Here’s Chapter 1. Comments welcome!
Some notes about the current status:
I’ve been collecting a lot of references (thanks, Zotero!) and now believe the reference list is more or less complete (the current reference list is included with the chapter, feedback is welcome on that as well).
Several of the other chapters are partially written, but aren’t really close to being ready for posting.
The PDF is formatted for a 6″x9″ book, so it won’t be particularly kind to trees if you print it out on standard-sized paper (I guess you could shrink it to fit two pages on one physical sheet, but then the diagrams might not look very good).
I’m planning to have the book printed by CreateSpace and listed for sale on Amazon.com (this is free, by the way). I thought about submitting the book to a commercial publisher, but after learning about the generally abusive state of academic publishing in a seminar last semester, I’m not willing to do that (in particular, I’m not going to give up my right to distribute copies of my own work as I see fit).
The material is licensed under Creative Commons, so you’re free to share. However, I’d prefer that you link back to this post rather than distributing the PDF (mainly because this is a draft, and could well contain errors at this stage).
Current status: 86 pages written since December 24, 2007, roughly three chapters worth of material. I should be able to finish by April or so at this rate.
I hope it’s useful to some of you!
January 30, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I just finished reading the first draft of chapter one. It’s a pretty difficult task to speak to your target population of digital immigrants (that would be me) and be informative without being condescending, but you do a pretty good job.
My only comment so far is that you do seem to assume a little bit more knowledge of internet culture in your reference to trolls and flamers than the average teacher might now possess. In five years or so an explanation wouldn’t be necessary, but for those of us who are still on the cusp of the immigrant population, these aren’t well-known concepts, yet. I only learned of trolls myself after a prescient post by a fellow Moodler at Moodle.org a year or two ago.
January 30, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Good point, Lesli. I’ll add some more material on trolls, flamers, spammers, and the other dark denizens of the innartubes.
Thanks for the kind words. I’ve been teaching this material to technologically-naive teachers for quite some time, with some degree of success. I’m glad my skills appear to be transferable to book form.