cross data from one "data catalogue" to another
tricky to gain access to data holdings etc...which are external to group

[pulitzer prize clarifications]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 09:50:00 +0000

The other day I blogged about changes to the Pulitzer prize terms; now included are online-only news organisations (rather than demanding that online-content only be accepted from organisations that also had a print version). Since then Simon Owens has drawn my attention to some developments . Simon was able to interview Pulitzer administrator Sig Gissler for a PBS article and then speak with Salon, Slate and ProPublica to gauge their reaction to the news.

From the PBS article:

"I spoke to Pulitzer administrator Sig Gissler to find out what kind of entrants the Pulitzer Board is looking for. He told me that a special committee had made recommendations for the changes earlier this year and in November the board adopted them.

"We're not about the business of looking around the country to identify specific organizations," Gissler said. "We leave it up to the entrants to meet our criteria."

In other words, the burden of proof lies on the news organization to provide ample evidence that it meets all the qualifications for the award. Each entrant must submit a detailed cover letter with each entry, and Gissler said that the organization would have to make the case that it adheres to strict journalistic standards and engages in original reporting.

Pressing further, I asked whether sites like Salon, Slate and the Huffington Post would qualify.

"I'm not sure if they all qualify," he replied. "I think you have to determine if they're primarily original news reporting. We're really trying to push the burden on the entrants and not try to sit here and speculate about an entry that may or may not be let in."

He did, however, confirm that a blog could hypothetically qualify. If one or two people call their website a text-based newspaper, would it be eligible?" he said. "Blogs tend to fall into three categories. There are news reporting blogs, there are commentary blogs, and there's a hybrid version of the two. If they're text-based and meet our criteria, then they probably could compete. But it would be up to them to satisfy the criteria."

[...]

"NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen showed similar skepticism in a series of posts on his Twitter account. In a message to me he asked if a blogger known for insightful opinion could win the award for commentary even though she doesn't engage in original reporting. When I responded that she probably wouldn't qualify, he replied, "Oh, I see. If it's commentary at a reporting based news organization, [you're] golden. [It's] the derivation that counts."

Read the entire article here where Simon develops the conversation and presents some interesting responses from other key people involved in journalism. You can also join the conversation by answering some of Simon's questions:

"What do you think about the new eligibility for Pulitzer Prizes in journalism? Are they open enough or should they include more entrants? How would you define who should be eligible for Pulitzers?"

[google earth and beyond]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 02:46:00 +0000

At the AGU conference this evening Michael Jones (Google) is talking about "The Spread of Scientific Knowledge From the Royal Society to Google Earth and Beyond."

Some notes (live blogged)

implicit role of communication within technologies (telephone, television etc...)
Roger Bacon
Knowledge was lost with the Greek and Egyptan civilizations, kept alive by Syrians, Moors, Jews and other then advance and diffused by Arabic-speakng peoples

spreading of scientific knowledge "by people on camels" is why we know what we know
the rise of the university - efficacy of printing, the compuass as aid to navigation, the royal society (1645, England, Newton, shared knowledge in a very collegial way)
This conference is like the Royal Society but only for a week, the next step in knowledge sharing is regular, informal meetings, R.S was more like a chat room rather than like a structured oratory
it's not just about getting data together but organising it
three great means for spreading knowledge: printing, the compass as aid to navigation, the royal society - says Joseph Glanvil (1630-1680). A Defence of the Royal Society, 1678
radio was a wasted opportunity, could have been used to reach people who weren't able to go to schools etc...
with computers you can do 100 times more than what newton did in the pub!
in the last 10 years, 1.4 billion people went online
there are 1.530,000,000 google searches daily... "and probably 100 other kinds"
400,000,000 google earth activations, everyone has to find grandma's house
says communication online via social networks is very important, so are e-mails and IM's
10 billion YouTube videos streamed monthing in the USA, closest things used to be grandparents showing home videos so YouTube is changing how we communicate
the point of google earth is allowing people to access information about their own world
you have to care about knowledge in order for it to really make a logical understandng
google earth is the equivalent of the blank web page or static on the radio, google earth is the empty graph paper for you to plot your graph - that's like the academics when they used to meet in the bar

