New mobile literacies

I hope there will be a good audience for my talk on Sunday. It's called 'New Mobile Literacies' and here's a bit of a taster. ....Mobility is one of those signature themes of early 21st Century living. On a macro scale we are preoccupied with the movement of people, whether it takes the form of the ‘migrant crisis’ that has tested Europe’s ability to act with humanity, the contagion and spread of Ebola that has troubled the medical community, illegal border crossings and their generational legacy, or the carbon footprint left by mass tourism and big business. Within liberal democracies we agonise about social mobility, about the rising gap between rich and poor. At a local level about the ability of the transport infrastructure to get people from A to B, and with our growing sensitivity to disability, and ageing, how access and mobility can be enhanced. None of these are new to the 21st Century, but a concept of ‘mobilities’ sensitizes us to how we put ourselves about, how we get around, who moves where, and how. So how do any of these instances of mobility connect with our idea of literacies? Perhaps the answer lies in something that has always intrigued me, the other dictionary definition of communication. It’s the second in my Concise Oxford, in which communication is described as ‘a means of connecting different places, such as a door, passage, road or railway’. Then communication, by whichever definition, always implies a sort of movement, whether that is a movement of people, things or ideas. Yes, a mobility. And if this holds true we could argue that all literacies are in some way mobile. If that is the case, no need to go on, except of course, for the fact that we  see rather a lot of people wandering about holding these things, these rectangular objects of different sizes – talking to them, tapping them, stroking them as if they were pets. Maybe you do the same, temporarily stashing a phone in your back pocket as you walk along or rummaging around in the dark recesses of a bag to locate the pulsing feel of an incoming call?

Commodification

Last week at the University of Greenwich I talked about new technology and the commodification of literacy. I used digital apps and playthings - aimed at very young children and their parents - as a way of exploring the tension between the opportunities and attractions of the digital, and the corporate interests that package and sell them. Erica Hateley in Children's Literacy, Learning and Culture expresses something similar when she writes that: 'As children are inducted younger and younger into particular modes of literacy, and particular dispositions as 'consuming citizens', researchers committed to learning from and contributing to young people's agency and social opportunities need to pay attention to what is happening culturally when reading and playing and literacy and learning means tapping, touching, swiping, and scrolling and combining online and offline activities.' (2013:39). I also pointed out how some of what is available carries an implicit message for parents - these are the sort of literacy routine that are important. This has been called the discourse of the 'good parent'. But this tension runs through everyday and institutionalised uses of technology at all levels - its potential both to free us and to enslave us.

The Trashmaster: literacy and new media

Language and Education have just published my paper 'The Trashmaster: literacy and new media' which is an attempt to turn the tables on the whole disadvantage debate. I argue that schools are failing students by not providing them with the skills to negotiate the new media environment. I use an analysis of the Trashmaster machinima to explore the literacy practices that are associated with new media and then bemoan the fact that children and young people are not provided with tools that might help them to produce and consume in these textual environments effectively or critically. I'm sure friends and colleagues will point out its shortcomings, but from my perspective, I wish I'd had enough space to put this analysis alongside some extracts from curriculum documents. That would sharpen the argument - I don't know, maybe there's a chapter to be written from that. Going forward from that there is a complexities paper with my colleague Cathy Burnett (that's very exciting) and then I'm sketching out a first piece on very young children and their interactions with iPads. Somewhere, also, swishing around in virtual space is a book chapter written with Julia Davies which looks at digital literacy and teacher education, drawing on the work of the Deft project. Plenty of writing....and then there's the day job!

In print

Finally, the Virtual Literacies book is going to press. It's been a delight to work so harmoniously with co-editors Julia Gillen, Jackie Marsh and Julia Davies as well as with a talented bunch of contributors. I know it sounds decidedly old-school, but it'll be great to get my hands on the hard copy! And, to add to the flow of publication my paper 'Mobile Practices in Everyday Life' is now online with BJET. That's the second of my forrays into what I see as the world of ICT. Now it's probably time to regroup with my literacies colleagues!

