Hope's Centre-Table

Alan Sokal Articles on the “Social Text” Affair

Review of Richard Lanham’s The Electronic Word by James O’Donnell

From an annoncement on HUMANIST:
The Virtual Humanities Lab at Brown University plans to develop existing and new digital resources into an experimental model for collaborative scholarship and pedagogy.
They are encoding Boccaccio’s Esposizioni sulla Commedia di
Dante and portions of Giovanni Villani’s Croniche. They are also
beginning work on a new interface, which will provide tools that will
allow scholars to annotate texts online, suggest variant encodings,
and of course participate in discussion using natural languages as
well as code.
Weblog at:
http://brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/vhl/.
Vika Zafrin

TOC : Educause Review, September / October 2004
http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm045.asp
Educational Blogging
Stephen Downes
The process of blogging – of reading onlin, engaging a community, and reflecting on it – is a process of bringing life into learning.
http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0450.asp
Going Nomadic: Mobile Learning in Higher Education
Bryan Alexander
How are wireless, mobile technologies and their emergent trends, such as swarms, affecting the learning environment, pedagogy, and campus life?
http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0451.asp
Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not
Brian Lamb
The needs met by “wikis”—documents posted online for open editing by all—are simply not being satisfied by present IT strategies and tools
http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0452.asp
Game-Based Learning: How to Delight and Instruct in the 21st Century
Joel Foreman
To learn more about videogames in academe, the author spoke with five leading-edge thinkers in the field: James Paul Gee, J. C. Herz, Randy Hinrichs, Marc Prensky, and Ben Sawyer.
http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0454.asp
Wait, there’s more ! A special Web Bonus !
InsurgenceEmergenceConvergence: How to Fold Soup
Did Steve Martin, in his 1979 short story “How to Fold Soup”, offer suggestions on how to deal with multimedia.
Enjoy!
http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0453.asp

Learning Management System (LMS), open source
http://www.sakaiproject.org/

Every move you make could be stored on a PLR
Kevin Maney
USA Today
Posted 9/7/2004 8:51 PM; Updated 9/8/2004 12:03 AM
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kevinmaney/2004-09-07-plr_x.htm
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Over the years, a number of tech prognosticators
have said that someday many of us will own a device that might be
called a personal life recorder, or PLR.
(goes on to describe new MRAM–Magnetic RAM–chip – more storage, very small)
Going forward, MRAM could open similar possibilities, in time perhaps
giving rise to personal life recorders. Of course, PLRs will create a
whole new set of problems. Like, how would you search all that data to
find the conversation that proves you asked your spouse if it was OK if
your mother came to stay for a month?
Could a lawyer subpoena your PLR? What if Kobe Bryant had one that
night in the hotel room?
I’m worried about what it might do to our minds. Human brains enhance
and put a spin on memories the second they are stored. I might find out
that none of my goals in hockey look anywhere near as exciting as I
recall. That could precipitate some kind of major personality disorder,
couldn’t it?

Arun Tripathi, overlong but good resource
Community in the Digital Age
Social scientists and philosophers argue the meaning of our evolving online lives.
http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/book_reviews/v5i28_tripathi-barney.html