Crossing boundaries:

Learning and teaching in virtual worlds

While the concept of multi-user virtual worlds is not a new one, the rising popularity of virtual world applications has been rapid over the last five years. Although much attention around such immersive environments has centred upon Second Life, there are currently 80 virtual world applications available and another 100 planned for 2009, with some targeting specific populations (e.g., young girls with BarbieGirls) and others catering for broader audiences (e.g., training applications in There.com). The appeal of virtual worlds is that they allow users to cross over into new spaces that can be used to support a range of social interactions. In this way, they have proven to be quite versatile, embracing varied activities and purposes, including business, cultural activities as well as having educational capabilities.

With its focus upon the educational uses of virtual world applications, this special issue of the British Journal of Educational Technology (Volume 40, Issue 6) aims to provide a definitive profile of the current status of virtual worlds for education and training. Specifically, we invite contributions from the research community to advance our understanding of this field of study and research. In order to build upon existing research, and to support the development of the field as a unique academic discipline, in this unique issue the editors are interested in hosting a forum for rigorous and leading edge contributions to the nascent field that:

• explore new frameworks, approaches and pedagogical models,
• present case studies of practice where innovative techniques are pioneered,
• investigate new methods of teaching, learning and research in the area,
• evaluate the experiences of teachers, learners and institutions using immersive worlds.

The aim of the special issue is to bring together the most leading edge research and development in the field and allow practitioners and researchers to benefit from these valuable contributions. Towards this aim, recommended topics of interest for this special issue include, but are not limited to, the following research questions:

• What value can virtual world applications add to conventional methods of education and what evidence exists to support such propositions?
• What are the institutional changes needed to accommodate learning approaches centred on virtual worlds?
• What pedagogies and approaches are needed to make the use of virtual world applications most effective and engaging, and what evidence exists to support such approaches?
• Are particular learner groups engaged more with virtual world applications than others?
• What are the main challenges for tutors and trainers using virtual world technologies?
• What are the main technological challenges associated with using virtual world applications?
• What frameworks and approaches can be developed to support effective, engaging and transformative usage of virtual worlds?
• Does the use of virtual worlds necessitate more learner-centred approaches? What evidence exists to support claims for or against such approaches?
• Will using these applications change how people learn? If so, what evidence exists to support such a claim?
• Do virtual world applications offer greater support than alternative technologies for building and supporting distributed learning communities?
• How do learners experience virtual worlds? How do they experience their interactions with others?
• How do learners choose to represent themselves in virtual worlds?

The issue also envisages contributions that relate to a wider range of virtual world applications particularly where learning and training issues are highlighted. Studies focusing upon massively multiplayer role-playing games (e.g. World of Warcraft), mirror worlds (e.g. Google earth) and hybrid worlds (e.g. mixed reality experiences) will also be considered for the issue where they make sure that the focus is upon learning activities and practices and where lessons learnt may be applied to virtual worlds for learning.

The issue will also be twinned with the First International IEEE Conference on Serious Games and Virtual Worlds which will be held in March 2009 at the University of Coventry, UK.

Submission Process

April 1, 2009: Full length papers due (see http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/submit.asp?ref=0007-1013&site=1 for guidelines). Please send an email to the editors with the title of your submission and submit your paper online using Manuscript Central. To make a submission, go to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/bjet. If this is the first time you have used the system you will be asked to register by clicking on ‘create an account.' Full instructions on making your submission are provided.  You should receive an acknowledgement within a few minutes.  Thereafter, you will be kept in touch with the progress of your submission through refereeing, any revisions that are required, and - hopefully - to final acceptance.

Please advise Sara de Freitas that you have made a submission for the special issue.  If you do not then it will be treated as an ordinary submission for a subsequent general issue

June 1, 2009:  Notification of acceptance

July 1, 2009: Final papers with revisions due

November, 2009: Publication date

Note: Submissions to the Crossing boundaries Serious Games and Virtual Worlds conference to be held at Coventry University in March 2009 that fit the purpose of this call may be recommended for co-submission to the special issue. Authors will be contacted directly where this is the case so that they can revisit the paper for the BJET special issue review process. Successfully reviewed papers will be processed by BJET in the normal way and according to the normal peer-review procedures. For those wishing to submit papers to the conference, details can be found at: http://www.sgandvwconference.net/announcement.asp?event=42

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Sara de Freitas B.A. (Hons), M.A., PhD

Sara de Freitas is Director of Research at the hub for research and development in serious games and virtual worlds at the Serious Games Institute at the University of Coventry, UK. Her research interests include evaluating the efficacy of serious games and virtual world applications, pedagogic modelling and policy and strategic development of e-learning. Sara chairs the Lab Group, speaks internationally and has a significant publications list in the field of e-learning, game-based learning and lifelong learning. Sara also holds a visiting fellowship at the University of London where she continues to build on leading edge research in the field at the London Knowledge Lab. She currently has four books in publication and is setting up an interdisciplinary research group focusing upon artificial intelligence, evaluation and validation for immersive forms and developing links between physical and virtual spaces through smart buildings. (Address: Sara de Freitas, PhD, Serious Games Institute, University of Coventry, Cheetah Road, Coventry, CV1 2TL, United Kingdom; s.defreitas|at|coventry.ac.uk).

