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Brown's class was discussing some of the whaling calculations in Moby Dick. When one student asked a question involving a complex computation, three students quickly pulled out their cell phones and did the math. Brown was surprised to learn that most cell phones have a built-in calculator. She was even more surprised at how literate her students were with the many functions included in their phones. She took a quick poll and found that all her students either had a cell phone or easy access to one. In fact, students became genuinely engaged in a class discussion about phone features. This got Brown thinking about how she might incorporate this technology into learning activities.

Brown noticed that many students used text messaging to communicate, and considered how she might use cell phones in summarizing and analyzing text to help her students better understand Richard III. Effective summarizing is one of the most powerful skills students can cultivate. It provides students with tools for identifying the most important aspects of what they are learning, especially when teachers use a frame of reference (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). Summarizing helps students identify critical information. Research shows gains in reading comprehension when students learn how to incorporate isummary framesi (series of questions designed to highlight critical passages) as a tool for summarizing (Meyer & Freedle, 1984). When students use this strategy, they are better able to understand what they are reading, identify key information, and provide a summary that helps them retain the information (Armbruster, Anderson, & Ostertag, 1987).

To manage the learning project, Brown asked a tech-savvy colleague to help her build a simple weblog. Once it was set up, it took Brown and her students 10 minutes in the school's computer lab to learn how to post entries. The weblog was intentionally basic. The only entries were selected passages from text of Richard III and Brown's six narrative-framing questions. Her questions deliberately focused students' attention on key passages. If students could understand these passages well enough to summarize them, Brown knew that their comprehension of the play would increase.

TOKYO (AP) - Cell-phone use has become so rampant among Japanese youngsters that the government is getting involved

valuable tool for the visually impaired

Easy 10-Step Setup Guide for Text-to-Speech Conversion

My session, which explored the meaning and significance of “digital humanities,” also featured rich, engaging presentations by Edward Vanhoutte on the history of humanities computing and John Walsh on comparing alchemy and digital humanities.

I wondered: What is digital scholarship, anyway?  What does it take to produce digital scholarship? What kind of digital resources and tools are available to support it? To what extent do these resources and tools enable us to do research more productively and creatively? What new questions do these tools and resources enable us to ask? What’s challenging about producing digital scholarship? What happens when scholars share research openly through blogs, institutional repositories, & other means?

I decided to investigate these questions by remixing my 2002 dissertation as a work of digital scholarship.  Now I’ll acknowledge that my study is not exactly scientific—there is a rather subjective sample of one.  However, I figured, somewhat pragmatically, that the best way for me to understand what digital scholars face was to do the work myself.