I would like to invite you all to wonderful West Lafayette, IN for our Serious Games forum (October 11-12). The forum brings together teachers and scholars who study commercial games that have persuasive ability and serious games in the more traditional sense. The participants are coming together to talk about issues of race and gender in games and the creation of games; cognition, education, and literacy skills and gaming practices; and the use of online virtual worlds as educational environments.

Our featured speaker is James P. Gee and panelists include Mia Consalvo, Sheri Graner Ray, Sarah Robbins, and Alice Robison. It is going to be a great conversation. If you can see your way clear to join us (or send your students) please do so. More information can be found online at http://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/dlc/gameforum.

As always, please feel free to contact me directly for more information!

I don't want film of my class posted the dang internet. It's not a question of intellectual property. Any student (or any one else for that matter) is freely welcome to all of the intellect that I have.

Do I have bad teaching days? Hell yeah, Who doesn't? Do I care if people see them? Probably not, just let them learn what not to do when they are standing in front of a class. :-)

Now let me get back to begging the university for money to fund my gaming research during my sabbatical (aka filling out grant applications).

From Inside Higher Ed :: You May Have Been YouTubed:

Nod to Nick Carbone's post on techrhet

via Boing Boing:

CopyNight is a site where copyfighters can list their local events by city, a kind of social calendar from trademark, copyright and patent reform. There's a monthly worldwide event and you can add your own local events as well. This is the brainchild, in part, of EFF Activist Ren Bucholz, and as he says, "building community around free culture is so important for our long-term success."

CopyNight is a monthly gathering of people interested in ensuring freedom for artists and tinkerers, fostering innovation, and restoring the balance between the public interests and intellectual property rights holders for the benefit of all.

We're going to have kick off events on Tuesday, March 29, when the Supreme Court will hear arguments about the future of file sharing. We already have events scheduled in San Francisco, D.C., and New York, but we'd love to have one in your neck of the woods as well. If you're interested, just pick a venue (bar/restaurant/your apartment) and drop me a line with your contact info by Wednesday night (March 16). We'll start publicizing the events this Thursday, and I believe that EFF & other groups sending announcements to their members too.

I have made reservations for those who have already confirmed with me that they wanted to come. Drop by if you like, but letting me know in advance so that I can change the reservation would be appreciated. Thirsty Bear is a Spanish restaurant and brewery. It looks promising!

Saturday, March 19, 2005
6:30 PM
Thirsty Bear
661 Howard St., San Francisco 94105
Phone: (415) 974-0905

Well, actually there will be knitting and martinis, we won't actually be knitting martinis. I'm pulling together a group of knitters for a traveling knit night at the CCCC. I think that this would be a great chance to get women in the field (and those sympathetic to the cause) together to just plain old vent! We won't be too terribly exclusionary. We'll welcome all fibrous folks (knitter/crocheters/tatters/ cross stitchers/etc). Email me (sblackmon(AT)cla.purdue.edu) and we'll set up a time. I am in town from Tuesday through Saturday.

The NCTE/CCCC Mobile Technology Center
Computer Connection Presentations at CCCC 2004 in San Antonio

Once again, I am looking for presenters for NCTE/CCCC Mobile Technology
Center Computer Connection at 4Cs. The Computer Connection is a project of
the CCCC Committee on Computers in Composition (7C)...
This is a very good opportunity for people who are new to the conference to
give a shorter presentation (20 - 30 minutes) in an intimate,
dialogue-facilitating environment. Last year, we had a good mix of new
folks, established scholars, and graduate students (although certainly some
of our presenters fit more than one of those categories). The audience tends
to be small but very engaged and ranges from postsecondary writing and
communication teachers eager to learn new strategies for using computers and
the Internet in their classes to technorhetoricians interested in cutting
edge tools and technologies...

Latinos are getting on the Internet faster than other groups in the United States, but the disparity between the number of men versus women online is much greater than for other groups, according to a study released this week.

The Web passes television! With teenagers spending more time online than watching television and listening to the radio, we really do need to spend more time thinking about identity & community creation on the Internet.

Forbes.com: Youth spend more time on Web than TV

The yearly drama of the incoming reading list at UNC-Chapel Hill. This year people are pissed that students are being asked to read Nickel and Dimed. I am just finishing this book and I, too, am pissed. Not because it is leftist or anti-capitalistic but because Barbara Ehrenreich is herself "clueless," there are points throughout the book when she is downright racist and classist. I say she may be clueless because she seems to be trying to lighten the depressing situation of the working class poor. The only problem is that her jokes are often at the expense of the poor and often colored (as in people of color, not as in African American) folk.

There are new articles on the opensource.mit site that deal specifically with Open Source Software. The MIT site is great for articles and they post new ones every month or so. Check out the rest of their offerings.