context brings knowledge to life
Google Earth is most popular in countries where knowledge is restricted
jones says he won't have a slide on this, talks of Obama and says how he has a preference to put money into technical advice
Jones says academic research is about always needing more money to find out more, publish cursory results then ask for more money. instead, find rocks, glaciers etc... then publish the data, on your website etc. so other researchers can see it. then you can play a game of how smart you are, who can interpret the data and how, bring your notebook to the bar
who is going to start doing this, scientists - the tone of increased funding should come with increased visability
transparency of communication avaiable on the internet - don't apply for a grant to put your information on google earth, if things are intrically productive you would just do it, you wouldn't need funding for it

[calgary airport staff enjoy some sledding]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 21:32:00 +0000

As I enjoyed a lovely double-double from Tim Hortons I gazed out the window at Calgary airport and saw this; two airport employees enjoying the snow:

[canada & snow]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 17:06:00 +0000

Leaving Friday morning from Heathrow on the way to California for a conference I was mentally preparing myself for sun and warmer weather. Instead, my flight was overbooked and I ended up going via Calgary to San Francisco. Part of the (still going) adventure was the massive snow storm last night in Calgary which successfully grounded pretty much all flights! Airport staff told us the airport was shutting down and sure enough, after a few hours there really weren't many people around (especially if you don't count those like us in the queue to find out what to do while in Calgary). Though it's not snowing now in Calgary it is -34 degrees C (with the wind chill) and yes, I do count that because the wind is fierce now, blowing snow around making for pretty poor visibility. People's cars are not starting (and these are rugged big jeeps and pickups) and the hotel doors have frozen open.

[pulitzer prize now includes online writings]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:16:00 +0000

Pulitzer Prizes Broadened to Include Online-Only Publications Primarily Devoted to Original News Reporting

Via Netwurker Mez on Facebook.

[social media in education - cfp]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 10:51:00 +0000

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.

[17 year old drives web app development]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:49:00 +0000

How amazing is this? A 17 year old student was faced with a problem: how to keep track of school work? Well, Andrew Shaper just went and created an amazing free online resource that allows students (it is geared toward secondary school and undergrad. students) to add assignments, classes and, the best bit (it's also the best bit for Christopher Dawson at ZDNet) is the ability to upload assignments via e-mail or text message to the site. Very well connected. I can imagine asking my own students to read Chapter 5 "Encoding and Retrieval from Long-Term Memory" in Cognitive Phsychology: Mind and Brain, and then they'd text this assignment to Soshiku. A really excellent example of filling a gap and being creative.

From the site:
"What is Soshiku?

Soshiku is a simple but powerful tool that manages your high school or college assignments. Soshiku keeps track of when your assignments are due and can even notify you via email or SMS.

And it's totally free."

[collective indigenous memory and digital archiving]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:51:00 +0000

Gail Maurice says "Every step I take is with my ancestors; my memory in my bones..."

With this quote echoing in my head I'm wondering how this kind of cultural valuing of memory appears in a world where technology can ensure a kind of *archiving* of memory. Is taking a step with ancestors the same or even possible if new generations have access to digital memories? How does the passing on of stories, ideas, warnings, histories change if elders can include recourse to multimodal or hyperlinked creations?

This musing led me to "Designing digital knowledge management tools with Aboriginal Australians" by Helen Verran, Michael Christie, Bryce Anbins-King, Trevor van Weeren and Wulumdhuna Yunupingu. The article can be found in Digital Creativity, 2007, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 129–142.