Dr. George Veletsianos B.A., M.A., Ph.D

George Veletsianos is Lecturer of Digital Technologies, Communication & Education at the University of Manchester, UK. His research interests involve the design, development, and evaluation of electronic learning environments, adventure learning, emerging technologies in distance and hybrid education, virtual characters, and the learner experience. His research and development work has been published in excess of 30 times in articles and manuscripts in academic journals, books, and conference proceedings, while his work has been presented at over 40 national and international conferences. (Address:  George Veletsianos, PhD, LTA, School of Education, Ellen Wilkinson Building, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom; veletsianos|at|gmail.com)

Key note speaker:
Robert Mills (King's College, London): Adventures in the Queer Museum

The aim of this
conference is to look at the status quo and the challenges in the future of
Queer Studies from a broad multi-, trans-disciplinary and polythetic angle.

Participants will present papers and panels from the whole spectrum of academia.

Queer Studies:
The definition for 'queer' adopted for this purpose is not restricted to LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender), but holistic along the lines of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's definition in her essay "Queer and Now": "That's one of the things that 'queer' can refer to: the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when constituent elements of anyone's gender, of anyone's sexuality aren't made (or can't be made) to signify monolithically."
In contemporary Western society, we can approach 'queerness' as querying, contrasting, challenging and transforming hetero-normativity.

Papers and Panel proposals are invited on any area and aspect of Queer Studies.

The proposals will undergo a peer-review process; the Proceedings of this conference will be prepared for peer-reviewed publication with a major Academic Press.

Proposal abstract deadline: 1. September 2008
Deadline for completed papers: 2 January 2009

Proposals for individual papers should take the form of abstracts of
not more than 400 words; panel proposals should include both a panel rationale and paper abstracts.

All proposals should be sent by email before
September, 1st 2008 to
Dr Burkhard Scherer (Theology & RS, CCCU); burkhard.scherer@canterbury.ac.uk

Tags: Queer, University, conference, canterbury, cfp

Integrated Support or Integrated Overhead?

First International Workshop on
Infrastructure for Research in Collaborative Software Engineering (IRCoSE) at FSE 2008

Atlanta, Georgia, USA
November 9, 2008

Second Paper Submission is Open!!

Theme and Goals of the workshop

Development teams today can choose from a growing number of options for assembling an end-to-end solution for collaborative software engineering. Examples range from tying together IDEs with various services (e.g. the Eclipse IDE + Subversion + Bugzilla + CruiseControl) to integrated end-to-end solutions like Jazz. These options are freely available for academia, provide extensibility, ready access to repositories of data, and community mechanisms to contribute back new improvements. This suggests an exciting opportunity for the software engineering researcher and educator to focus on experimentation and exploration instead of struggling with technology. But, often these infrastructure choices were designed for developers, not researchers and educators can there be a balance without creating overhead for all parties?

The theme of this workshop is on strategies and technologies for minimizing infrastructure overhead to enable a focus on software engineering research and teaching in the domain of collaborative software engineering. The central activity of the workshop will be sharing experiences in evaluating and using open-source, academic, and commercial choices to conduct research, showcase how choices helped accelerate their work, and identify areas for improvement. This one-day workshop seeks to build up a community interested in ways to reduce infrastructure overhead and help bring focus to software engineering research and teaching. We will feature presentations and group discussions to increase interaction among participants. We also encourage an open ongoing discussion that includes sharing of best practices and recommendations to improve the usability of core technologies.

We invite position papers that summarize current or past collaborative software engineering projects and discuss issues around infrastructure choices, such as:

    * What features and requirements drove the infrastructure choices?
    * What worked well, and what didn't with the infrastructure during the project?
    * How can the infrastructure be improved?
    * What requirements, standards, capabilities, etc. should be broadly available for future projects?
    * Should other researchers and educators be using the same infrastructure? Why, or why not?

Projects described can include topic areas such as (but are not limited to):

    * Collaboration and awareness
    * Configuration Management
    * Planning and Work Item Management
    * Process Guidance
    * Build
    * Project Health
    * Reporting and Visualization
    * Repository Mining (of code, work items, builds, and other artifacts)
    * Tailoring of environments for education/classroom use

Important Dates

Second paper submission: September 30, 2008, 23:59 GMT -12:00.
Second author notification: October 13, 2008.

Camera-ready copy: November 3, 2008, 23:59 GMT -12:00.
Workshop: November 9, 2008

Submission Information

Participants will be asked to submit position papers (4 pages maximum) on a topic relevant to the workshop as PDF files using the ACM Digital library guidelines. Papers must be uploaded via the workshop website (link to the Submission Site) by September 19, 2008. Authors of selected submissions will be asked to participate at the workshop. Their position papers will be posted on the workshop website. While the papers should be treated as non-archival, they may be included on USB sticks provided to all attendees of the FSE conference.

Organization

Workshop Organizers

Li-Te Cheng, IBM Research
Daniela Damian, University of Victoria
Gail Murphy, University of British Columbia
Adrian Schröter, University of Victoria

Program Committee

Li-Te Cheng, IBM Research
Daniela Damian, University of Victoria
Frank Maurer, University of Calgary
Gail Murphy, University of British Columbia
Nachiappan Nagappan, Microsoft
Anita Sarma, Carnegie Mellon University
Adrian Schröter, University of Victoria 

I had hoped to scale down slightly for the Problems and Possibilities of Early Medieval Diplomatic strand in 2009, after finding organising and running three sessions a bit much even though they were mostly problem-free. But a meeting between myself and Allan McKinley on the Wednesday of this year's Leeds revealed that our plans were more ambitious than that. We're looking at probably four sessions this time, one focusing on matters digital and electronic as they pertain to charter studies, one on Northern diplomatic, Scandinavia and Scotland and so on, where charters start late, and two more along our usual lines as described elsewhere. I've already got enough speakers for two and a bit, but who actually comes up with titles and abstracts in time for the proposal deadline, which is the end of September, is a different matter.

