All those topics that i wish i had time to pursue more earnestly.

The rules:

1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

I was tagged by my wife Random Access Mazar

1. I went to three different high schools over three years and graduated from the one where I started.

2. My earliest memory is of eating Cambell’s Oyster Stew, which my father told me was banana soup in order to get me to eat it.

3. I have a hard time matching events from my childhood with a calendar. I remember my grandfather’s funeral being when I was 5, but it was apparently when i was 7. I remember cutting my finger when i was 8, but it was closer to 11, etc. etc.

4. My right hand index finger’s fingerprint is not the one I was born with.

5. My first car was a maroon chevy chevette with a standard transmission and the rear end from an automatic which gave it slightly better acceleration, for a chevette. The shifter know fell off, so i replaced it with a t-handle knob, which was somewhat ironic. My grandfather built the car, gave it to me, and sold it for me. My second care was given to by my aunt and uncle, it was a town and country station wagon that i had for 10+ years.

6. I helped found, was nominally CTO of, and closed a company within a year during the internet boom.

7. I’ve written and sent 2 different business plans to angel and VC investors. The first one was to take COTS computing and integrate it invisibly into office furniture. The second one was to use a micropayment/tip funding structure to enable and encourage educators to share lessons, lesson plans, etc. It was an attempt to commodify professional knowledge in order to make that knowledge open and communal. Needless to say neither was funded and I have no idea where those plans are today.

Tagging: Shane, Michael, Sarah, Sue, Smirby

In The World’s Fair : The Problems with One Laptop Per Child Ben Cohen (a colleague of mine from school) presents what his students, all engineers in training, find to be problematic about OLPC.

He follows uphere. While my problems with OLPC are parallel to his students, I think there are much more interesting secondary effects of training people on these machines as a form of ‘literacy’.

Reblock Yourself the Polly Frost Way!

[From Reblock Yourself the Polly Frost Way! - The Atlantic (January 7, 2009) ]

—000000——-0000000——

nice little thought piece on getting control of your writer’s voice after you’ve realized blogging,rss, anonymity, and etc. have destroyed it.

Technical knowledge was to be strenuously avoided: “Facts are the core of an anti-intellectual curriculum,” he observed. “Facts do not solve problems. . . . The gadgeteers and the data collectors have threatened to become the supreme chieftains of the scholarly world.” The true stewards of the university, said the career administrator, should be those who deal with the most fundamental problems: metaphysicians.

[From Middlebrow Messiahs by Brendan Boyle, City Journal 16 January 2009]

——–

This is an interesting take on the great books model of higher education. The model where we read in order to learn to think, to learn to create, to learn to be. I think it is an interesting model, and I find that my students are generally unread in terms of classics and well unread in almost everything else longer than 10 pages too, but such is life.

The man who invented the doner kebab has died

[From The man who invented the doner kebab has died - Telegraph]

——

He changed the world…

CFP: Learning Infrastructures in the Social Sciences and Humanities

Special issue of the journal Learning Inquiry (http://www.springerlink.com/content/120592/)
Edited by Jeremy Hunsinger
Papers Due: May 15th 2009
Please contact the editor to discuss topics at jhuns.(@)vt.edu (remove brackets)

In the last 20 years, the learning infrastructures of the social sciences and humanities have transformed dramatically toward a more plural set of practices, methods, systems, and tools. In this issue, we are looking for contributions from social informatics, humanistic informatics, cultural informatics, digital humanities, internet studies, design research, media studies, and related fields dealing with the learning infrastructures. I am seeking papers that deal empirically, analytically and/or critically with the learning infrastructures in the social sciences and humanities. Cyberinfrastructures, physical infrastructures and organizational infrastructures have been transformed through the politics, economics, and technologies surrounding our learning infrastructures.

Learning infrastructures are part of professors and students scholarly experiences everyday. These infrastructures are part of how students begin their engagement with the social sciences and humanities and perhaps become part of how they maintain that engagement throughout their lives. Beyond our professors, departments, centers and institutes, our learning infrastructures are mediating our disciplinarity and interdisciplinarities to our students. In short, learning infrastructures are a part of how students learn to be scholars in various disciplines and citizens in the world-at-large.

Part of the debate surrounding learning infrastructures in the social sciences and humanities is the over/under-definition and over/underdetermination of terms such as learning and infrastructure in disciplinary and interdisciplinary discourses. In this CFP, I want to encourage papers that help to define and critically engages those terms.

