Started the blog (this blog!) in earnest today.

I’ve been posting the log of research updates that I’ve been keeping (sporadically) for the past several months. Someone once said that links are the currency of the Web so I’ll link to the resources that I mention whenever I can.

Although I’m still playing with the structure of this thing, I have several themes in mind: Research History, Prior Work, Dissertation–final drafts (for work on the diss that I feel is at least nearing completion), Dissertation–in progress (for all the other diss work), Notes (maybe? a collection of the notes I’m working from?), General Academic (for the wide range of work I find myself doing on a day-to-day basis). This post is General Academic. And strangely Meta. Or something.

Other today:
-two hour Teaching ESL workshop
-looked at friend’s SSHRC proposal (on creating game engine with useful modules for academics/researchers to easily and cheaply build fantastic online games–very cool)
-completed Week 1 of the Learn To Program: Fundamentals coursera. I signed up for this five weeks late but plan to speed through it. It’s my first coursera course and the platform is incredible–clean, easy to use, and wonderfully instructive. This course is an intro to Python (no previous Python experience).
-working through Bryan Alexander’s The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives With New Media. It’s a fantastic book–full of great recommendations for other texts and projects, especially storytelling apps, which I’m thinking need to work their way into the final section of my diss. The problem with Alexander’s book is that it’s so good I’m reading it very slowly, all the while staring at an ever-expanding bookcase full of books to read and an ever-expanding list of things to do. I need to read The New Digital Storytelling rather carefully as I’ve promised the Inquire journal (at school) that I’ll write a review of it for their Winter issue.
-following new people on Twitter! Still trying to work my way into the tweetersphere…