In the article, the authors explain that "A significant number of indigenous and non-indigenous people respond with horror to the idea of using digital technologies to do collective memory in indigenous communities." This "horror" seems to stem from a belief that computers are anathema to a collective memory that is created together, in person, alongside nature/land. "Computers are actually more harm than good." There is a worry (understandably) that technology (or at least the way it is used) can help inculcate notions that indigenous knowledge is a commodity.

Verran et al call on feminist discourse to help negotiate the role of technology; there is an emphasis on the always-already provisional and partial view of knowledge (via mechanical means or otherwise): "Located accountability is built on what Haraway (1991, p.191) terms “partial, locatable critical knowledges”. As she makes clear, the fact that our knowing is relative to and limited by our locations does not in any sense relieve us of responsibility for it. On the contrary, it is precisely the fact that our vision of the world is a vision from somewhere, that it is inextricably based in an embodied and therefore partial perspective, which makes us personally responsible for it. The only possible route to objectivity on this view is through collective knowledge of the specific locations of our respective visions." (Suchman 2002, p. 96)

The article goes on to flesh out some ways of combining technology with the need to archive cultural memories. There are some interesting projects which, I think, can be quite appealing to students - especially aboriginal. Take for instance the TAMI database: "a fluid file management and database system which carries no Western assumptions about knowledge, and which maximises the possibility for the user to creatively relate and annotate assemblages of resources for their own purposes." This means that there are no hiearchies built into the system, no author, then subject etc... but rather: "The only a priori ontological distinction at work in the database is the distinction between texts, audios, movies and images. Apart from that there are no pre-existing categories (as there are in other database where metadata are sequestered into fields such as ‘author, ‘title’, ‘subject’). This provides a certain ontological flatness so indigenous knowledge traditions are not pre-empted by Western assumptions." Image cited in journal article. A project in a classroom might include students using google pages or delicious (though the latter might seem more "western" with the emphasis on text) to craft their own database of memories or experiences - perhaps focused on an emotion, story or single memory and from their build a multimodal archive. Also, rather than searching TAMI with a text string, as we do in google and delicious, users can scan thumbnails of each resource. Sounds a bit like some visual search engines. What the authors note at the end of the article is the ever-necessary importance of "digitally-canny outsiders" who know how to use the technology and are culturally sensitive.

See a map of UK memories here: http://www.nationsmemorybank.com/memorymap/

The image at the top of this post is of Cliff Island, Institute for Northern Studies fonds, University of Saskatchewan Archives, Institute for Northern Studies (INS) fonds – F2100. Binder 10. II. Slides – 4501 to 5000. Database ID: 20263.

[education and IT employment]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 09:23:00 +0000

New Job Database:
The Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), an international, educational organization reaching 75,000 professionals in Information Technology in Education and E-Learning, has launched a new Career Center to assist job seekers and employers in these fields.

*However most of the jobs, at least so far, are based in the States.

Have a peruse of the 10 most recent positions:

[digital literacy, learning and kids]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 08:23:00 +0000

Youth "can be 'always on,' in constant contact with their friends through private communications like instant messaging or mobile phones, as well as in public ways through social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook."

"Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures" is a three-year collaborative project funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Carried out by researchers at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley, the digital youth project explores how kids use digital media in their everyday lives."

Project Objectives
The first objective is to describe kids as active innovators using digital media rather than as passive consumers of popular culture or academic knowledge. The second objective is to think about the implications of kids' innovative cultures for schools and higher education and to engage in a dialogue with educational planners. The third objective is to advise software designers about how to use kids' innovative approaches to knowledge and learning in building better software.

Research Summary
Over three years, University of California, Irvine researcher Mizuko Ito and her team interviewed over 800 youth and young adults and conducted over 5000 hours of online observations as part of the most extensive U.S. study of youth media use.

They found that social network and video-sharing sites, online games, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of youth culture. The research shows that today’s youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity amid new worlds for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression.

