Two recent publications that relate to my interest in language education and information technology:

Svensson, Patrik. “Virtual worlds as arenas for language learning” (originally from 2003). In Hubbard, P. (Ed.) (2009). Computer Assisted Language Learning: Critical Concepts in Linguistics, Volumes I-IV. London & New York: Routledge.

Report from Språkgruppen SUHF 2009 (Report from the Language group, The Association of Swedish Higher Education). A report on the situation and future for academic language education in Sweden. It is nice to see that some of the work I have done in the past on learning, language education and technology (myself and with collaborators) is used fairly extensively in the report.

Someone pointed out that I have not blogged in this space for quite some time. I have just been too busy, and I have also prioritized doing online writing elsewhere (including the HUMlab blog). Hopefully there will be more writing here in the future. Or I will start a new blog. Let’s see.

I am currently at a café in Umeå. I am the only customer. I still works as a café space as there is background music and the people working here are around. I am very happy there are several quite decent cafés here in Umeå. An important property of any city I think.

Doing lots of other things I have stored up substantial energy over the last couple of months which I will use this summer to do some writing (among other things). I have finished the first digital humanities article (out of three), and my plan is to finish full drafts of the subsequent articles by August. In August I will also do planning work (with co-editor) for an edited volume. Should be fun!

I am also doing quite a bit of work on getting the technology and concept of the new part of HUMlab getting implemented. Very exciting and I quite enjoy us pushing the envelope quite a bit both conceptually and in terms of technology.

A young woman just installed a reading device (one of these things with a long arm to allow you to read books more easily) at the table next to mine in the café I am currently frequenting. Others have combined tables to create a large desk space and the surface is totally cluttered. Another student is singing to herself (mostly) with headphones while working at her laptop. In some cafés you see the same people day after day, year after year. The café may be your primary work place (especially here in the US I think). To me it is a secondary work place, but still very important.

This has been a very hectic year and I am happy to have a few days of relatively slow time. I went on a walk in beautiful Sollefteå earlier today in the cold. Sollefteå features a great deal of undulated terrain, a river and a very picturesque setting. I have a great deal of planning to do for 2009, but I will wait another few days. I need to get a book proposal text together and I am also looking into upgrading some of my technology. For a long time I considered buying a Mac, but I almost decided on getting a Windows 64-bit system. A difficult choice. One of my criteria is that I would like to use the same primary operating system on the all the computers I use, and as far as Apple is concerned, I do not think their laptops match my requirements in terms of battery life length, modularity, and screen resolution (in relation to screen size). Also, I use some Windows tools that I really need, but one key tool (X1) does not seem to have support for Windows 64 bit. I am ok with using an iphone though – it is just too good to be excluded because of a principle (I loved running Sea Dragon – Microsoft software – on one the other day).

I had a productive meeting today at UC Irvine. Forward looking and exciting. Mainly about a book project, but also other things. Tonight, I have a “free” evening, which I chose to partly spend in the hotel bar with a latop. It works as well as a café in terms of getting writing and work done. Well, so far I have only done emailing. I will do work on the second digital humanities article though. There has been so much traveling and HUMlab work this week that I have not had time so far. Tomorrow I will try to all the things I need to do “back home”. On Sunday I will mostly work on my articles.

And the dog is well.

I have now arrived in Irvine and will have meetings here tomorrow at UCHRI at UC Irvine. This morning I did some work on the expansion of the lab and I am trying to catch on email and other things.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you precisely try to judge the size of red sector of the fuel gauge in your car? Today I found myself on the I-405 going South through Los Angeles in bumber-to-bumper traffic, 7 lanes or so each way and ongoing roadwork. No problem – this is regular LA-like traffic (even though it was a lot for the relatively late hour). The problem was that I was very low on gas, and somewhere with “city exits” rather than reliable interstate exists with gas stations etc. Anyhow, I realized that I had to leave the 405 and did so pretty much at random. Well, a city like Los Angeles consumes a great deal of gas, so there are bound to be gas stations. Not as often in the cities as outside and at the fringes (where you enter more city-like structures). Anyhow, after driving around for a bit and the GPS getting unhappier and unhappier, I did find a gas station. For some reason, LA gas stations are not always that appealing (this exact thing happened to me a couple of years ago – notice a pattern?). The pump would not take my cards and when I talked to the girl locked away in a shack with a glass window and a slot for transactions and voice transfer, she told me that they only accept debit cards. Well, fortunately I had some cash on me – not a lot, but enough. (and with current gas price you get a lot for 10 dollars). More than 3 gallons I guess. Not that dramatic a story, maybe, but imagine being stuck on the interstate at a section where they are doing roadwork (so limited shoulder) with massive traffic in the dark. With a mobile phone out of battery power.

SoCal News: Mimi Ito’s and other’s report/s on digital media, youth and learning. Henry Jenkins moving from MIT to USC.

I am currently in Santa Cruz, where have I had a meeting today. Tomorrow I will drive to Southern California – Irvine. And yesterday I was in Palo Alto. I saw a girl with a cardboard sign saying “Can you spare some change?” and some more that I could not read – on Stanford campus. It is rather telling if your first reaction is to think that this is probably some kind of art installation. But Stanford is having to make cuts partly as a dip in their endowment. On the other hand, according to this comprehensive SF Chronicle article on US university endowments (from before ‘the crisis’), the endowment grew fast last year and amounted to 17,1 billion dollars. 1,1 million per student (Princeton has twice that amount, and the UC system had about $8 billion at the time of the article.

Here are some photos from my visit to Bruce Damer (read more here).

Time to do some HUMlab work. I hope to have a chance to look at my article later tonight.

I am watching this great program on independent bookstores (on KQED, Paperback Dreams, prudcer Alex Beckstead) – some of them in Berkeley – and others I have visited. Cody’s, Kepler’s, Powell’s. Intreviews with the key people, reactions to chain stores and internet bookshops.  I miss Cody’s in particular. Not because it is the great bookstore I have visited, but because it contributed greatly to the bookshop ecology in Berkeley (and now there is big physical gap on Telegraph). And it was a very good bookshop. “It is this big things that have changed people’s life”, owner Andry Ross said. It has been a very a tough market, of course, but I think that maybe Cody’s did not adapt, or maybe adapted in a non-sustainable way. Difficult to say, but certainly a loss. Kepler’s seems to be doing better. Powell’s went online early on.

One of the things I like about the US – at least the US I meet – is the strength of individuals and their drive and conviction. I just talked to the waitress at the bar I am “using” for writing (combined with eating/drinking) and it turns out that she is hoping to do an MA in bioengineering at one of a choice of very good schools. There is no question of the importance of education and there is absolutely no lack of dedication (even if it will take her two years of work to be able to make it). These were the students (especially the graduate students) I met at Berkley when I was there in 96-97. It is a cultural difference, of course, but the level of competitiveness (and collaboration) and drive would be daunting to many students back home I think. It is not only good, but it makes for intellectually rich milieus where you are expected to participate beyond your own research task and where there is – at best – a high level of professionalism and tangible commitment.

I have made quite some progress on the second article in my series of three today. It is a slightly large scope (the landscape of digital humanities), but I think I will be able to pull it off. Also, I have benefited from my recent stay in Edmonton (I use the humanities computing programme at University of Alberta as a case study/encounter).

And I got our new dog endorsed by a world-leading scholar today.