Canada's digital literacy

In everyday uses of the word, literacy associates with being able to read and write. But making meaning, by locating, organizing, and understanding information are also implied, along with critical engagement. So literacy involves both the production and consumption of meaning. Reading Canada’s Information and CommunicationsTechnology Council’s white paper on digital literacy is interesting in this light. Just add the words digital and technology and you come to their definition Digital Literacy which is 'taken to mean the ability to locate, organize, understand, evaluate, and create information using digital technology for a knowledge-based society. It involves a working knowledge of current high-technology, and an understanding of how it can be used. Digitally literate people can communicate and work more efficiently, especially with those who possess the same knowledge and skills.'

Schools - the future?

I went for a cycle ride at the weekend. Riding round Lake Albert I thought of three possible future for education. They are:

Deletion schools as institutions are increasingly irrelevant. As social structures strongly formed by modernist thought, they perpetuate a factory model of education, which attempts to prepare the young for a world that has long since disappeared.

Re-construction schools as they are currently conceived are incapable of delivering the kinds of understandings and skills or cultivating the habits of mind that will produce 21^st Century citizens or a 21^st Century workforce. A new vision of schooling is required that incorporates the new literacies and is responsive to emerging patterns of social organisation.

Reform schools are out of step with society and need to capitalise on the new literacies that children and young people engage with on a daily basis. Extensive professional and curriculum development is required to align our education systems with the lives of young people.

History of use

I looked in the mirror this morning, saw my face, and thought well there's the history of use. That's after more than 20 hours of flying; so it's not surprising. But the phrase a 'history of use' comes from a paper on distributed cognition that I've been revisiting. It's by Hollan, Hutchins & Kirsh (2000) and it occurs to me that I may use it while I'm down here in Australia, not because of the history of use, but because it connects with Ihde's idea of human and technology as an active-realtional pair, as well as elements of practice theory, and even parts of actor network theory. In particular I like the idea that '...just like a blind person's cane...so well-designed work materials become integrated into the way people think, see and control activities (178)'. The blind person's cane is, I think an allusion to Heidegger. But as well as this, I like the observation that 'the environment people are embedded in is a reservoir of resources for learning, problem-solving, and reasoning.' (178). It's a thought-provoking article, a good example of psychologists moving away from their fixation with individuals - and that's all before you get to the history of use bit!

Baroque literacies?

The picture is supposed to evoke the idea of ponds within ponds (Leibniz) and the following are some of the ideas I'm working on, beginning with the idea that the human subject is embodied and all activity is situated (there is little choice in this, after all, at least from a phenomenological poit of view). And then, as a result there may be little gain in ‘looking up’ to more abstract theory, but a compelling richness in ‘looking down’ into the complexities and interconnections of embodiment and situated activity itself. Rather than moving in the direction of coherence and convergence this suggests a view of literacies informed by the notion of ‘baroque complexity’ (Kwa, 2002) - one that may provide a more nuanced account of how digital texts enter the communication economy of contemporary literacy practices. Drawing generously on the work of Deleuze (1993), Kwa outlines three characteristics of the baroque: 'First the historic baroque insists on a strong phenomenological realness, a 'sensuous materiality'. Second, this materiality is not confined to, or locked within a simple individual but flows out in many directions, blurring the distinction between individual and environment. And third, there is also the baroque inventiveness, the ability to produce lots of novel combinations out of a rather limited set of elements, for instance as in baroque music.’ (Kwa, 2002:26). So Kwa’s version of the baroque encourages us to ‘look down’ at the detail rather than to ‘look up’ for some broader picture (Law, 2002). In practice that may well mean seeing the ways in which the broader patterning of practices such as the global flows of information, shifting power relations and so on are inscribed or become manifest in specific situations. To be continued....

The hammer and the keyboard

In the everyday use of tools, their operation becomes routine and normalized. Interfaces work in the same way. When we switch devices there is often a certain amount of disruption and we are thrown back on the stubborn materiality of our instruments of control, those tools that we normally experience as being straightforward - become almost invisible. 'Heidegger's hammer' is a way of explaining how the tool recedes from view in daily use. Its visibility is heightened when 'the tool turns out to be damaged or the material unsuitable.' (1962:102). That was my experience operating the above keyboard. Nothing went well. I had to look a bit closer to see that the familiar looking object was subtley different. The letter arrangement is not the usual QWERTY layout, but the Belgian equivalent. It disrupted my operations, I became hesitant and dependent on an expert to guide me.