[pn] personal and professional update

[Mark Warschauer]

Dear friends and colleagues:

I wanted to take a few moments to update people both professionally 
and personally.

I've taken most of the summer off from professional work due to the 
birth of our second son, Danny.  As you many of you know, Danny was 
born in June with a number of special challenges.  He is home with us 
and doing extremely well.  Those of you who want to follow Danny's 
development, and hopefully over time learn more about children's 
development with Down syndrome, are welcome to visit the blog, Ocean 
and Stars.  (Note: if you are visiting or linking to this blog, 
please use the address http://oceanandstars.com.  I originally 
provided a different URL on this list, but that was just a temporary 
placeholder and I would prefer that the new URL be used now.)

I am now gradually getting back into work, with a number of projects 
on tap.  I have recently updated my professional Website to add or 
update 4-5 papers published over the last year 
(http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw/papers.html).  This year, a team of us 
at UCI will continue our case study research on laptops and literacy. 
I eventually expect to work on a book on this topic as well as a 
number of papers (the first will be coming out in a special issue of 
the journal, System, this December).  We are also continuing our 
third year of research on a National Science Funded project to 
establish a virtual reality classroom for the teaching of engineering 
at UCI.  Finally, I am working with others to prepare a proposal for 
a new doctoral program in education at UCI.  So, for those of you who 
are interested in applying for a Ph.D. here, I hope that we will be 
able to offer more opportunities in that regard in the coming years.

As for Papyrus News, I want to thank Steve McCarthy for his 
outstanding work in taking over the day-to-day editorial leadership 
of the list over the past year and on an ongoing basis.  I am 
investigating the possibility of moving Papyrus News to a blog 
format, as the management of an email list has become increasingly 
cumbersome in the era of spam and viruses.  This may take some time, 
as the blogging site I now use, via Typepad (for the Ocean and Stars 
blog), is currently blocked in China, and I would prefer to seek a 
solution that is available to my Chinese colleagues and friends.  I'm 
sure there are commercial variants possible, but we are also in the 
process of installing our own server for blogs in my department, and 
perhaps we'll eventually gravitate PN to that.  In the meantime, I've 
asked Steve to continuing to edit the Papyrus News email list, and he 
has graciously agreed to do so.

Finally, Keiko and I would like to thank you all for the support that 
so many of you have offered during the difficult trials that we have 
gone through over the past year.  In many cases, that has come via 
email, letters, or other forms of direct communication.  For many 
others of you, it has come through the quiet thoughts of concern in 
your hearts--and, believe me, we feel those as well.  Thank you so 
much, from the bottom of our hearts.

Best wishes to all for a happy and productive season and year.

Mark Warschauer
September 1, 2004
http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw