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Call for Journal Editor

Ubiquitous Learning: An International Journal seeks an editor, or team of editors, for a one-year term. This is an opportunity to make a significant contribution to what we believe will become one of the leading journals in its field, the journal’s associated conference and, more broadly, the knowledge-community which the journal and conference seek to serve.

The roles of the editor are to:

  • write an introduction for the Journal volume which would be included in the first issue for the year, and possibly on the website, the newsletter and other appropriate places or for the purposes of marketing and promotion.
  • collate papers addressing a theme of the editor’s choosing into a book, to be launched at the conference at the completion of the editor’s term. The chapters may be drawn from submissions to the journal during this or recent years, and other material as considered appropriate.
  • actively solicit manuscripts for the Journal from well-known and notable members of the community—these would could be refereed if the author wished, or regarded as ‘invited papers’.
  • assist the Commissioning Editor with suggestions of supplementary peer reviewers for specific papers (and this will never be burdensome – note that the Commissioning Editor of the Journal finalizes a majority of the peer reviewer requirements based on thematic matching and ‘mutual obligation’ principles in which all author requested to review up to three other papers).
  • promote the journal throughout their network and other associated networks.
  • maintain regular communications with the community via periodical blog posts to the community website (which feeds automatically to our email newsletter, Facebook and Twitter).

The editor will be offered a complimentary electronic subscription to the Journal, free copies of the book which they edit, an electronic subscription to the book series as well as complimentary registrations to attend the conferences at the beginning and end of their term.

Qualifications

The Editor of the Journal must possess the following attributes:

  • They will have successfully obtained higher degree, and have academic teaching and scholarly research experience in an area related to the subject matter of the Journal.
  • They will have published in this or other comparable scholarly journals.

Applicants are asked to send:

  1. a cover letter outlining their interest and relevant experience, and the ways in which you would propose to enhance the profile of the journal
  2. a curriculum vitae
  3. a special theme outline: a title with paragraph explanation.

Please send applications and supporting documentation to journals@ubi-learn.com.

The deadline for applications is 26 September 2011.

Ubiquitous Learning Journal: Recently Published

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The latest issue of Ubiquitous Learning: An International Journal includes:


The New Way to Write

By: Cynthia Schweigert,WCIA

“New software developed by the U of I is being tested in area schools  It’s a new way for students to work on their writing skills. U of I developers created it in hopes of eliminating standardized testing. They think teachers are putting too much class time into the test. The new software would put the spotlight back on the students.

“You get to type it and you get to do stuff on the computer, along with helping out your peers and you usually don’t get to do that in a lot of other classes,” said eighth grader Quala Hayes.”

To read more and watch the news video…

For more on this project…

How Privacy Vanishes Online, a Bit at a Time

sc-189-550-x-358From Steve Lohr in the New York Times:

If a stranger came up to you on the street, would you give him your name, Social Security number and e-mail address?

Probably not.

Yet people often dole out all kinds of personal information on the Internet that allows such identifying data to be deduced. Services like FacebookTwitterand Flickr are oceans of personal minutiae — birthday greetings sent and received, school and work gossip, photos of family vacations, and movies watched.

Computer scientists and policy experts say that such seemingly innocuous bits of self-revelation can increasingly be collected and reassembled by computers to help create a picture of a person’s identity, sometimes down to the Social Security number.

For the article…

Wi-Fi Turns Rowdy Bus Into Rolling Study Hall

From Sam Dillon in The New York Times

12bus_ca0-articleinlineVAIL, Ariz. — Students endure hundreds of hours on yellow buses each year getting to and from school in this desert exurb of Tucson, and stir-crazy teenagers break the monotony by teasing, texting, flirting, shouting, climbing (over seats) and sometimes punching (seats or seatmates).

But on this chilly morning, as bus No. 92 rolls down a mountain highway just before dawn, high school students are quiet, typing on laptops.

To read more…

Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity

websterdamon_danahboyd_fn_euFrom Danah Boyd, the preliminary draft of her welcoming keynote address at the 2010 SXSW conference.

What keeps me up at night is trying to make sense of how social media transforms society and, more importantly, what it helps make visible about humanity. Technophobes love to talk about how technology is ruining everything and technophiles obsess over how everything is radically different. I like to wade through the extremes to see the subtle inflection points. Reality is always in the details.

My goal today is to invite you to step back and ask: what hath we wrought? We’ve all been involved in social media from at least one perspective. Some of you are creators, developers, designers; others of you are business folks, marketers, analysts. Some of you use social media in your jobs and some of you live it as part of your daily practice. We are all collectively creating culture through our engagement with social media. So what I’d like to do is offer some insights that allow you to think critically about our collective project so that we can all find ways to do better.

To give you something to munch on, I’ve decided to focus my talk on two interwoven concepts that keep coming up whenever we think about social media: privacy and publicity. I’m highlighting these issues because I think that they’re going to play a crucial role in the evolution of social media. I think that we’re going to have to work them out and I need your help in doing so.

For the full talk…

Digital Na(t)ives? Variation in Internet Skills and Uses among Members of the “Net Generation”

headersmall1From Eszter Hargittai in the journal Sociological Inquiry:

People who have grown up with digital media are often assumed to be universally savvy with information and communication technologies. Such assumptions are rarely grounded in empirical evidence, however. This article draws on unique data with information about a diverse group of young adults’ Internet uses and skills to suggest that even when controlling for Internet access and experiences, people differ in their online abilities and activities. Additionally, findings suggest that Internet know-how is not randomly distributed among the population, rather, higher levels of parental education, being a male, and being white or Asian American are associated with higher levels of Web-use skill. These user characteristics are also related to the extent to which young adults engage in diverse types of online activities. Moreover, skill itself is positively associated with types of uses. Overall, these findings suggest that even when controlling for basic Internet access, among a group of young adults, socioeconomic status is an important predictor of how people are incorporating the Web into their everyday lives with those from more privileged backgrounds using it in more informed ways for a larger number of activities.

For more…

Creating Open Educational Resources with dScribe

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From the dScribe web site:

dScribe, short for “digital and distributed scribes,” is a participatory and collaborative model for creating open content. It brings together enrolled students, staff, faculty, and self-motivated learners to work together toward the common goal of creating content that is openly licensed and available to people throughout the world. It was first developed by students and faculty at the University of Michigan to leverage the interest and talent of students in working with faculty and staff to transform educational material into open educational resources (OER). The dScribe model encourages students, faculty, staff, and other interested individuals such as alumni and community members to get involved in not only creating open content, but also generating awareness about the benefits of creating and sharing educational content with a global learning community.

To view the site…

Ubiquitous Learning Journal, Volume 2, Number 1 now available

The first issue of Volume 2 of Ubiquitous Learning: An International Journal has now been published.

Volume 2, Number 1 includes:

    Howard Rheingold’s Educational Technology Bookmarks

    hreingoldAuthor, teacher and commentator Howard Rheingold has made available a four-year collection of bookmarks in educational technology via the social bookmarking service delicious.