LitSciMed's Social Space

Dear LitSciMeders,

Please post your 500 word descriptions with, if at all possible, a picture of your object on your social space blogs. If you’re unable to do so they can be emailed to s.ruston@salford.ac.uk, but if you have a blog, please use it for this.

Can you also please fill in an evaluation form? These can be found at http://tinyurl.com/yev4usr

All best,
LitSciMed

Dear LitSciMedders,

I have an exciting new development to announce – one that I hope you’ll participate in no matter where you are in the world!

I’m going to interview Dr. Peter Buse [link to his paper and slidecast]about his work on Polaroid live on the social space. All you need is a computer which has sound on it (a headset with microphone is even better) and during the interview you’ll be able to ask questions (either by typing or asking verbally). I’ll be asking Peter about his work in the history of technology, about what it’s like to work on a soon-to-be defunct invention, and about why Polaroid so captures our imaginations. All you need to do is to be around and near a computer on Monday 8th March from 4-5pm.

The session will take place on an online platfom: Elluminate. It is an easy to use and powerful environment allowing participants to exchange and develop ideas though audio, written chat and a shared whiteboard. The platform works on all major operating systems – including Windows, Apple and Linux.

To join the session on the 8th of March (4pm UK time) simply click here. You will be asked to provide a valid email address to join the session. We will open the room one hour ahead of time, so we are able to assist participants with any last minute technical glitches.

Dear LitSciMed,

Here is a link to Scott Brewster’s text of his paper on ‘Psychoanalysis, Medicine and Social Pathology’, which was originally billed for the residential training course but was not given because of the snow. Here too is the audio of his talk:

I hope that we can still have a good discussion of the ideas contained here using the discussion group with the same name.

Best,

Sharon

Charlotte Sleigh (University of Kent) gave a plenary lecture at the first event of the LitSciMed doctoral training programme on Monday 4th January 2010. You can listen to it or download it here. Link to Charlotte Sleigh – Plenary Session Podcast can be found below.

You can download the mp3 file here [click with right hand button of the mouse and select 'save link as']

Cristiano Turbil gave a presentation on his research at the first event of the LitSciMed programme on Tuesday 5th January 2010. You can listen to it or download it here.

Jackie Mountain gave a presentation on her research at the first event of the LitSciMed programme on Tuesday 5th January 2010. You can listen to it below.

In order to make your participation in the LitSciMed project more prominent, we have created a couple of communication channels, which you are welcome to contribute to.

These include:

A youtube group, to which you can submit your own videos. [how to...]

A photosharing group on Flickr, which will aggregate photos taken during the LitSciMed workshops and related events [how to...].

The LitSciMed Consortium has also a Flickr presence, where  pictures related with the project will be shared.

Courtesy of DrewBuddie
Original Photo available here

A Slideshare presence will also be established [as soon as slideshare resumes its activity… ]. It will be used to collect presentations and other resources used during the LitSciMed events. Feel free to add your presentations on to it too.

Please, remember to observe the copyright guidelines regarding the use of third party pictures.

Finally, tag your content with ‘LitSciMed’ and any other relevant key words, so it becomes easier to find.

Shall you have any questions or suggestions, don’t hesitate to contact Cristina.

Hi everyone,

It’s great that so many people have joined this social space already. It’s starting to generate some interesting ideas and conversations, and will develop further over time. We announced the names of those who were given places for the first training event earlier this week, and I’m sorry that a number of you will not be attending the event in person. We’d like the social space to work as a replacement for face-to-face teaching and to accompany training events if you were lucky enough to get a place.

This social space offers you the opportunity to publicise your research, make friends and contacts, discuss issues, your reading, and your ideas, and generally for us to create and maintain a network of scholars interested in the various intersections that we find between literature, science and medicine.

I encourage you all to blog about your research projects and findings, send messages to other members or write on their wire, join and create groups, discuss and comment on others’ ideas. If you have any trouble using the social space, there is a tutorial here, or you can email Cristina Costa (our Learning Technologies Officer) on c.mendesdacosta[@]salford.ac.uk.

When the first event takes place (4-8 January 2010) we will be sending videos, slidecasts, podcasts, blog posts and discussions to this social space, and feeding back comments from the social space into the event. We already have a reading list on our website. This links to the some of the reading in full-text versions which can be read online.

To get things started, I’d like everyone to try one of the following methods to tell other members about their research project:

• Blogposts,
• Three-minute video, using your mobile phone, a webcam, or youtube (we will create a youtube channel where you can upload them)
• 10 photos to Photostory your project, using your own digital camera and/or other images (you can link to Flickr to find Creative Commons images, ie shared files that can be used, reused and remixed by third parties ), and use a Scrapblog or a photostory software (windows only) to create a short presentation) [alternatively you can use MovieMaker (PC) or iMovie (Apple) and upload your finished resource to a video channel as Youtube]
• A three-minute podcast (you can use handybits or  Audacity [tutorial] for this, or even your computer’s audio recorder software)
• A 10 slide powerpoint (you can use Slideshare for this) [tutorial available here]
• A three-minute slidecast/ Postercast (you can use Voicethread for this) [tutorial available here]

[remember that if you are using images found on the web, you need to be aware of copyright restrictions; there is information about this here]

I’ve chosen to do a photostory using the gallery function of flikr.com, about the book I’m writing at the moment (tentatively called Science and the Romantic Imagination).

If you can do this by Monday 21st December, we’ll have some interesting stuff to look at before the first event. Cristina Costa is happy for you to get in touch for ideas and technical support.

I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

All best,

Sharon Ruston