Work…

Summer has a way of making you feel a little more human up here in Alaska with all the sun and good weather (that we normally have). Inevitably, feeling more human means we step away from our computers a little more often… and forget about The List of things we keep meaning to get around to. Well, writing here has been one of those things on The List for me that I have let slide.

I’ve been wondering the past few days what the participants of this year’s iDesign and iTeach were up to in their busy lives. No doubt many have been on a trip or two since I’ve seen them last. I’m going to cruise through my blog subscriptions to see if I can find any evidence to confirm my hypothesis.

Over the summer we’ve been working on the iTeach web site and the main blog on Rhetorica. If you are a past participant of iTeach, we are trying to pull the latest posts from your blogs into the iTeach site. Likewise, we are doing the same thing on the main blog on Rhetorica, capturing the latest posts from the instructional designers here a CDE. The iDesign web site will also be adding similar features not too long from now.

As part of the UAF Summer Lecture Series, Dan O’Neil, author of The Firecracker Boys, will talk about Project Chariot and the past prospects for nuclear experimentation in Alaska. The lecture is this Wednesday (09 July) in Schaible Auditorium.

While scanning the news this morning I encountered an article from the Edmonton Sun that mentioned Dr. Greg Newby, one of our faculty here at UAF, and Project Gutenberg. Dr. Newby the Chief Scientist at the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center had worked with us a few months back exploring Second Life for visualization of real-world data.

So what is Project Gutenberg?

“Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.”

There are currently over 25,000 books available to read (free) through the project and over 100,000 available through their partners and affiliates. What I didn’t get from that article was an actual link to Project Gutenberg. There is a top 100 list available too if you’re looking for some recomendations.