Week XIV

Continuing the theme of legal resources for teaching/students... Project Oyez, a website dedicated to Supreme Court Media. The United States court system is notoriously traditional when it comes to allowing media in the courtroom. The Supreme Court especially has been hesitant to allow photos, let alone audio recordings released to the public (there is an ancient audio recording device that records for the use of the Court, but is not generally released).

Sometimes, rarely, there are releases made. Other media are allowed at times too. Oyez is dedicated to archiving all of this media and information for public consumption, which I believe is a valuable tool for students, etc, trying to gain a deeper understanding about the Supreme Court.

Week XIII

After years of legal research, I've become fairly familiar with some of the most useful sites. I shared the Presidential Documents link a few weeks ago. Another hugely useful site, though its interface leaves a lot to be desired, is THOMAS, run by the Library of Congress.

Thomas contains online text for bills, resolutions, etc. proposed to the United States Congress. Its searchable, and while it has a fairly clunky interface, it is very useful, especially for people who don't have access to Lexis Law.

Week XII

Okay, this is for Week XII, but the link features National Library Week, which is April 15-21. I personally think, as educators, being aware of initiatives like this is very important because often times there are extra materials these non profit groups provide that help to highlight their cause. It can be a very good way to briefly introduce students to a wide variety of issues without the teacher having to spend an in-depth amount of time on structuring a lesson plan to overview the topic.

Week XI

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents

A rather little known site (outside of legal research), where the actual text of any presidential document is posted only a week or so after its release. This is especially useful for students wanting to do a paper on a presidential speech that may not have been televised, etc. One of its limitations though is that it only covers until 1993 digitally, though the information is available less conviently in print for earlier presidential documents.

Week X

Playing post catch-up...

Project Gutenberg

The oldest of the e-book libraries online, and still one of the best maintained. Has copies of public domain works whose copyrights have expired in the United States. I personally think this would be a great resource for lower income schools who might have computer labs, but not necessarily the money to buy all the books for reading each year. This way kids could do some of their readings in-class (maybe some kind of after school homework reading program even?).

Week IX

There has been a growing trend in the last two decades or so away from the physical written word. While books are still a popular way to disseminate information (even with the increasing availability of e-books, especially e-textbooks), e-mail and other forms of digital communications such AIM and Blackberries have detracted from practices like letter writing. The post office has noticed this and has had to raise the price of postage several times in recent years to help defray the costs this lack of business has brought.

While this new technology is definitely useful and has become not only an early adopter phenomenon, but one accepted by the general population, there are still a large number of late or non adopters. Many of these people are either economically disadvantaged or of a generation that is not comfortable with adopting new technology (the latter category of non-adopters is who I would like to address). One of the unfortunate social trends as a result of this technological trend is that many of the elderly who are living longer, and often alone, are even more isolated from remaining friends and family who are more technologically advanced and reliant on that technology as a way to communicate.

For example, I think nothing of sending an e-card to wish a friend a Happy Birthday, but I rarely think to make the "effort" to go buy a card and stamp for one of my great aunts or uncles who doesn't have a computer.

Around Christmas time I was reading a LiveJournal community for gift ideas when I ran across an intriguing idea called "Subscription to My Life." The idea was simple- "give" one of your relatives a 52 week subscription to your life. I adapted this idea for my Grandmother who is 90 and lives by herself out of state. I rarely have time to call and talk, but I took an on-line subscription form and used Photoshop to doctor it and make it look like a subscription form for my life. I went out and bought several dozen postcards and stamps and every week I send her a quick written postcard just telling her what happened with my week.

My parents, who talk to her several times a week, say that she rarely talks about anything else since I've started sending her the postcards.

I was talking to one our classmates today and she was telling me about her great-grandmother who is in a similar situation. I told her about this idea and she loved the concept of it and said that this would be a great idea to share. Both from the perspective that it could really help you connect with someone you don't usually get to connect with, and from the idea that sometimes we should think about those who get left behind when technology springs ahead without them.

Week VIII

And another post to catch me up for now. There are only a few really good resources for people researching new media from a social sciences perspective. Terra Nova is one of the best. Terra Nova "is a blog about virtual worlds and their implications. Virtual Worlds include synthetics worlds, MMOs, MMORPGs, Social Worlds, MUDs, MOOs, and MUSHes. Terra Nova authors include scholars, practitioners and writers."

The discussions are deeply academic and examine both common topics like violence in video games, as well as more obscure concepts like the rights of players to control user content (one instance where several users had their accounts/characters deleted from an online game was characterized as murder). The authors are a veritable "who's who" in the study of virtual worlds.

If you have any questions or would like to know more about the study of virtual games let me know. One of my classes in Undergrad was an ethnographic research project undertaken in the MMO World of Warcraft. It was only the second or third time a class like that had been offered in the nation and it was interesting both to research in that type of environment as well as endure the kind of scrutiny a class of that nature created in both the academic as well as virtual world.

For example, we often had lectures in-game so that we could talk with some of the most well-respected researchers in the field. Nick Yee "visited" with us in World of Warcraft which proved challenging as we met near a "public" road in-game. The "sight" of twenty gnomes sitting in a clearing, attentively listening to a Nigh Elf discuss age of consent forms for survey takers on a public chat channel drew a lot of interest, as well as criticism from fellow gamers. The reaction of the academic community to our endeavors was similar as well, unfortunately.

My paper for this class, which examined Western colonial themes built into World of Warcraft, was featured one month on Terra Nova, in an article on Cultural Borrowing in World of Warcraft. The ensuing ruckus was a sight to behold as academics, players, and anyone else who wanted to get involved promptly did so, loudly, and not always nicely. It really highlighted for me how important this growing field is academically, and also, on many levels, how misunderstood it is as well.