So I've been sending mail out to people, and will send more out to likely individuals in the next few days, asking if they'd like to contribute. But it seems only fair, and perhaps wise, to stick the request here too. Would you like to do the Leeds experience next year? (They have some travel bursaries if we get in quick enough.) Do you have something to say about early medieval society and/or its charters, that involves treating them as authored and biased accounts of matters, like, you know, any other text? If so, either comment here or drop me an e-mail via the address on my departmental web-page, and I'll be in touch. After all: you'll only wind up reading about it and thinking, "bah, I could have been in that blog post" if you don't, right? Sure you will...

As entidades ligadas à Psicologia marcaram presença no lançamento da Conferência Nacional de Educação Básica para intensificar a divulgação da campanha de inclusão da Psicologia no Ensino Médio. A campanha foi divulgada no Centro de Convenções nesta segunda-feira por meio da distribuição de panfletos com as oito razões para a inclusão da disciplina na grade do Ensino Médio. O banner da campanha chamou a atenção dos representantes de professores, alunos, organizações de classe e movimentos sociais participantes da Conferência que passavam pelo rol de entrada da Conferência.

A presidente da Associação Brasileira de Ensino de Psicologia (Abep), Roberta Azzi, explicou a importância da presença desta campanha na Conferência Nacional. "Aqui na conferência nós podemos atingir várias camadas da sociedade, desde o governo federal até a sociedade civil para que todos possam entender as razões pelas quais a Psicologia é fundamental para que o Ensino Médio se torne um ensino mais completo para o jovem brasileiro".

De acordo com a conselheira do CFP, Iolete Ribeiro da Silva, essa participação é importante para dar visibilidade às contribuições da psicologia ao aluno do ensino médio abrindo espaço para o diálogo com professores de outras áreas, pais e gestores. "É importante frisar que o conhecimento psicológico fornece as bases para uma prática pedagógica significativa junto aos adolescentes e jovens, por contemplar a compreensão das necessidades do desenvolvimento e das características de cada um".

As entidades da Psicologia lançaram a campanha de Inclusão da Psicologia no Ensino Médio em parceria com o Fórum Nacional de Entidades da Psicologia Brasileira (Fenpb) e com as Associações Brasileiras de Ensino de Psicologia (Abep) e de Psicologia Escolar e Educacional (ABRAPEE). Quem se interessar pelo assunto pode se manifestar pelo site www.pol.org.br e enviando um e-mail aos deputados e senadores pedindo que apóiem esta luta. Basta entrar no site, clicar no link para a campanha e enviar o seu manifesto.

Editors seek articles of 5000-7000 words, including notes, for a proposed book-length collection entitled “Play’d to Great Applause”: Early Modern Audience and Audiences of Early Modern Drama

We seek essays discussing the behaviors, beliefs, attitudes or composition of either contemporary or current audiences of early modern drama. Part One will look at audiences from 1580-1640, while Part Two will focus on late-twentieth and twenty-first century productions of early modern drama. This collection will focus on live performance, not film and television productions.

Articles may address such issues as:
• the audience and civic pageants
• the audience and dumb shows
• the audience and censorship
• the audience and other “entertainments” (hangings, bear-baitings, and
sermons)
• antitheatrical tracts’ definition of audience
• actors as audience, audience as actors
• cult of personality
• power of the spectator
• non-Shakespearean plays and the modern viewer
• Shakespeare festivals
• modern staging in reconstructed theatres (London Globe)
• directing the early modern play for the 21st century audience

We welcome submissions from scholars, actors, directors, and others. Send detailed proposals and brief CVs by January 31, 2009 to both editors, preferably electronically. Completed essays will be expected by May 31, 2009. Annalisa Castaldo, Humanities Division, 1 University Place, Widener University, Chester, PA 19050 acastaldo_at_mail.widener.edu Rhonda Knight, Department of Communications, Language, and Literature, 300 E. College Ave., Coker College, Hartsville, SC 29550 rknight_at_coker.edu

New histories of the body, historical phenomenology, and psychoanalytic readings of the body-as-text have flourished in the last two decades in early modern studies. As Sean McDowell has recently noted, “scholarship on the early modern body – its materiality, its processes, its relationships to affect and cognition, its role in enculturation, and its connections to the physical world – coalesced in the 1990s into its own field,"* as evidenced by a growing number of academic conferences, scholarly monographs, and edited collections on the topic.

The editors welcome papers of 6,000-10,000 words that engage with any aspect of 'embodiment' and 'Shakespeare.' Topics might include, but are not limited to: Shakespeare and histories/theories of the body;
representations of the body and early modern phenomenology; the actor’s body; cultural appropriations and body ‘politics’; the cinematic body; body-as-text and the body-in-the-text; Shakespeare and the senses;
embodiment and identity.

Please send proposals by email, including a short abstract, to David McInnis <mcinnisd_at_unimelb.edu.au> and Brett D. Hirsch <bdhirsch_at_cyllene.uwa.edu.au> by 1 October 2008. The deadline for essay submissions, following acceptance of abstracts, is 1 February 2009. The special issue will be published mid-year.