Many adults worry that children are wasting time online, texting, or playing video games. The researchers explain why youth find these activities compelling and important. The digital world is creating new opportunities for youth to grapple with social norms, explore interests, develop technical skills, and experiment with new forms of self-expression. These activities have captured teens’ attention because they provide avenues for extending social worlds, self-directed learning, and independence."

Go here to download a two-page summary of the report.

Go here to download the summary white paper.

Go here to access the full report.

Go here for the press release and video being hosted by the MacArthur Foundation.

Photo from Old Shoe Woman on Flickr.

[twitter and future of creative technologies]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:02:00 +0000

On Thursday at The Future of Creative Technologies Conference it was bandied around that twitter, though used, isn't really worth (financially) much. In fact, when someone suggested that twitter and business model don't go hand in hand there were quite a few appreciative guffaws. A recent post by Steve Clayton also touches on the subject: "Wow…quite a story from Kara Swisher today that Facebook was interested in buying Twitter

for $500m. Okay, I love Twitter as much as anyone but $500m is a big chunk of cash for something that isn’t making money at the moment. That’s not to say that it couldn’t and I think the only way Twitter is going is up but in the current climate, that’s a big wedge.

Personally I think Twitter is right to hold out but hope it’s all a big game of Russian roulette."

Photo by John Wardell (Netinho) on flickr.

[the future of creative technologies conference]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:45:00 +0000

xposted from the ioct blog:

Yesterday saw the Campus Centre filled with over 100 delegates participating in workshops and discussions on the Future of Creative Technologies. After the morning workshop sessions there were talks by Jim Hendler, Lev Manovich and Howard Rheingold. We concluded the conference with a lively discussion session.

Have a look at what people were saying about the conference

Twitter - http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23foct08

Jerry Fishenden has a text version the twitter stream: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dg9qx8bc_3hpxpkhd5

Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=foct08

Googled:

http://scienceoftheinvisible.blogspot.com/2008/11/future-of-creative-technologies-foct08.html

http://www.l4l.co.uk/?p=129

http://transitlab.org/2008/11/20/the-future-of-creative-technologies-conference-08/

My photos on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jesslaccetti/sets/72157609610632533/

[pirate philosophy @ sussex]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:19:00 +0000

'Pirate Philosophy (Version 3.0): Open Access, Open Editing, Open Content, Open Media'

Speaker: Professor Gary Hall Co-Founding, Editor of Culture Machine (http://www.culturemachine.net/) And of Open Humanities Press (OHP), an open access publishing house dedicated to critical and cultural theory

Arts D110 at 5.00 Wednesday Nov 19

All Welcome

University of Sussex: Centre for Material Digital Culture/ Department of Media and Film <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/rcmdc/>

[webology and folksonomy]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:05:00 +0000

The latest issue of webology is guest edited by Louise Spiteri at the School of Information Management at Dalhousie University, Canada. This entire issue is devoted to folksonomy. We all know that folksonomy was coined by Thomas Vander Wal: "Folksonomy is the result of personal free tagging of information and objects (anything with a URL) for one's own retrieval. The tagging is done in a social environment (usually shared and open to others). Folksonomy is created from the act of tagging by the person consuming the information." From the editorial: "The papers in this special issue reflect the diversity of approaches taken to create Web resources that reflect better the needs of end users. Particular emphasis is placed on the need to manage the increasing volumes of tags and information available on the Web, particularly as more people are becoming engaged with numerous social applications. As is discussed in some of the papers in this special edition, there is certainly scope to consider ways in which to combine the more traditional controlled vocabularies with the free-flowing nature of tagging." Bruce's report on the A Million Penguins wiki-novel fits in well with this issue of webology especially when read alongside Isabella Peters and Katrin Weller's article on wiki gardening as Bruce told us about "gardners" who tend the wiki novel, rather unlike vandels who go in to mess it up. However, Peters and Weller go a step further to suggest a way to weed out mess. They suggest introducing a tag garden that matches synonyms together. Any of you who have search on flickr or delicious (just two examples) will know that search for blog doesn't always turn up results that are tagged with blogger or blogging. But, more literate users realise this and begin to craft their own vocab. controls. I know I don't tag things with blogging or blogger anymore, I just use the term blog. "For our garden this means, that we have some plants that look alike, but are not the same (homonyms), some plants which can be found in different variations and are sometimes difficult to recognize as one species (synonyms) and others which are somehow related or should be combined. Thus, we have to apply some garden design or landscape architecture to turn our savage garden. We may use labels for the homonyms, and establish flower beds as well as paths between them and pointers or sign posts to show us the way along the synonyms, hierarchies and other semantic interrelations (see Figure 2). We need some additional structure and direct accessibility to provide additional forms of (semantic) navigation (besides tag clouds, most popular tags and combinations of tags-user-document co-occurences)."

