Conversations about (new) literacies

Posted on April 8, 2009 by Doug Belshaw

As regular readers of this blog know, I’m (still!) studying towards my Ed.D. on the subject of ‘digital literacies’. The subject crops up in various networks of which I’m part from time-to-time, not least via my Twitter network.

Twitter only allows 140 characters which can be a little limiting sometimes and tweets are hard to collate and archive. As a result, I decided we needed a old-skool forum. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you:

literacyconversation.org

It’s powered by bbPress, the sibling of the excellent WordPress (which powers this blog). It was super-easy to setup and there’s already some first-class debate and conversation going on. Head on over and take part! 😀

Eee-aye, eee-aye, eee-aye… oh.

Posted on March 24, 2008 by Doug Belshaw

Last Sunday I managed to track down an Asus eee. There’s been a lot of hype about these little laptops with their 7″ screens. I was all prepared to starting writing a review of how useful mine’s been when… it’s stopped working.

Well, that’s not strictly true. It still works. It’s just that the left mouse button, which is on a kind of rocker switch beneath the trackpad, has stopped working. If I plug in a USB mouse it works fine – but that’s not the point, is it?

So it will be going back tomorrow. It would seem I’m not the only one with this problem. Something to do with leaving it running and overheating. Me? Using a laptop too much? Shurely not… 😉

Update: After 45 minutes in Toys ‘R’ Us (yes, that’s where I bought it from – nowhere else had any in stock!) I got a replacement. The only one they had left was the display model. I took it as it’s in good condition and actually the 701 model. This means that it’s easier to overclock and upgrade! Oh, and I also managed to wangle a £10 gift voucher. 😀