*Early Modern Literary Studies* (ISSN 1201-2459) is a refereed journal serving as a formal arena for scholarly discussion and as an academic resource for researchers in the area. Articles in EMLS examine English
literature, literary culture, and language during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For more details, visit <http://purl.org/emls>.

--
*Sean McDowell, “The View from the Interior: The New Body Scholarship in
Renaissance/Early Modern Studies,” Literature Compass 3-4 (2006): 778-
791, p. 778.

I want to personally thank all those who have fought the fight since the beginning. Without the dedication of  those people, against extreme odds, there would be no chance of stopping the degradation of rural Ontario, or any other rural area. Wind farms are all about power. Not electrical power - but the power of Govt. and Corporations over the population.

The wind industry is a typical example of what democracy, removed, looks like.

Never forget - Democracy is not a right. If you want to live in a democratic country you must demand and defend it.

The media as whole is closed to you and me. It has become a mere tool, used to push govt. and corporate agendas, with no regard for the public.

The time has come for every citizen to wake up and become a participant in their democracy.

You need to make demands on your govt. and the media. Change only comes from pressure.
It is time we all proved our worth as citizens and apply the pressure required. You, own your country.
It does not belong to the govt. or the corporations.
It belongs to you and your children. Take the opportunity to prove to yourself and your children that you intend to live in a true democracy.

What other choice do you really have. Roll up your democratic sleeves and get to work.

Write your govt. and demand changes. Even more important, write your local and national media outlets and tell them in no uncertain terms that you intend to boycott them until they start reporting the truth.

Every wind farm in Ontario has had negative affects on the people and their property.

Canadian Free Press

The list of environmental costs imposed on wildlife and people are now being recognized

By Online Monday, July 28, 2008

By: Dr. Brian L. Horejsi, Dr. Barrie K. Gilbert, George Wuerthner

People are barking up the wrong tree by promoting, or succumbing to,
wind turbine construction regardless of where it is proposed and how
many there might be. Many North Americans are infected with tunnel
vision and erroneously appear to believe that turbine generated energy
is somehow linked to reversing the growth in and impact of Green House
Gas (GHG) emissions.

There exists NO evidence anywhere that Turbine energy is
substituting for or displacing fossil fuel dependence, nor is there any
evidence that it is in any material way slowing the rate of GHG
emission growth. Turbine energy is a non factor in the never ending
growth agenda of the fossil fuel industry, and it is not a factor in
the agenda of governments promoting growth in and dependence on oil and gas consumption. There can be no better example than North America of the failure of turbine energy to slow growth in anything.

People have been hoodwinked into promoting wind turbine energy as
some sort of Nirvana all while human population growth and per capita
energy consumption continue to spiral upward. Turbine energy generation
is fueling growth in human population and energy consumption and growth
in a false “economy”. It is NOT doing the opposite.

Matching the folly of the energy replacement misunderstanding is denial by governments and promoters of the ecological impacts and health effects of turbines; the ugly reality is that they are a serious addition to the industrialization of quiet rural landscapes that people have long valued for quality of life, retirement, and recreation.

The list of environmental costs imposed on wildlife and people are
now being recognized; they are far from meaningless, but they have been
trivialized by turbine promoters and politicians that have systematically tilted the deck sharply in the developers favor.
Environmental costs have been systematically ignored by a political and
regulatory system that has corrupted individual and societal freedom
and environmental integrity by relegating these values to some distant
offshoot of economic growth. These costs, and those who stand by them,
are treated with contempt; how dare they influence the decision to
grant some landowner a chance to make a buck by carving your backyard
and your space into fragments with giant chopping machines?

Wind turbines are an assault on human well being and act to degrade
the human “gestalt”. Promotion of wind turbine energy is a case of
serious misjudgment by those who fraudulently use green wash to promote
their commercial aspirations.

Buried deep within the human genome is an innate recognition and
suspicion of monsters – large objects – looming on the horizon. Wind
turbines are todays versions of a threatening monster, jammed down the
throats of neighbors and localities. 30% of the human cortex occupies
itself with processing visual information, far more than any other
sense, and nothing delivers a more intrusive and intense visual picture
than the tower and blades of wind turbines. Turbines erode freedom of
the human mind hour after hour, night after day, virtually forever,
like a cell phone ringing incessantly and yet no one is able to turn it
off. To many people this intrusion into their physical and physiological space is an insidious form of torment. The mental effect is analogous to the physical effects of a heavy smoker sitting next to you essentially for life!

We do not subscribe to the managerial / market approach to democracy
or conservation with its deeply entrenched bias against human values
such as an unadulterated horizon. This largely corporate view denigrates the value of freedom of the human spirit – the very pedestal upon which human dignity, character and strength are built.

In an honest and fair regulatory and political environment, local
citizens and communities would bury turbine projects long before they
get to the serious implementation stage. Once again, however, citizens
are being forced to try and employ the very tools that degrade our
quality of life and humiliate us as mere pawns of some corporate
created market economy. That being the case, it occurs to us that wind
turbines wearing eternally on the human psyche, constituting a “taking”
by corporate promoters and biased government collaborators; a taking
that damages the well being of all residents. We asked ourselves if
$1000 payment per person would compensate for the damages imposed on
the ever day life of hundreds and thousands of affected citizens? Not
even close. Perhaps then, $3000, or $8000? Would that kind of money
make up for the forced collapse of part of your quality of life, your
loss of right to space, loss of privacy, loss of political power, curbs
on your freedom, and the mental and physical costs imposed on you by
stress associated with constant angst, irritation and distraction? For
some, we suspect yes would be the answer. For others, like those who
have lost a child to negligent corporate behavior, been strangled
slowly by nicotine, or been poisoned by toxic emissions or effluent, no
amount of money can compensate for the deprivation and harm they have
and will suffer. Regardless of the compensatory damages you might place
on that part of your life lost because of turbine industrialization,
should you not be compensated for this taking?