Peters, Isabella & Weller, Katrin (2008). "Tag gardening for folksonomy enrichment and maintenance." Webology, 5(3), Article 58. Available at: http://www.webology.ir/2008/v5n3/a58.html.

[employment: podcast developer at UCL]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 08:28:00 +0000

I haven't seen one of these positions at a university before. Pretty forward thinking of UCL even if it is only a year long pilot project. But, there is the implication, should the project go well, UCL will require a permanent podcast developer.

Podcast Service Developer

UCL Information Services Division

1 year post (ref 54260)

UCL has embarked on a project to assess the feasibility of setting up a service to record, store and then make lectures available for viewing or download. This is known as the Podcast Project.

The project will involve the re-encoding and publication of existing media into various publication environments, and the creation of portable and fixed capture stations that are integrated into the Podcast Producer environment. The project is for one year in the first instance.

We are looking for an IT professional to join the Applications Development team in ISD who develop and support e-learning and multimedia web-based applications. A key aspect of the role will be building work flows for Podcast Producer and Episode. The successful candidate will be able to communicate fluently and present technical information to both technical and non-technical audiences. This post could suit a new graduate with enthusiasm.

Salary will be on UCL salary scale 7 in the range of £31,620 to £38,250 per annum (inclusive of London Allowance).

Applications should be received no later than 5pm on close date.

Interviews are likely to be held on Tuesday, 9th December 2008.

To apply for the post, please download an application form and job description from ( http://www.ucl.ac.uk/is/vacancies. )

If you cannot obtain these from the web, you can email is-jobs@ucl.ac.uk quoting the relevant reference number (above), or write to Information Systems, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT. Do NOT send a CV. For further queries, phone 020-7679-7357. No agencies.

Closing date for this post is 26 November 2008

[blogging rubric]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 06:13:00 +0000

Thanks to Nancy Bosch 's post at classroom2.0 I found Andrew Churches' Blog Journalling Rubric focusing on the "understanding" level of Bloom's Taxonomy.

I wonder what this rubric might look like if we focus instead on knowledge, evaluation or application rather than the comprehension level of Bloom's taxonomy. Churches does have examples of rubrics that fall into other taxonomic categories.

A handy resource for educators and students.

[blogosphere blamed in political fakery]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:22:00 +0000

What's that? Sarah Palin doesn't know that Africa is a continent. Well, I certainly wouldn't be jumping to defend her. I probably wouldn't think that she was misquoted. I'd assume, well, that she was Republican and that is pretty much synonomous with...well, you know.

When Fox news made this assertion, it was (mostly) taken as fact. Now that the election dust has settled, it turns out that Martin Eisenstadt who fed this information to Fox doesn't exist, and the guys who created the now famous character were really only trying to pitch a new tv show.

But, the imporant thing that you'll discover if you read the NY Times, it's all the fault of the blogosphere.

