For an online meeting in Traveler with the ITAS network and others interested I have read a couple of papers on different communication modes in online (language) education. Regine Hampel and Mirjam Hauck in their paper

As you

In this post I will report on a recent incident that neatly combines some of my favourite topics: cell phones in connection with driving and irony, but from a somewhat different perspective than my prior related posts.

As I’ve previously discussed I sometimes have arguments with my fiancé regarding his driving, and especially regarding his habit of driving while being deeply engaged in distance conversations over his cell phone. The other day I got a phone call from him where he informed me that he’d been in a car accident. Luckily he was okay, even though the car was not. When explaining to me the details of the incident, he started off by letting me know that he had received a phone call from a customer on his cell phone. Of course, the fact that the cell phone was involved was not surprising to me at all. However, there is a somewhat unexpected twist to this story… It turns out that at this particular occasion my fiancé had actually followed my advice and had stopped his car on the side of the road while talking (although I doubt that it was because of my presence/absence argumentation – probably it had more to do with him having to search for some important documentation than anything else). While orderly parked on the side of the road, a car with a trailer carrying some big forestry machine passed him without paying attention to the fact that the machine was sticking out on the side and consequently crashed into the back of my fiancé’s car… Now that’s ironic if you ask me! Also, it will probably (and sadly) be the end of him following this particular advice of mine in the future…

I could also mention that before the day was over the rental car that my fiancé drove from the site of the accident also ended up in the ditch, but that’s a whole other story, having to do with extreme road conditions and bad tires, not with cell phones… No one got hurt there either, thankfully…

The last couple of days in HUMlab have been a blast, and I am filled with new inspiration and ideas. Apart from interesting presentations by Jeffrey Schnapp, Henry Jenkins, Jay Bolter and others (see the HUMlab Blog for some presentation summaries) I very much liked the debate between Espen Aarseth and Henry Jenkins on computer game studies. One of the core issues of discussion was, not surprisingly when considering their different approaches to the study of computer games, the role of narrative. A member of the audience, a gamer, gave his view on this by arguing that the reason why he patiently waited and longed for new versions of games to be released was not because he was eager to see the new graphics, but rather because he wanted to find out about the new story line. He also said that he wanted to be

In connection with the conference that just took place in HUMlab, we launched our new English web presence, The HUMlab Blog. Here we will try to keep those interested updated on the activities in the lab as well as try to create a forum for discussion on issues that we

Tomorrow, Monday, at 5pm CET a group of students from my department participating in the so called Virtual Wedding project will present their work around the theme of

I

The other day I went to my first board meeting as (deputy) student representative for the board of Ume

I am slowly readapting to the life of academia after a couple of weeks of complete vacation. As for blogging, I am trying to find new inspiration for yet another season of mind dazzling posts . While waiting for this inspiration to present itself, I