The commercial private sector is forcing itself into your life, and
that constitutes a taking of your rights, benefits and well being. We
propose that each person impacted by a turbine receive, as a starting
point for negotiations, $3000 annually, to be paid by the developer for
the loss of private and citizen rights, a very large portion of which
includes peace and satisfaction, a critical part of your state of mind.
We all know that is a significant part of personal, social and democratic well being. The concept is simple; if the developer and some uncaring land owners want to destroy your rights and those of other citizens, inflicting on you suffering and mental distress, the good old “free” enterprise system developers and local governments love to hide behind, comes into play; they pay to destroy part of your life. There has to be pain and resistance in the system for those who knowingly exploit the public and individual vulnerability, a now institutionalized vulnerability which commercial and private sector interests worked hard to establish.

The recent proliferation of wind turbine farms is just one more case
of the serious aggression and destruction that reflects the continuing
expansion of an extremist private property and commercialism agenda.
This socially, legally and politically defective agenda and process is being exploited by corporations, some local residents, and local governments. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not freedom and it is not democracy; it is vandalism and oppression in the name of commercialism.
As citizens we have the right, and we say the obligation, and we must
marshal the courage, to reject wind turbine invasions as a corruption
of our well being that is cached “in our spirit rather than in our wallet”.

Dr. Brian L. Horejsi

Behavioral scientist and citizen advocate for democratic process

Box 84006, PO Market Mall

Calgary, Alberta, T3A 5C4

403-246-9328

And

Dr. Barrie K. Gilbert

Wildlife Ecologist and conservation activist

Box 252

Wolfe Island, Ontario KOH 2HO

613-385-2289

And

George Wuerthner,

Ecologist and writer.

POB 719, Richmond,

Vermont 05477

802-434-3948

28 July 2008

Canadian Free Press

IEEE CG&A Call for Papers
Serious Games

Guest Editors
Tiffany Barnes, L. Miguel Encarnação, and Chris Shaw

Special Issue of IEEE CG&A, March/April 2009
Submissions due: 30 July 2008
Author notification: 31 October 2008
Final versions due: 28 November 2008

URL: http://www.computer.org/portal/pages/cga/content/cfpjan09.html

Videogames for entertainment have been pushing the boundaries of graphics research and capabilities for the past two decades. More recently, these technologies have been extended to include interaction with and modification of data-driven, complex 3D models, performed in real time on graphics processing units. As this industry has matured, other applications of videogame technologies have become apparent for the purposes of scientific simulation and visualization, industrial and military training, medical and health training and education, and geographic information systems, as well as public awareness and policy change. The models used in these serious game applications may contain millions of 3D primitives, from point sets to voxels, to complex higher-dimensional data sets. The use of serious games for education, decision-making, health, and training applications makes the realistic, real-time representation of models and data through geometry, appearance, illumination, visibility, and behavior critically important.

Another significant set of problems concerns the representation and animation of avatars and other life-like characters in a game and the interaction of the player with his or her own avatars as well as the avatars of other players. For training scenarios, a significant challenge is the provision of artificially intelligent characters for players to interact with. For persuasive applications, the realism of the characters' social behavior bears additional importance.
Characters must react to the players in a way that supports the application goals and is immediately and realistically responsive.

Serious games require the real-time acquisition, processing, and visualization of changing data sets at high bandwidth and low latency, often with multiple simultaneous users. Rendering rates and interaction in these games are ideally at or above 30-60 frames per second. Advances that accelerate the management and interaction of large data sets, including techniques based on sample-based representation and rendering, polygon rasterization and shader hardware, and ray tracing are important for serious games, but the examination of the effects of these techniques on fidelity for decision making and training is particularly salient.

Toward maximizing real-world training effects, as well as making game play a more ubiquitous aspect of everyday life, serious games increasingly aim at bridging players' real world behavior and virtual world performance. The emergence of sophisticated low-cost sensor technologies to monitor activities, biometrics, geospatial location, proximity, and contextual influences promises to greatly enhance players' direct and indirect interaction with games and therefore has great potential to improve their effectiveness. However, the richness of these new modalities will also require a rethinking of the general interaction paradigms commonly associated with videogames in order to draw maximum benefit from multimodal input capabilities.

This special issue seeks articles examining some of the latest advances with respect to data representation, algorithms and data structures, systems issues, and applications for serious games that include real-time interaction with complex models. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to

* multiplayer systems architectures,
* player-to-player coordination,
* automated and semiautomated modeling techniques,
* compression and playback of simulation data,
* scripting and control of animated characters,
* training scenario planning and execution,
* human figure animation for training,
* intelligent characters,
* individual, group, and crowd behavior modeling and simulation,
* lighting, and relighting sampled models,
* representation and storage of large data sets,
* scalable parallel algorithms and architectures,
* rendering of complex and hybrid data sets,
* sampling and filtering for complex models,
* image- or sample-based representations,
* simplification and compression,
* visibility computations,
* data-driven procedural modeling,
* hardware for processing large data sets,
* data and resource management,
* configuration management and change control,
* delivery considerations (networking and system configuration),
* novel interaction techniques for massive data sets,
* sensor-based input and interaction technologies and techniques, and
systems and applications.

