The Long Road

The Long Road The Public Philosophy Journal

365 in 2013

As the year comes to a close, so too does my 365 in 2013 picture a day project. The purpose of the project was to cultivate habits of mindfulness. Each day I set myself the…

Christopher LongDecember 31, 2013

Technology The Long Road

Keynote Tweet, Mavericks and Keynote v6

If you are, as I am, in the habit of live-tweeting your own lectures using Keynote and the Applescript Keynote Tweet 2.5, originally created by Toby Harris and subsequently updated by @cogdog, you will need…

Christopher LongDecember 26, 2013

Living LwCH The Long Road

Anticipation

Excitement abounds here in the Long household as preparations are made for the arrival of Santa. At 9- and 8-years old, the girls are at that prime age when Christmas is long anticipated and full…

Christopher LongDecember 24, 2013

Living LwCH The Long Road

Evening Sledding

It was dark before I got around to shoveling the walkway. The girls were excited to be outside, but I had a chore to complete. They wanted to go sledding, so they started down the…

Christopher LongDecember 8, 2013

The Peer Review Coordinator and the Collegiality Index

As we sought to map out the design and functionality of the PPJ with colleagues at Matrix a few weeks ago, we began to suggest how a disciplinary economy of an open peer review might be navigated…

Christopher LongNovember 27, 2013

The Long Road The Public Philosophy Journal

The Disciplinary Economy of Open Peer Review

There seems to be widespread skepticism that peer review without anonymity can be both rigorous and fair. This post thinks through the dynamics of an open peer review process and suggests that both rigor and…

Christopher LongNovember 18, 2013

The Administrative Life The Long Road

Toward a Deliberative University Public

I have always sought to integrate my philosophical commitments into my administrative life. So, when Noëlle McAfee came to campus to deliver a paper entitled, "Deliberation and the Affective Dimensions of Public Will-formation," I found…

Christopher LongNovember 13, 2013

Technology The Long Road

Technology in the Practice of Philosophy

This summer two colleagues, Marina McCoy and Adriel Trott, asked me if I had a short video about my use of technology as a professor of philosophy. At the time, I didn't. But their requests…

Christopher LongNovember 6, 2013

The Administrative Life The Long Road

General Education Reform and the Art of Listening

By the time we took the stage as the final panel of the day, we had heard the voices of expert educators, faculty, administrators, employers and alums speak about the value and importance of general…

Christopher LongNovember 3, 2013

Academic Grants, Fellowships, Awards The Long Road

The End of the Beginning and the Path Ahead for @PubPhilJ

On Friday, October 4th, we received the good news that the Mellon Foundation's Scholarly Communications and Information Technology program will provide $236K to support the development of the Public Philosophy Journal (PPJ, aka @PubPhilJ). The grant marks the end of…

Christopher LongOctober 18, 2013

The Liberal Arts The Long Road

Music, Philosophy and the Liberal Arts

On the day he was to die, we find Socrates writing poetry. This is very strange because Socrates generally chose not to write, opting instead to engage in dialogue with those he encountered in and…

Christopher LongSeptember 9, 2013

Education The Liberal Arts The Long Road The Undergraduate Experience

Beginning Again with the Liberal Arts

The rhythm of the academic year returns us again to the beginning. State College is charged with energy as parents drop off their children, some for the first time, and students turn and return to…

Christopher LongAugust 24, 2013

Digital Research The Long Road

The Digital Research Circle Completed

In April 2010, I began blogging about closing the digital research circle. The iPad had just been released and I had just moved from Endnote to Zotero to take advantage of its ability to share…

Christopher LongAugust 8, 2013

Books The Evolving Book The Long Road

The Evolving Book: Building into the CBO

The CBO is Cambridge Books Online, the electronic books platform for Cambridge University Press (CUP). This is the platform into which Mike Chaplin and a team of programmers working for CUP will build the Socratic and…

Christopher LongAugust 6, 2013

Books Digital Humanities The Evolving Book The Long Road

The Evolving Book: Introduction

As my book, Socratic and Platonic Political Philosophy: Practicing a Politics of Reading, goes officially into editorial production on the print side of Cambridge University Press, I have started to work with Mike Chaplin on…

Christopher LongAugust 4, 2013

Academic Digital Humanities The Long Road

Cultivating the Virtues of DH

Last week humanities scholars from around the world descended upon Lincoln, Nebraska for DH2013, the annual international conference of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations. It was my first time at the DH conference and…

Christopher LongJuly 26, 2013

Digital Humanities The Long Road

Performative Publication

New affordances in dynamic modes of digital scholarly communication have enabled authors to tailor the content of our texts to the forms in which they appear in public. The diversity of ways it is now…

Christopher LongJuly 19, 2013

Education The Liberal Arts The Long Road

Speaking about the Liberal Arts in China

NANJING, China - One of the challenges we face in higher education in the United States is how to ensure the academic success of the many new international students from China our universities are welcoming…

Christopher LongMay 21, 2013

Collaborative Note Taking on @Twitter

As many of you know, I have long been experimenting with how to use twitter effectively in academic contexts. Many are skeptical of twitter's ability to add substantive value to academic conversations because of its…

Christopher LongApril 7, 2013

What is Public Philosophy?

