I have been putting together an archive of streamed seminars and reports for the ITAS webpage. In doing so, I came across the extremely long list of streamed seminars that we have archived at HUMlab. If you have some time over, I strongly suggest that you take a look over there. Some examples include Judith Donath, MIT Media Lab, speaking about ìPresentations of Self in the Virtual Worldî, Charles Fillmore, UCB, on ìLinking Sense to Syntax in Framenetî, and Katherin Hayles, UCLA, on ìComputing the Humanî. If you know Swedish, I would recommend the seminar by Sven Strˆmqvist, Lund University, on ìAtt t‰nka fˆr att tala och att t‰nka fˆr att skrivaî. If you had watched the seminars as they took place you would have been able to interact with the speaker through a text chat (at least that goes for the most recent part of the list). However, the opportunity to archive the streams certainly does enhance the possibilities of flexible learning.

In a couple of weeks Stephanie and I will be giving a seminar in HUMlab, where we will report from the conferences we have attended this summer. With this in mind Iíve spent some time today looking through the material I have from the CATaCí04 conference. While working my way through proceedings and notes it occurred to me that I still havenít written anything in here about one of the papers on intercultural communication that I found interesting, something that I promised myself to do some time ago. The paper Iím referring to is ìFalling through the (cultural) gaps? Intercultural communication challenges in cyberspaceî, by Reeder, MacFayden, Chase and Roche. Among other things the authors argue that there is a specific internet culture, an issue which has occupied my mind many times before . In their view, internet culture is a product of the fact that the technological applications themselves are culturally situated. When I have been theorizing about specific internet cultures, I have mainly thought of the cultures that I believe can be socially constructed in strong online communities. This paper, however, got me thinking about how internet culture for less strong communities (such as a group of learners and/or teachers meeting only on a few occasions) might be more affected by the background culture of the developers of the technological application than by a socially constructed and negotiated culture. This would have important implications for my own analysis. I would need to identify whether the community of learners/teachers that I will be studying have had enough opportunities to interact in the mediated environment, both during class and for socializing, in order to develop their own internet culture, or if the cultural background of the producers of the platforms still has the most impact on the internet culture in which the informants interact. (A similar version of this paper is available in the promising-looking online refereed journal Language Learning and Technology)

Wednesday to Saturday this upcoming week I wish I could be back in Vienna again. The university of Vienna is hosting this years Eurocall conference (CALL=Computer Assisted Language Learning), and I would have liked to participate there. Both to get an update on what is happening in this area, and to discuss and get feedback on my research. In order to get some kind of overview of where this field is at at the moment, I have skimmed through the abstracts on the conference webpage. A quite popular theme seems to be how to use corpora in language education, and some of the papers deal with how to enhance possibilities for collaborative and constructivist learning, and the role of the teacher in the virtual classroom.

These are some of the presentations that I would have liked to attend (sorted according to my interests):

Synchronous voice communication: Arcos, Abermann
Text chat: Harada, Kung, Oscoz
IM as social enhancer: Heins et al.
Comparison of different tools for mediated communication: Kenning
Intercultural communication: Knierim et al.

However, abstracts only tell you so much. Last week I submitted a proposal for a Scandinavian Eurocall conference which will take place in Odense, Denmark on October 15-17. The scenario that I wish for would be that my paper would get accepted, and that some (or all) of the above also would be there, so that I could get a more complete picture.

Here are a couple of interesting things that I have found skimming through the scarce blog posts that have been written in the blogosphere over the summer. Both deal with web platforms, and the first one is a resource on video conferencing in language learning, compiled by Robert OíDowd. He is interested in intercultural communication online (which is also one of my areas of interest) and is working on a Ph.D. on that same topic. (via Patrik Svensson). The second is a resource on collaborative synchronous environments online, put together by Robin Good for the online conference e/merge. It includes a narrated slideshow and a “jungle tour”. I definitely do need to check some of these platforms out. (via Nancy White)

I’m one of those strange people who really enjoy getting back from vacation. Not that I havenít had a great vacation, itís just that I feel so recharged and excited about finally getting to take on the challenges of the new semester that Iíve known have been waiting for me all alongÖ At this time of year I always have such great plans for how much better and more efficient I will do things this semester as compared to previous ones. This does not just go for work related thingsÖ I have also promised myself to be extremely economical this semester (bye bye greasy expensive microwave pizza ñ welcome homemade stews, frozen in portions) and to top it off I have also promised to lead a healthy life (one hour walk each morning before breakfast ñ Iíve even bought those silly looking walking sticks that supposedly make exercise 40% more effective). As for work, these are a few of the things that I have to look forward to this semester: – Read theory for my thesis – Collect material for the first part of my thesis – Present findings at seminar/conference – Lead an information drive about HUMlab aimed at the humanities faculty here at the university – Plan and carry out activities for the ITAS network – Write article for Tekka – Give a short course in the lab on qualitative internet research – Participate in post grad course on syntax Good thing I’m back to start digging in to all of this… Iím sure I will need at least four months to complete the list, but right now Iím feeling quite confident.