Articles should be no more than 10 magazine pages, where a page is 800 words and a quarter-page image counts as 200 words. Cite only the 12 most critical references, and consider providing technical background in sidebars for nonexpert readers. Color images can be interspersed throughout the article and should be limited to a total of 10. Visit IEEE CG&A style and length guidelines at
http://www.computer.org/cga/author.htm.

Please submit your article using our online manuscript submission service at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cs-ieee. When uploading your article, please select the appropriate special issue title under the category "Manuscript Type." Also include complete contact information for all authors and coauthors in the submission. If you
have any questions about submitting your article, please contact Alkenia Winston.

Please direct any correspondence prior to submission to one of the guest editors:

Tiffany Barnes
Woodward 403E
Computer Science Department
UNC Charlotte
9201 University City Blvd.
Charlotte, NC 28223
tbarnes2 at uncc. edu
Phone: +1 704 687 8577
Fax: +1 704 687 3516

L. Miguel Encarnação
500 W Main St., HUM10
Innovation Center
Humana Inc.
Louisville, KY 40202
lme at computer. org
Phone: +1 502 580 8691
Fax: +1 502 508 0042

Chris Shaw
13450 102 Ave.
Simon Fraser University Surrey
Surrey, BC, V3T 5X3
Canada
shaw at sfu. ca
Phone: +1 778 782-7506
Fax: +1 778 782-7488

Indians could take some lessons from US citizens who are fierce about their right to cyber privacy, says Ketan Tanna

]]> http://jcmurphy.wordpress.com/?p=116 Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:52:15 +0000 Jessica http://jcmurphy.wordpress.com/?p=116 THE POLITICS OF SHAKESPEARE

International Conference

18-20 December 2008: Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India

The Centre of Advanced Study in English, Jadavpur University, invites abstracts of papers for an International Conference on ‘The Politics of Shakespeare’, to be held on 18-20 December 2008. The conference is being
held with active participation from the Shakespeare Association of America, several of whose members are expected to attend. The purpose of the partnership is to open new Shakespearean exchanges between West and East.

The title has deliberately been left open, to cover both political themes and concerns in Shakespeare’s own plays, and the political implications (in the widest sense) of the study, staging and reception of Shakespeare.
Abstracts (maximum of 500 words) are invited for presentations in half-hour slots, affording 20 minutes paper-reading time plus ten minutes for questions and discussion.

Details of plenary sessions and a proposed panel discussion will be announced later.

We regret that we cannot offer travel assistance, but will provide hospitality over the days of the conference to most participants. Members of the SAA are requested to inform Lena Orlin, Executive Secretary, SAA, in
addition to the conference directors at Jadavpur.

Email abstracts by 30 August 2008 for responses by 15 September 2008, to the conference directors:

Amlan Das Gupta, amlan04_AT_gmail.com

or

Paromita Chakravarti, chakravarti6_AT_gmail.com

The conference will be held Sept 19, 20, and 21, 2008 at the University of
Wisconsin-Whitewater. We invite work in all areas relating to feminism and
feminist practices; anti-racist theory/practice; political theory and ethics; metaphysics and epistemology as well as papers, panels, and performances that engage feminist anti-racist praxis
and theorizing more broadly.

Midwest SWIP is an interdisciplinary conference with a particular emphasis on troubling the discipline of philosophy and the theory/practice dichotomy.

Queries and submissions should be sent via email to each of the following: Tinola Mayfield-Guerrero at tinolam AT yahoo.com and
Chris Gallagher at cgallag3 AT utnet.utoledo.edu

Please visit us at: http://blogs.uww.edu/midwestswip/

The deadline has been extended to August 1, 2008.

Cheers,
Tom

---

A workshop on the topic of "Culture and Cognition: An Enactive View" will be held in Bristol, UK on December 5th and 6th.

The purpose of this workshop is to help to develop a robust vocabulary and set of concepts that are capable of sustaining dialogue between researchers in cognitive systems, cognitive science, arts, media, and culture by using the insights and approaches of the enactive approach to cognition.

There is a website devoted to the workshop at http://cultureandcognition.ucd.ie.

Prospective participants can make their interest known by providing their email and a statement of interest at the website.

All interested parties can register to participate in forum discussions.

This workshop is funded by euCognition, and members will be able to claim participation costs under the usual euCognition rules (see http://www.eucognition.org for details).

Fred Cummins and Bill Sharpe
Workshop organizers

Cheers,
Tom

---

Hello everybody.

As agreed, we will be organizing in 2009 a new Summer School on Enaction and Cognitive Science which will take place from 21-30 July in Bangalore, India, in the buildings of the National Institute of
Advanced Studies (NIAS). You will find attached a very brief presentation of the project. The list of invited speakers is not yet finalized: for the moment we are contacting Arindam Chakrabarti
(University of Hawaii), Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad (University of Lancaster), Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (University of Oregon), Michel Bitbol (CREA, Paris).

We are deliberately sending you this message before the summer so that you will have time to consider your possible participation. The cost will be approximately 1500 euros (travel included), but this year we will probably not have financial support (although we are making some requests), so we will probably not be able to help you financially. In addition, we have not planned any particular selection of participants. However, since it is a School, if the requests are too numerous we will give priority to young scientists.