As we begin to articulate the contours of the Public Philosophy Journal, some account of the meaning of the public philosophy the journal intends to practice may help us continue to cultivate the community on…

Christopher LongFebruary 20, 2013

Education The Liberal Arts The Long Road

The Humanities, Stitched

If, as Michael Bérubé suggested today in his Chronicle of Higher Education article "The Humanities, Unraveled," the situation in the humanities is "a seamless garment of crisis: If you pull on any one thread, the…

Christopher LongFebruary 18, 2013

Education Technology The Long Road

Research and the Penn State Vision

The Long Road at the BWVision On Saturday, January 19, 2013, I joined administrators, staff and members of the Penn State Board of Trustees for the Blue and White Vision Council Seminar at the Nittany…

Christopher LongJanuary 24, 2013

This Day is Broken

6/365: Grandparents Clock Originally uploaded by cplong11 Today is Mack Brady's birthday; he would have turned 9. His father has recently written eloquently, even in his grief, about the theological questions the senseless death of…

Christopher LongJanuary 16, 2013

Education Technology The Long Road The Undergraduate Experience

One Week

Statuesque Originally uploaded by Targuman When the Collegian asked me to comment on the scholarship established in honor of Mack Brady for the article they published today, they could not integrate all I had written.…

Christopher LongJanuary 7, 2013

Digital Research The Long Road

Research Cycle Returns to Zotero

Even as I press to finish an article on dogs and wolves in Plato's Republic for a volume entitled "Plato's Animals" edited by Michael Naas, it is worth returning for a moment to our ongoing…

Christopher LongDecember 31, 2012

Education Technology The Long Road

Initial Reflections on MOOCs and the College Curriculum

Villemard 1910 - En L'An 2000 - At School Originally uploaded by amphalon As the debate over Massively Open Online Courses, also known by their unfortunate acronym: MOOC, rages on, I thought I would begin…

Christopher LongDecember 19, 2012

Twitter, Community and the First Year Experience

Words do things. What they do, depends on the manner in which they are said, written and received. What they did, and failed to do, last night is something that requires some reflection. That is…

Christopher LongNovember 29, 2012

DancinGirl Turns 7, Ponders Finitude

As we pulled into our driveway after running errands preparing for her Monster High birthday party, DancinGirl, who was generally excited about the day, announced that she has been thinking a lot, recently, about death.…

Christopher LongNovember 11, 2012

Civic Life The Long Road

On Canvassing, Four Years Later

Today, the girls and I, along with my colleague, Dan Letwin, and his son, Nick, took to the local streets to canvass for Barack Obama as we did four years ago. A lot has changed…

Christopher LongNovember 4, 2012

Academic Technology The Long Road

On Live-Tweeting Your Own Lecture

On Thursday, October 25th, at 4:30 PDT, I will read a paper entitled, Plato and the Politics of Reading at the University of San Francisco. One of the main points of the paper is that reading is fundamentally a…

Christopher LongOctober 20, 2012

Books The Evolving Book The Long Road

The Book As Ecosystem of Scholarly Dialogue

Consider this an invitation to continue along a path we have traversed together over the past three years. This path, which began in the wake of my 2009 Summer Faculty Teaching and Learning with Technology Fellowship,…

Christopher LongJune 25, 2012

Digital Research The Long Road

Sente, Mendeley, Zotero: Too Many Sharp Tools

As spring rolls into summer, it is time for another appraisal of my digital research ecosystem. For a brief history of my reflections on digital scholarly research, I invite you to take a ride on…

Christopher LongJune 5, 2012

Education LwCH The Long Road

Literacy in Bloom

DancinGirl has fallen in love with words. Actually, she has always loved to play with words, singing, rhyming, mimicking. But now her love of the verbal has exploded into literacy. She is reading voraciously; book…

