Quotes from Cathy N. Davidson

I began to wonder if writers don't choose to love long-distance, a sure way of blending passion and prose. The love letter seems perfectly suited to the contradiction of a writer's life... the love letter may be the emblem of a vocation that demands solitude but desires communication.

The new education must prepare our students to thrive in a world of flux, to be ready no matter what comes next. It must empower them to be leaders of innovation and to be able not only to adapt to a changing world but also to change the world.

Relatedly, an increasingly horizontal structure of learning puts pressure on how learning institutions-schools,

Our argument here is that our institutions of learning have changed far more slowly than the modes of inventive, collaborative, participatory learning offered by the Internet and an array of contemporary mobile technologies.

because of the collaborative opportunities offered by social networking sites, wikis, blogs, and many other interactive digital sources. But beneath these sites are networks and, sometimes,

University of California, Irvine, Professor of Art and Engineering, Codirector of Arts, Computation, and Engineering (ACE) Program Kavita Philip University of California, Irvine, Associate Professor of Women's Studies, Anthropology, and Arts, Computation, and Engineering (ACE) Program Todd Presner University

others met (if at all) only virtually, whose institutional status

we are part of many institutions.

year (and still remains there) inviting comments by anyone registered to the site. An innovative digital tool, called Commentpress, allowed any reader to open a comment box for any paragraph of the text and to type in a response, and

to create learning institutions on new participatory models and offers a bibliography of models and examples of pioneering institutions that already are making the first steps at creating new learning networks.2 In the online version of our book, URLs will point one directly to sites where one can find out more about a number of innovative participatory learning experiments and institutions. Although the scope of our main

of bandwidth and other infrastructure far from universally available as well as issues of censorship in

there is certainly a greater degree of fluidity and access to participation than at traditional educational institutions.' So we re-ask our question: Are these Internet sites "learning institutions"? And, if so, what do these institutions tell us about the more traditional learning institutions such as schools, universities, graduate schools?

traditional institutions on almost every level: hierarchy

Zoe Marie Jones, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke University, joined this project in

organizational charts and well-defined legal structures. What is the relationship between the quite traditional nonprofit corporation headquartered in San Francisco and the free, open, multilingual, online, global community of volunteers? Is the "institution" the sustaining organization, the

linked to SMARTBoards in every classroom and networked so that assignments and notes can be accessed even from home. The building itself is also unique in its holistic approach. Rainwater is caught and repurposed for use in toilets, the roof is covered with vegetation to shield it from ultraviolet rays, panels embedded within the windows capture

based on natural lighting and atmospheric conditions, and sensors in all the rooms turn lights on and off depending on whether the space is being used. In short, the School of the Future incorporates many innovations but also has high-tech interactivity that borders on extreme surveillance

ways that digitality works to cross the boundaries within and across traditional learning institutions. How do collaborative, interdisciplinary, multi-institutional learning spaces help to transform traditional

current research on how young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. The Reports result from research projects funded by the MacArthur Foundation as part of its $50 million

socialize, and participate in civic life. The Reports result from research projects funded by the MacArthur Foundation as part of its $50 million initiative

April 21, 2007, at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, at Electronic Techtonics: Thinking at the Interface, the first international HASTAC conference; and on May 11, 2007, at the University of California's Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI), in Irvine, California.

appreciation of the profundity of what the Internet offers humanity as a model of a learning institution. To initiate and exemplify

Anderson's The Long Tail

doctoral candidate in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke University, joined this project in the Fall of 2007. Collaboration (especially with so many participants) is an enormous