Delicious December 12.9.09 - 12.15.09

The Many Users of Twitter
"Used both as a business tool and a way of keeping up with the latest tabloid gossip, Twitter has overcome all the critics who thought that a 140-character blogging service had no future."

UMWeb 2.0 | UMW webifies its world
"UMW Blogs represents a notable example of the power of collaborative effort among faculty, learning technology specialists, and institutional IT support in responding to the challenges of teaching, learning, and scholarship in the digital age."

"We have been harassed in your stores, rejected in your communities online, and treated with disrespect on your online services and your advertising. We have seen commercials and art that some of us find offensive."

Open Access Encyclopedias
"a number of academic institutions are quietly trying to do what Britannica and others say can’t be done: build online encyclopedias that are rigorous, scholarly, and free to access."

"While some look at it as a learning-style model, it is intended as a problem-solving wheel that represents phases of learning--from reading and exploration, to reflective writing, to visualization of the content learned, to attempts to try it out."

Sexualization in Video Games
"There's a reason our games are filled with snarling, emotionless (aside from their totally straight love for their buddies) bros and women being crushed under the weight of their hypersexualized characterization."

"The distribution of concerns illustrates another crisis, a cultural crisis: the tendency to focus on short-term parochial gains, a core element of our socioeconomic institutions and their ideological support system."

"When used as a tool for ubiquitous learning, text messaging and tweeting wouldn't be tools of distraction, but a means of engagement for this generation of gadget-obsessed teens."

"It’s not that load times are unacceptable; it’s that there needs to be some kind of organization behind them so that the player isn’t going to spend most of the game irritated by them."

"The paradox in every part and sentence of the post-apocalyptic narrative- - evoking even as it denies - is repeated as if fractally by The Road as a whole."