Christopher LongMay 29, 2012

Education The Long Road

Plutarch and Digital Learning

Villemard 1910 - En L'An 2000 - At School Originally uploaded by amphalon My most recent blog post over on the Wonders and Marvels blog considers what Plutarch has to teach us about teaching and…

Christopher LongMay 17, 2012

Multiplayer Introduction Game

At the 2012 Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium at Penn State, I had the honor of introducing Jane McGonigal, Creative Director of Social Chocolate, and game designer extraordinaire. In his book, The Grasshopper, Bernard…

Christopher LongMarch 24, 2012

Education Technology The Long Road The Undergraduate Experience

Complementarity

LITCHFIELD, SC - Vacation can be a time for moments of insight and tenderness. One such moment came this week for me at a restaurant here in South Carolina called Studio Café. (You can see…

Christopher LongDecember 30, 2011

Liberal Arts Voices Hanging Out on Google

Student Panel at LASTS11 Originally uploaded by LAUSatPSU On Wednesday, September 28th at 4pm eastern, we in the Liberal Arts Undergraduate Studies office will take another step out into the great technological unknown by recording…

Christopher LongSeptember 27, 2011

For DancinGirl on Her First Day of Kindergarten

Dear DancinGirl: Do you know why I call you DancinGirl when I write about you here? It is because, from the moment I met you, now almost six years ago, you were dancing. At first,…

Christopher LongAugust 30, 2011

Education LwCH The Long Road

The Untimely Death of a Preschool

St. Andrew's Preschool Originally uploaded by cplong11 It happened without warning, without any hint that the end was at hand. Suddenly, there it was: May 27th, the day after the last day of the preschool…

Christopher LongJune 10, 2011

Academic Living The Long Road Travel

Learning the Art of Relaxation

STONE HARBOR, NJ - Just midway through my week vacation, I am beginning to learning the art of relaxation. As a faculty member, when the semester of teaching is over, a span of summer begins…

Christopher LongJune 1, 2011

Digital Research Technology The Long Road

Summer Research in Digital

This summer John Dolan, Director of Digital Media and Pedagogy, and I are heading up a summer digital research project in the College of the Liberal Arts. For a description of the project, check out…

Christopher LongMay 19, 2011

Image of a wave breaking in the ocean with two figures to the right, a father and a daughter. The father, in a baseball cap, is lifting the daughter over the wave as it breaks. The foam of earlier waves are in the foreground. It is a relatively overcast day.

The Long Road The Undergraduate Experience

Beginning in Wonder

Aristotle, of course, famously said: "For it is by way of wondering that people both now and at first began to philosophize ..." (Metaphysics, I.2, 982b13-4). Tonight, ArtGirl began to philosophize. She wondered so eloquently…

Christopher LongMarch 26, 2011

Transformative Education

I first met Ruth Canagarajah in an honors course I taught a few years ago. She already struck me then as a thoughtful, engaged and creative student. She wrote an excellent paper for that course…

Christopher LongMarch 1, 2011

Civic Life Education The Long Road

Deliberative Dialogue

Deliberative Democracy Flash Forum Panel Originally uploaded by cplong11 This image captures a poignant moment in the Flash Forum in Response to the Arizona Shootings held by the Center for Democratic Deliberation on January 21…

Christopher LongJanuary 22, 2011

Evolving Digital Research Ecosystem

Final Edits Originally uploaded by cplong11 In the months since my last posts on using Mendeley, Zotero and the iPad for academic research, my experience has been more fully informed by practice. This fall I was…

Christopher LongDecember 27, 2010

The Arrival of the Book

CpL Holding the Book Originally uploaded by cplong11 Today I received a box, and in that box were six objects with a certain degree of heft, a solidity I did not quite expect. The objects…

Christopher LongNovember 17, 2010

The Big Oh-Five

Little Girl by a Little Girl Originally uploaded by cplong11 Today is DancinGirl's birthday and it has been a day of well, dancing. And on Saturday, at her princess dance party, we will dance some…

Christopher LongNovember 11, 2010

Living LwCH The Long Road

Letting Jelly Dog Go

On Sunday, ArtGirl stood in front of the mirror looking at herself. I noticed two things: she seemed bigger to me and she was not holding her favorite stuffed animal, Jelly Dog. It was then…

Christopher LongAugust 26, 2010

Living Technology The Long Road

Prosthetic Gods

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud writes: With every tool man is perfecting his own organs, whether motor or sensory, or is removing the limits to their functioning (43). The passage touches on something I…

Christopher LongJuly 27, 2010

Light in Motion

Four Running 2 Originally uploaded by cplong11 My father taught me to appreciate the subtle joys of photography back before everything went digital. In our basement darkroom, we used to develop the black and white…