Possible topics:
• Transformation of institutions in relation to learning infrastructures
• New methods, new understandings in the social sciences and humanities related to learning infrastructures
• New disciplines, interdisciplines and transdisciplines and learning infrastructures
• Political economics of learning infrastructures
• Ethics, norms, and politics surrounding learning infrastructures
• Openness and/or closedness in learning infrastructures
• Social/Cultural/Informatics informatics and learning infrastructures
• New directions for learning infrastructures based on social sciences and humanities
• Cultural environmentalism and learning infrastructures
• Knowledge/Design ecologies and learning infrastructures

Review process will be double blind peer review following editorial selection.   We expect to place fewer than 8 papers in this special issue. We would prefer papers between 4000-16000 words. Papers should be submitted to http://www.editorialmanager.com/linq/ Please contact the editor to discuss your paper and/or when you submit your paper.

CALL FOR PAPERS

special issue of Learning, Media and Technology

issue theme: Learning in Virtual Worlds

Edited by Jeremy Hunsinger and Aleks Krotoski

Virtual worlds are learning worlds.

There is substantial evidence that people learn in virtual worlds. While most learning in these spaces is informal, existing outside the school curriculum, formalised learning environments have also been developed in textual worlds, MOOs, MUSHes, MUDs and multi-media spaces like ActiveWorlds(R), Second Life(R), World of Warcraft (R) to support educational goals in primary, secondary, higher and lifelong learning contexts.

The extensive writings on virtual reality and virtual worlds over the past four decades have covered the breadth of the phenomena and experiences of learning via CMC in these situated spaces; this call for papers seeks scholarship that builds upon and extends those accounts. We seek research that deals with learning and research in social networks or among friends, learning through play, learning through artistic creation and learning in unconventional virtual realities. We seek papers that examine learning or modes of learning that occurs in unexpected ways.

For example, workshops have been transformed with the inclusion of new materials, like clay or other art equipment, encouraging participants to express themselves through different modes of communication. Such physical practices mirror the opportunities afforded in virtual environments, increasing potential outcomes by breaking down borders of expression, creating a place for play, and expanding discourse. We seek research that aims to capture similar alternative practices in learning within virtual worlds.

While all forms of scholarship and research are welcome, we prefer theoretically and empirically grounded study in the social or behavioral sciences. We seek a special issue that exemplifies methodological pluralism. The use of visual evidence and representations is also encouraged.

Submission guidelines:

This special issue is edited by Jeremy Hunsinger and Aleks Krotoski. Please contact them at jhuns@vt.edu and akrotoski@yahoo.com to discuss your submissions. The editors welcome contributions from new researchers and those who are more well-established. Submitted manuscripts will be subject to peer review.

Length of papers will vary as per disciplinary expectations, but we encourage papers of around 6000 words. Short discussion papers of 2000 words on relevant subjects are also welcomed for the ‘Viewpoints’ section. Learning, Media and Technology submission guidelines and referencing styles will be followed [see: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/17439884.asp]

The guest editors will consider papers received by March 15, 2009. Fewer than 10 papers will be accepted. The special issue will be published in early 2010. Please send papers to jhuns@vt.edu, clearly indicating that your submission is for the Special Issue on learning in virtual worlds.

went something like this:

Do you believe in Santa’s flaws

in Santa’s flaws

in Santa’s flaws

Do you believe in Santa’s flaws….

Because Santa’s flaws are you…..

[From Coca-Cola United States]

—

this is just surreal…

Since this is the last Happy Hour of the year, all of today’s questions relate to your 2008 experiences. I’ve added more questions that usual, but don’t feel compelled to answer everything. Let’s get right to it.

1. What’s the most interesting book or article you read in 2008?

Probably

The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life

2. What’s the best food you tried for the first time in 2008?

Jersey Beef at Cafe Europa in Copenhagen

3. What prominent figure’s death upset you the most in 2008?

Studs Turkle and George Carlin

4. What’s the most unexpected way the economic crisis affected you in 2008?

umm, lost 1/4 of my current retirement savings?

5. What’s a new hobby you picked up in 2008?

none

6. When you look back at 2008 five years from now, what will be the first thing that comes to mind? (For me, it’s a three-way tie: the birth of my daughter, the Giants’ Super Bowl win and those four straight days last week when Yahoo! linked to mental_floss stories on their homepage.)

Got married:)

7. And I’ll end this batch of questions the same way I did last year: “Let’s make Week-After-Christmas Resolutions. Something you vow to start doing next Friday, but can give up on January 1st.” What’s yours? [From Friday Happy Hour: What Did We Learn This Year?]

hmmm, not eating… pork?