"Mr. Gorlin, 39, argued that Eisenstadt was no more of a joke than half the bloggers or political commentators on the Internet or television.
[...]
But most of Eisenstadt’s victims have been bloggers, a reflection of the sloppy speed at which any tidbit, no matter how specious, can bounce around the Internet. And they fell for the fake material despite ample warnings online about Eisenstadt, including the work of one blogger who spent months chasing the illusion around cyberspace, trying to debunk it."
[...]
Among the Americans who took that bait was Jonathan Stein, a reporter for Mother Jones. A few hours later Mr. Stein put up a post on the magazine’s political blog, with the title “Hoax Alert: Bizarre ‘McCain Adviser’ Too Good to Be True,” and explained how he had been fooled.
In July, after the McCain campaign compared Senator Barack Obama to Paris Hilton, the Eisenstadt blog said “the phone was burning off the hook” at McCain headquarters, with angry calls from Ms. Hilton’s grandfather and others. A Los Angeles Times political blog, among others, retold the story, citing Eisenstadt by name and linking to his blog.
Last month Eisenstadt blogged that Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, Joe the Plumber, was closely related to Charles Keating, the disgraced former savings and loan chief. It wasn’t true, but other bloggers ran with it.
Among those taken in by Monday’s confession about the Palin Africa report was The New Republic’s political blog. Later the magazine posted this atop the entry: “Oy — this would appear to be a hoax. Apologies.”
But the truth was out for all to see long before the big-name take-downs. For months sourcewatch.org has identified Martin Eisenstadt as a hoax. When Mr. Stein was the victim, he blogged that “there was enough info on the Web that I should have sussed this thing out."

[reading flabuert's a simple heart]

noreply@blogger.com (Jess) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:28:00 +0000

A little while ago I mentioned that Andy had let me raid his office library (such fun!) and one of the many books that I nabbed was Flaubert's Three Tales.

"A Simple Heart" focuses on Félicité, a "maidservant" who "did all the cooking and the housework, the sewing, the washing, and the ironing. She could bridle a horse, fatten poultry, and churn butter, and she remained faithful toher mistress, who was by no means an easy person to get on with." I am immediately sad for Félicité. On the third page we learn that her father dies when she was young and then her mother died leaving her sisters to look after her. When they followed their own paths (suggesting none of them were concerned or even really aware of Félicité), they left a farmer to take Félicité in. This new life meant perpetual cold - physical and emotional. After this awful experience, Félicité finds a job at a different farm where her new employers are kind to her even if the other help aren't. At this time she meets a man, falls in love, and then has her heart broken. Needing a change, Félicité finds a position with Madame Aubain where she gets "installed" like furniture in the house and also finds herself taking care of Paul and Virginie. When those around her leave or die, Félicité turns to religion (or rather, her interpretation of religion) as a panacea for her pain. The narrative begins by suggesting an unfolding future: "for half a century the women of Pont-l'Évêque envided Mme Aubain her maidservant Félicité." This is interesting because the way that Félicité is described, she is not "becoming," she is a woman already "installed" and "fixed." So dedicated and loyal, she seems complete in the same way that she ensures all her tasks are. Throughout the story there seem to be opportunities where we might begin to see a blossoming Félicité. She would "keep on kissing" the two children (present continuous) until Madame told her to stop. Emotion also seems to be a barrier to becoming, Félicité is "eaten up inside" and that prevents her from taking up hobbies or work that might otherwise involve her thoughts. Emotion is also detrimental to Virginie who originally becomes quite ill because of a fright. Later on she must refrain from playing the pain because "the slightest emotion upset her." At the end of the narrative, Félicité, who we have come to know as a loyal, selfless and hard working but "wooden" and who on her death bed remains finicky about tidiness, nonetheless experiences a deeply multimodal passing. Dying of pneumonia, Félicité smells the "mystical" scent of incense. We see her closer her eyes, we hear her slowing heart, we feel the fountain drying. Finally in death she can be loyal to herself and immerse herself in sensory perception.