I had set a deadline of January 31st for myself to submit the paper I started at the STEMTEC retreat. Even though it was the first week of classes, I've been working hard on the paper to get it finished. I got great feedback from Buzz who helped me throw out some stuff that true, but which doesn't really contribute to the paper. I also realized another fairly important piece of the story, and revised several bits as a consequence. It's kind of a strange paper, part pedagogy and part technology -- neither fish nor fowl, I'm afraid. Late Friday afternoon, I finally sent it off to the 
Journal of Computer Mediated Communication. I had spent quite a bit of time thinking about where to put it. I finally decided that it had to be an on-line journal. It will probably get it's largest readership when I like to it from my faculty home page. I received a reply from the editor that my submission was received.
I finally found a client that will let me integrate irc and aim messaging. I've never been particularly excited by instant messaging. I guess I'm not in the right demographic. My brother and I just use email. I used irc a lot when I was in graduate school -- mainly to chat in Esperanto with folks. Now I've set up an irc server to support the courses in the Biology Department. Mostly people aren't using the stuff now, but I suspect it will take off once people discover its potential -- especially in conjunction with the wiki. I believe that using irc will be a great way to coordinate with other members of your group when doing collaborative writing in the wiki.