We would like to receive notice of your firm intention to participate by the end of September at the latest, and we will need a definite decision (with financial engagement) before the end of the year. Do
not hesitate to spread this information.

Meanwhile: have a good summer!
Olivier Gapenne

http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~zimmerth/rsse-2008

IMPORTANT DATES

Friday, July 25: position papers due
Friday, August 29: author notification
Friday, September 19: camera-ready copy due for accepted papers

THEMES AND GOALS

Recommendation systems for software engineering are tools that help
developers and managers to better cope with the huge amount of
information faced in today's software projects. They provide
developers with information to guide them in a number of activities
(e.g., software navigation, debugging, refactoring), or to alert them
of potential issues (e.g., conflicting changes, failure-inducing
changes, duplicated functionality). Similarly, managers get only to
see the information that is relevant to make a certain decision (e.g.,
bug distribution when allocating resources). Recommendation systems
can draw from a wide variety of input data, and benefit from different
types of analyses.

Although many recommendation systems have demonstrable usefulness and
usability in software engineering, a number of questions remain to be
discussed and investigated: What recommendations do developers and
managers actually need? How can we evaluate recommendations? Are there
fundamentally different kinds of recommenders? How can we integrate
recommendations from different sources? How can we protect the privacy
of developers? In this workshop, we will study advances in
recommendation systems, with a special focus on evaluation,
integration, and usability.

The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers and
practitioners with interest and experience in the elaboration and
evaluation of concepts, techniques, and tools for providing
recommendations to developers involved in software engineering tasks.

Specific areas of interests include, but are not limited to:
- Infrastructure of recommendation systems
- Application of techniques from artificial intelligence and
information retrieval
- Mining software artifacts for recommendations
- Recommendation systems for code reuse
- Recommendation systems for teams and managers
- Software navigation, debugging, refactoring, collaboration
- Evaluation of recommendation systems
- Benchmarks for recommendation systems
- Usability of recommendation systems
- Ethical issues such as privacy and behavioral shaping

SUBMISSIONS

Three kinds of submission are solicited: long position papers
(5-pages) presenting promising preliminary results and/or describing
tools; short position papers (2-pages) presenting novel ideas in the
formative stages; and position statements (1-page) where a stance or
idea of interest can be expressed. Some position papers will be
selected for regular presentations, others for a poster session.

All long and short position papers accepted to the workshop will be
published in the ACM Digital Library, unless the authors prefer not to
do so. All accepted position papers and position statements will be
made available to the attendees, regardless.

Submissions must be uploaded via the submission website at
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rsse2008 by July 25, 2008.

Moving World(s): Changes and Innovations in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Europe

The habit of dividing Time into centuries has often raised controversy due to its arbitrariness and imprecision. Rather than focus exclusively on the topic of disruption – entailing radical and exclusive positions – we have chosen to highlight the notion of continuity: what forms do the changes take at the end of the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the Renaissance, questioning the fixity of systems and more particularly the world picture and the schema of a central, immobile Earth?
Through historical documents, literary texts or works of art, this conference means to explore the expression of changes in various fields of studies so as to bring together scholars from apparently separate disciplines.

Suggested topics:
· work, economy and daily life: their concrete aspects and their specific vocable
· mobility, the representation and perception of space and territories
· technical innovations in the fields of art, architecture, literature
· Man facing changes and his relation to Time
· participation in public life; exploration of the intimate space as a form of “geographical meditation” (Jean-Marc Besse, Les Grandeurs de laTerre. Aspects du savoir géographique à la Renaissance, Lyon, ENS Éditions, 203, p. 309)

You are invited to submit a proposal for a 30-minute paper (in French or in English).
Deadline for proposals: 15 October 2008

Please contact:

Muriel Cunin: muriel.cunin1_at_libertysurf.fr

Martine Yvernault : martine.yvernault_at_unilim.fr

Shakespeare and Humanism
Sources of and Approaches to King Lear

The 44th International Congress on Medieval Studies (May 7-10, 2009) will take place at Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, Michigan).

Reading time for papers should be no more than twenty minutes. According to rules established by the Congress, those submitting abstracts for one session may not submit abstracts for other sessions in the same year.

Email submissions are encouraged. Please include home and office phone numbers, complete mailing address, and e-mail address along with your abstract. If you need equipment, let us know now.

Maximum length of abstract: 500 words.
Deadline for abstracts: 15 September 2008. This deadline is absolute.

Please direct questions and abstracts to:

Martine van Elk

mvanelk_at_csulb.edu

We are soliciting academic papers for an anthology on feminism and fashion. Fashion is a powerful way we express our politics, personalities, and preferences for who and how we love. Yet fashion can also repress freedom and sexual expression. Fashion encourages profound creativity, rebellion, and defiant self-definition while simultaneously controlling and disciplining the body. Fashion signals resistance to sexual morés and it can also promote a problematic consumer culture. Fashion creates collective identity, but also constrains individual voice. In other words, fashion contains the paradoxical potential for pleasure and subjugation, expression and conformity.

