Whois:

Bitculture is the web portfolio of Dave H. Crusoe. This web presence reflects a small collection of my work in the education, technology, cognitive science and social media spaces. The best way to get in touch is through Public Learning Media. “We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” Little Gidding V, No. 4, Four Quartets -- T.S. Eliot

Active Art:

My desire is to deliver quality, accessible educating tools to populations of significant size and scale.

I'm Co-Founder and Director of The Public Learning Media Laboratory, a 501(c)3 located in Cambridge, MA. We produce free elementary and middle school technology tools that promote dynamic, fast-paced teacher-led instruction. Our goal is to reach 10% of American classrooms with our math, information literacy and data tools by the end of the 2012-2013 school year. As of 9/2011, we are tracking implementation with 4%+ of US School Districts.

To support operations, we rely on traditional fundraising and grants, and provide a variety of technology services to other qualifying organizations.

Prior Art:

Invented, designed, produced and managed Sociafy-Q, a social networking analytics engine, as a method to explore the impact of social networking outreach conducted for nonprofit organizations. This technology was developed as a follow-on to a social media survey report co-authored with Citizen Schools.

Program design for The Nautilix Challenge (a marine robotics and marine/environmental education project)

Designed and Produced the The Internet Radio Project, a program to provide internet radio connectivity and training to public schools. We operated between 2002 and 2006 and served several dozen K-12s in total. Students' work lives, in archived form, at The Internet Radio Project.

Technology Experience:

Program direction, including staffing, budgeting and project management/implementation through Agile and Waterfall. Program and project design, and administration of transitions and rollouts, of major corporate systems, including Salesforce CRM and Sharepoint. Design experience with major databasing packages, including MySQL and SQL. Lead design experience with major programming languages, including PHP, Javascript and Apex.

Multimedia production (e-learning) writing, direction and delivery.

Corporate analytics through web, social and custom metrics, including significant invention and research in the metrics space.

Research and Studies:

During my stint as a Technology, Innovation and Education student (Ed.M, 2005) at HGSE, most of my writing (and thinking) focused on understanding the intersections of culture, education and technology. Some of my work included:

• An essay exploring semiotics (in the Geertz sense) and the meaning of learning objects within a muti-user virutal environment (MUVE).
• An examination of possible gender variations in the pattern of students' use of the River City MUVE analyzed through log data captured for all user events within the system.
• An essay exploring education and the potential gender effects of interface-based educational material [pdf] that's been cited elsewhere.
  
• The report of a six-month ethnographic study of "ToE", an online gaming clan: [pdf]
• A qualitative study of Battlefield 1942 gamers that explores player perceptions of learning through entertainment gaming: [pdf]
• A"total conversion mod" of Neverwinter Nights designed to teach high school students critial inquiry through considering events of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. Downloaded upon request - it's kinda big to host, and contains some copyrighted content.

In 2006, I returned to HGSE to study cognitive science through "Mind, Brain and Education", a wonderful program. Among other topics, I was curious about the psychological and neurological states that lead to activities of high creativity and productivity.

Since graduating, I have turned my attention to mathematical cognitive and skill learning.

Puddle Jumping:

Other free time: married to the wonderful Laila Flores, my dear co-story-teller; curious photographer, caver and highly motivated speleo-naturalist (member of the UT Grotto, most active in the Boston Grotto), rarely-stung beekeeper, national-public-radio-devout, puddle jumper extraordinare (except that it's fun to land in the puddle), and still-discordant banjo player (enough so that I'm not allowed to play after 9pm) and muddy organic gardner. Enthused about exploring!