mLearning eBook, illustrations available

As the end of the year approaches, I decided, well, to write this blog post. Grades have been turned in, the semester is officially over, and here I am churning through a few papers and chapters that won’t see the light of day until sometime in 2015, as well as an upcoming London presentation for early in January and a workshop in Finland in February. And yes, the thesis is coming along as well.

Before the weight of that writing really sets in, I wanted to take a moment to wish you all a wonderful 2015. I am in a good place in my life. My wife is my best friend, I teach and write and think, and a few projects that I have been spending some time with over the last six months seem to have gained some traction, which means I might be talking about them soon. Life is good and I am thankful. I do understand that 2014 has been less than kind to others, some dear to me, so I am humbled by my good fortune. To those struggling, my love and all my positive energy I launch into the ether, hopeful it might find you in a better place.

It also dawned on me that the ebook I wrote last year has probably run its commercial course, so I am making it free here for any and all who want it. The name of the book is “Incessant Motion Through Space: Field Activities in the Humanities with Mobile Technology.” There are parts that I shudder a bit to think that I wrote, but overall it was meant as a book for teachers wanting to perform some field activity with mobile technology. It is meant for them, and for lifelong learners wanting to do these things for themselves; it really isn’t anything approaching scholarship as such. It is specific to the humanities, but there are countless resources out there for similar learning activities with the sciences, the field sciences in particular. In fact, I got much of my inspiration for all of this from a project dedicated to botany that I worked on for years and years. So that caveat aside, it is available off to the right as ePub, and below as the following:

• ePub Version (for most E-readers)
• Mobi Version (for you Kindle/Amazon users out there)
• PDF Version (for those who can’t be bothered with either of these formats)

I made this book available with the following Creative Commons license, if only to avoid the scenario I had before where someone tried to bundle up a few papers freely available via open access journals, including one of my own, and sell it as an ebook via Amazon.I simply hate the thought of someone buying what is essentially free, so hence the non-commercial parameter of the CC license.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Carrying on in this festive way, I am also making available, care of my sister, Jennifer Gallagher (architect, designer, sibling, etc.) the illustrations created for the ebook. These are being licensed under the following Creative Commons license, so please attribute as suggested.

This work by Jennifer Gallagher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

The original photographs that Jen worked with on these are referenced in the ebook itself (some of which are collaged at the beginning of this post), so be sure to give that a look for a proper understanding of where they come from. All historical photographs, to the best of my research, were from the public domain (which interestingly Creative Commons has retired as a distinction), but that was murky in one case. Some were, to the best of my knowledge, orphan works so proceed with caution. All completely hand drawn images are Jen’s and all modern ones (London, New York, Paris) were my original photographs.

• Final Illustrations for Incessant Motion Through Space

So there you go. All my best for 2015.