This book explores the productive tensions generated by fashion and style. We are interested in essays that take up questions of gender with special attention to race, class, sexuality, age, and ethnicity. This collection blends theory and pop culture analysis in exciting ways, focusing on contemporary trends and controversies.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

• Theories of agency, style, and the presentation of self
• Performing identity: race, class, gender and sexuality through style
• Consumerist pleasure and anxiety
• Fashion production in the context of global capital and trade
• Bois, grrls, trannies and styles of queerness
• Hardcore, metro, punk, and khakis: constructing masculinities through fashion
• Body art and ethnic appropriations
• Debates in plastic surgery and re-fashioning the body
• Class identity and decorating domestic space
• Feminist fashion: debates over style and politics
• The ethics of green production and marketing
• Everyday pornography and fashion fetish
• Virtual style and online identities
• Material culture and craft in a postmodern world
• Slumming and radical chic: tensions of authenticity and irony
• Vintage and thrift fashion: nostalgia and class signifiers
• DIY Style: fashion off the corporate grid

Deadline for abstracts is August 15, 2008.

Format for abstracts: Word document, double-spaced, between 300 and 500 words. Include contact information and short bio.

Send to: FashionBook1@yahoo.com

Shira Tarrant
Assistant Professor, Women’s Studies Department
California State University, Long Beach

and

Marjorie Jolles
Assistant Professor, Women’s & Gender Studies Program
Roosevelt University

Michelle and I met a few years ago when Phoenix Woman magazine did an article on women and finances. She never cringed when she learned of my challenges and I learned a lot from her. I'm proud to have her as a client and believe she stands out from the other CFPs by really honing in on a client's emotions and needs behind their money and savings.

PHOENIX WOMAN TO CHANGE PERCEPTION OF FINANCIAL PLANNING

PHOENIX, AZ - Michelle Evard, CFP and founder of Evard Financial Advisors, PLLC is on a mission to change the perceptions of financial planning and the way people feel about their money. She believes that people can meet their finances with excitement and fun rather than dread and fear. Education and advice are needed, not products to build wealth in a slow economy. Her plan is to find solutions by honing in on a client’s wants, needs and emotions about money. Evard understands that gender and background also play a role in how a client views finances.

Evard’s strong values and holistic approach to serving clients sets her apart from others in her field. “We are dealing with people’s livelihoods and the money they worked their entire lives to save up, said Evard. “You should be paying for advice, information and experience, not for a ‘wealth-building’ product like most companies try to sell you.”

Because everyone has different lifestyles and financial responsibilities, Michelle refuses to use the “one-size-fits-all” approach.  She uses her financial expertise to walk clients through the process, providing options that meet their unique needs.  Michelle also gives in depth explanations and takes time to carefully respond to her client’s questions and concerns.

Evard Financial Advisors, PLLC create flexibility by offering three financial investment programs. Each program is customized to meet an individual’s needs and is based on the complexity of each situation. 

The Fee for Plan program is designed for clients who wish to handle their own investments, but would like the guidance of a financial plan to assist them in making decisions.

The Asset Management program is for clients who would like Evard Financial Advisors, PLLC to manage their accounts and investments.

A client also has the option of paying an hourly rate for advice.  Fees are competitive and negotiable and the initial consultation is free.

Evard Financial Advisors, PLLC offers a comprehensive range of services to meet client needs. They provide individuals, families and corporate clients with the expertise needed when making financial decisions to assist in managing finances. They offer professional advice for savings & investments, retirement plans, insurance coverage, tax, social security, educational planning and estate organization and 401(k) consulting. Visit http://www.mefinancial.net or call 480. 203. 3880 for more information.

The field of World History has been a growing area of scholarship and education over the last three decades. In focusing on the global impact and implications of colonialism, imperialism, the mercantile and industrial revolutions, as well as revolutionary resistance from the early-modern period to the present, World History provides a framework for understanding international capitalism, contemporary politics, and the relationship between economic systems and the dynamics of diverse societies.

This conference will examine the relationship between the historical roots of World History and its contemporary social, political, economic, and cultural dimensions. We invite paper submissions on a range of topics related to World History and Historical Materialism and encourage papers on the following themes:

• Class and Global Developments
• Authoritarian Capitalism and Human Rights
• Empire, Imperialism, and Neocolonialism
• Political Economy of Gender and Sexuality in Global Contexts
• Revolution and World History
• History of Communism and the International Left
• Postcolonialism, Eurocentrism and the Politics of World History
• Global Finance and Neo-Imperialism
• Race and Racism in World History
• Labor, Work, and the History of Migration
• Democratic and Popular Resistance to Global Capitalism

Confirmed Plenary Speakers: Bruce Cumings (University of Chicago), Karen Dubinsky (Queen’s University), Rosemary Hennessy (Rice University), Rebecca Karl (New York University), Hyun Ok Park (York University), Mary Poovey (New York University).

We welcome individual submissions as well as panel proposals. For individual papers, please send a 250-word abstract and a one-page CV (maximum); for panel proposals please send a 250-word panel abstract along with a 250-word paper abstract and one-page CV for each presenter.

Proposals can be submitted by email, fax, or mail to:
Tina Chen (chentm@ms.umanitoba.ca) / David Churchill (d_churchill@umanitoba.ca)
Department of History
UniversityCollege
Universityof Manitoba
Winnipeg, Manitoba
R3T 2M8
Canada

Fax: 204-474-7914

Travel subsidies may be available for graduate students who present papers at the conference.

Deadline for submission of proposals: October 1, 2008

Hosted by the Interdisciplinary Research Circle on Globalization and Cosmopolitanism and the Department of History at the University of Manitoba.
www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/history/research_circle/events.htm