Posts from — November 2003

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy/photos/cellar/cellar.html
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy/photos/cellar2/cellar2.html
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy/photos/halloween/halloween.html

nothing that great, some more of my horrid unedited photography, have fun.

More on the Digital Promise Project. The October 15 issue of RLG DigiNews has an interview with Anne Murphy of the DDP. Excerpt, quoting Anny Murphy: “As a result of our studies, we propose that one of the main objectives of the Digital Opportunity [Investment] Trust [DO IT] be to assist in the digitization of the collections of universities, museums, libraries, and cultural institutions –Americaâs heritage is stored there. DO IT will help to digitize these collections and to set standards to conserve born-digital materials, ensuring their accessibility to all.” [Open Access News]

From Monolithic to Grid. 3 Nov 2003: How did we get from there to here? The history of computing is marked by ages. In each age, the basic design of how we work with computers changes. Many people probably think we're in the brave new Internet age at this time, but considering the nature of computing, we're likely just at an intermediary stage. We're just now peeking into the next age — the age of the truly distributed computing system –he coming of the grid. [RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix]

Course Development Wars: A Content Expert's Cry for Help.

“You’ve changed the entire meaning and intent of my course!” I blurted out the words and then regreted it as Kendra, the instructional designer looked at me in shock
[Xplana]

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hyperspecialization, the redisciplinization of higher-education, fordism, and post-fordism, the fascism of informationalism, all of that feeds into the situation where education is removed, or inserted, from the processes of higher education, being replaced more or less by method.

Alex thinks that formalism allows for creativity, i agree. In this case though, i don't see it as really a formalization as much as the enveloping of a system and delimiting of what have been for 30 to 150 years certain disciplinary conventions that encourage certain modes of thought, which i will call critical and exploratory. But i think Alex is on to something too with the formalism allowing creativity, HTML for instance is a great example of that, though I've looked at his syllabi on the web and didn't see them following any of the paradigms mentioned in the article;)

Research Writing.

“In teaching research writing, I begin with a bibliographic essay – a narratio of the chain of thought that a student must later insert their critique. I require that they avoid having a thesis until they understand the evidence. Then, as a thesis emerges into an argumentative paper, they must attract the attention of an audience (exordium), provide a logically consistent argument (argumentio), anticipate counter-arguments (refutatio), and suggest a course of action based on their thesis and the evidence. Writing first works to change ourselves, then it works to change others.”(this Public Address > Pragmatic and Semantic Structures)

:: note :: . . . a wonderful clear statement . . .too many students suffer under pre-ordained structure . . . this emerging thesis is the work of creative energy . . . ['if' ..]

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this is useful, i'll have to remember it when i restrucure my courses.

the author of perdido street station and scar comes out swinging….

Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature. His oeuvre is massive and contagious – you can't ignore it, so don't even try. The best you can do is consciously try to lance the boil. And there's a lot to dislike – his cod-Wagnerian pomposity, his boys-own-adventure glorying in war, his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quos, his belief in absolute morality that blurs moral and political complexity.

Pandora Bots. Pandora Bots
http://www.pandorabots.com/

Welcome to pandorabots.com, the place where you can create and unleash virtual personalities. Pandorabots.com is an experimental software robot (bot) hosting service based on the work of Dr. Richard Wallace and the A.L.I.C.E./AIML free software community (www.alicebot.org).

From any browser, you may create, design and publish your own software robots 䴋 and make them available to anyone via the Internet. Click here to sign-up for an account to begin creating your own virtual robots. If you already have an account, please sign-in below with your email address and password. [Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker]

Hotels of Doom. Hotelchatter. The ever-prolific Rusty of Kuro5hin fame has a new website out. This one is a collaborative weblog for reviewing hotels around the world. Having had some bad hotel experiences, I fully endorse the idea, but will people be motivated enough to write? [MetaFilter]

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this is interesting, some nice little stories here.

This week i have to finish my proposal stuff, get out a few job applications, and finish writing a book review for david. all in all, i'm busy. nothing new there.

IMing at Work. From the CACM Newstrack: A recent study of 300 firms in the U.S. and Britain÷ the world's two largest instant… [zephoria]

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both of my co-panelists, Anabel Quan-Haase and Gina Neff, at the aoir internet environment as work environment panel spoke of interesting studies related to IM'S, i don't really think that much about im's though i think they fit my general thesis on those environments.