Christopher LongJuly 22, 2010

Digital Research Education Technology The Long Road

Mendeley on the iPhone

Mendeley on the iPhone Originally uploaded by cplong11 I am happy to report that Mendeley has developed an iPhone app that brings us a step closer to the digital research model I hope to implement…

Christopher LongJuly 20, 2010

Academic Education The Long Road

From Engagement to Cooperation

It is widely recognized among educators that student engagement is a key to academic success. Disengaged students erode the social dynamics in the classroom, have a negative impact on their peers and drop out at…

Christopher LongJuly 8, 2010

Hacking Pedagogy

Cole Camplese and I were invited to be part of this year's Learning Design Summer Camp at Penn State. The presentation topic that was proposed to us was strong in and of itself, but when…

Christopher LongJuly 2, 2010

Living LwCH The Long Road Travel

Playing in the Waves with My Daughter

MYRTLE BEACH, SC - She is uncertain, but brave and increasingly confident. The waves are not huge, but to her six-year-old self, they must be daunting. Even so, we venture out, her to test her…

Christopher LongJune 16, 2010

Integrating Mendeley into the Research Circle

It seems that my quest to close the digital research circle has been joined by a few fellow researchers. The idea is compelling and would not only save both time and paper, but would offer new…

Christopher LongJune 3, 2010

Zotero, the iPad and Summer Research

Last month in a post about closing the digital research circle, I wrote about using the iPad to read, take notes on pdf files and integrate those files into a bibliography program. We are still…

Christopher LongMay 21, 2010

Civic Life The Long Road

The Specter of Arlen

Despite the fact that I have never voted for Arlen Specter, I have come to respect some of the values he stood for over his long career in the Senate. As a Republican, he remained…

Christopher LongMay 18, 2010

Now She is Six

Today is ArtGirl's birthday and I am feeling the need to mark the moment with a few reflections about some of the things I admire about my daughter.She questions with assiduous tenacity and refuses to…

Christopher LongMay 11, 2010

Education Technology The Long Road The Undergraduate Experience

Closing the Digital Research Circle

I have been looking for a way to close the circle of my digital academic research. The idea is to do rigorous philosophical research without paper, taking full advantage of cloud computing, the syncing of…

Christopher LongApril 15, 2010

Some Initial Thoughts on the iPad

It is already clear to me that the iPad does not replicate the experience of the iPhone even though many of the apps serve the same functionality. The iPad is much less intrusive in collaborative…

Christopher LongApril 8, 2010

LwCH The Long Road Travel

Living the Contradictions of Disney

ORLANDO, FL - My first visit to Disney World surprised me. Before I had two girls, I never thought I would be interested in visiting a place that stood, in my mind, for all that…

Christopher LongApril 3, 2010

Academic Transformation

Over the past few days I have been thinking more intensely about the meaning and nature of academic transformation. In the wake of the TLT Symposium at Penn State last weekend, I traveled to Orlando…

Christopher LongMarch 30, 2010

A Note on the 2010 Horizon Report

Upon reading the 2010 Horizon Report from the New Media Consortium, I was struck by how the key trends in technology they identify might help us meet challenges they articulate. Let me mention a two…

Christopher LongFebruary 6, 2010

A Note in Memory of John Edwin Smith

It is impossible to put the rich complexity of a unique human life into words, but sometimes, the articulation of a single idea can capture something of a life that might otherwise escape notice.

Christopher LongDecember 23, 2009

Education The Long Road

Penn State's Energy Future Considered

The Rock Ethics Institute has taken a lead in cultivating a real dialogue about the Penn State's energy future. On November 18, 2009, Nancy Tuana, the Director of the Rock Ethics Institute, moderated a roundtable…

Christopher LongDecember 15, 2009

Academic Education LwCH Technology The Long Road

Embracing Different Voices

After talking to trusted people, thinking things over and otherwise working through the transition I am making to Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies at the College of the Liberal Arts, I have decided to embrace…

Christopher LongDecember 13, 2009

Academic Living The Long Road

On Hearing Oneself Through Others

One of the more important of the many unexpected benefits of producing the Digital Dialogue is the feedback I have received from friends who listen. In a strange way, the podcast offers me some distance…

Christopher LongDecember 2, 2009

Listening: Barb and Jan on Phil and Soph

This Thanksgiving we decided to participate in the spirit of the National Day of Listening. My cousin, Marjorie, and I sat down with our mothers, Janet Filing and Barbara Almstead, to ask them about their…

Christopher LongNovember 27, 2009