Temporary halt

liter8
I won't be posting again until the beginning of September. I'm away in Spain until then. In the mean time feel free to read and comment on my posts and archives, and use my links .

Defining moment

roof4
To add to the discussion on digital literacy initiated here and continued on Dr Joolz, I wanted to set out the view that for me the focus (or definition) of the term is reading-with and writing-with new technologies - technologies which involve the semiotic of lettered representation, alongside other forms of representation. In this sense digital literacy extends out of print literacy despite the fact that the processes, tools, surfaces and spaces of production and consumption are different. So the common ground is alphabetic writing and this I believe, is helpful and important, particularly to educational and developmental debates. However, when we consider the texts and contexts in which digital literacy is located there is a much larger shift of emphasis. These could be categorised in the following ways:

1. A move from the fixed to the fluid: the text is no longer contained between the covers or by the limits of the page.
2. Texts become interwoven in more complex ways through the use of hyperlinks.
3. Texts are revised, updated, added to and appended (and often archived).
4. Genres borrow freely, hybridize and mutate.
5. Texts become collaborative and multivocal with replies, links, posted comments and borrowing.
6. Reading and writing paths are non-linear, knowledge and information structures are rhyzomic.
7. Texts become more densely multimodal (as multimedia allows for a rich interplay of modes).
8. Roles of readers and writers overlap.
9. Textual interaction and collaboration often result in shared authorship.
10. The communicative space is shared as the local fuses with the global.
11. The impression of co-presence and synchronous engagement increases.
12. Boundaries begin to blur (work/leisure; public/private; serious/frivolous)

So the transformation is in terms of new possibilities for texts, easier combinations of semiotic systems, new communicative relationships and some other things about speed, publication and audience. But we should be able to ask, without the danger of being branded as a conservative, how far we could get with new literacies - or to be more specific technoliteracies – without alphabetic literacy.

Hyper-real

ACDO
We had a great time in – where was it – Hanwell? I particularly liked walking down to the Brent River locks (Grand Union Canal, built 1880) and I found this sign in Ruth’s garden house. On the reverse side it says: “Should this become soiled rub lightly with a clean moist leather”. I like that as much as the use of underlining and exclamation marks on the front (don’t the colours remind you of Mars bars?). On Saturday we went here to see Thomas Demand’s large, hyper-real photographs. Mostly they are interior spaces that are exquisitely crafted out of cardboard, coloured paper and glue – but they look just like real kitchens, offices, and so on. As another visitor loudly pointed out, the only difference is that there are no logos, brand names and so on. I resented hearing that, but it’s true. Maybe he’d read an art book or knew what he was looking at. Maybe not.

Laugh!!

This video is the funniest I've seen in ages. I'm not sure who these OK Go guys are, but its seems like they're big in the States.

Cool dudes

The end
I must say that I was surprised to see that my article “Digikids, Cool Dudes and the New Writing” is listed as Number 2 in e-learning’s list of most downloaded articles. Of course, this doesn’t itself mean much (it could be that the same people keep loosing it; or it’s on somebody’s reading list; or it’s popularist garbage; or it’s free). It’s no big deal - but now that Dr Joolz has pointed out I wouldn’t be surprised if I don’t look at the page frequently to see how it’s getting along! That’s one take on academic self-image for you. On a related note, it’s great to see Angela Thomas’s chapter in “Uses of Blogs”. You can look at the content and even download the introductory chapter here. Finally, the Barnsley Virtual World design progresses in fits and starts, but now features a fancy-looking hilltop manor house modeled on Burton Agnes (near Driffield I think). I expect this work will carry on while I’m offline and away in Spain….

Civic and social

word stencil on brick
Here’s Simply Clare reflecting on some of the subtleties of social participation before taking a well-deserved break. Meanwhile Ideant gives us a lengthier exploration of social media and civic participation. The post (or is it a mini-essay?) works really well as a way of teasing out the themes in the debate and nearly manages to unmask the ideologies that underpin the more extreme positions. By that I mean the new age of total participation envisioned by cyber-evangelists and the dumbing-down culture crash views of the technophobes. The analysis helps to identify themes, but really does little more. It seems that there is some evidence of the potential for civic participation - that’s promising, but it’s as far as it goes. As for dumbing down, that’s the same old moral panic that has always haunted new media.

Yay!!

very open
This is to celebrate Ruth’s achievements (she’s my second daughter). She’s been working here, but she’s just got a new job in a swanky place on Bond Street. So well done, Ruth! Listen to her latest track here, plans for a promotional video are now going ahead….

Game/play

summer
OK, so this is a “networked national touring exhibition” and it focuses on the creative potential of digital games and interactive play environments. It seems like it’s worth checking out and the blog’s pretty fancy, too. For instance there’s plenty to read on this link. And when there’s nothing else to do, there’s always the yeti database!

Thinks

Moroccana104
Judith Butler is demanding reading, packed with the sort of philosophical density that challenges existing ideas. But I’m happy with the straightforward nature of stuff like: “…to tell a story of oneself is already to act, since telling is a kind of action, performed with some addressee, generalised or specific, as an implied feature. It is an action in the direction of an other as well as an action that requires an other, in which the other is presupposed.” (2005:81). That seems to dovetail in with what I was trying to get at here by grafting on the concept of social networks as contexts for identity performance. I also put a bit more on the identity theme here. Then, almost as light relief , I’ve found this fourfold categorization of selfhood quite useful, too!

And

passion2
I plan to be in Chicago next April for AERA 2007 . I’ll be promoting the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy and I’ll be focusing on my contribution to this research handbook. Here’s the abstract: “As new techno-literacy practices become embedded in society, they impact on ever younger age groups. The technological environment children inhabit directly involves literacy, both in the broadest sense of the term, and in the more specific domain of lettered representation. My work focuses on young children’s on-screen experience and particularly the productive aspect of writing-with-new-technology. I look at different ways of theorising changes in written communication and the relationship between these and curriculum design. This review of current research focuses on three areas: young children’s experience of digital writing in and beyond the classroom; ways of using ICT in the writing classroom; and the use and development of purpose-built classroom applications to promote digital literacy. The review highlights a shift of emphasis from whether to use ICT to how to use ICT in literacy, suggesting the need for more work that shows how digital writing can be embedded in classroom practice in ways that provide authentic contexts for learning and communication. However, because digital writing involves new kinds of skills and new kinds of social practices it cannot simply be grafted on to existing instructional practices and curricular objectives. We need to re-evaluate the ways in which writing is taught and develop our understanding of what constitutes writing development in digital environments. This will involve more exploration of what experiences, resources and guidance are most helpful in the early stages of emergent literacy, and working towards an understanding of the appropriate balance between experimentation, skill instruction and critical engagement with new writing tools and processes.” And….

Here and there

van
I’ve seen the van several times, but this was the first opportunity for a good shot (regular readers will, of course remember this and this from the streets of Sheffield). Also from the streets of Sheffield is ex-Pulp front man Jarvis Cocker. He’s now in MySpace with a strange YouTube video and the track "Running the World" - both displaying that humour and political edge that you either love or hate. Away from here, I’ve been exploring the world of MUVEs. There’s a good potted history here. It seems that virtual worlds only really seemed to achieve their present popular form in the mid 1990s. So that’s quite a rapid trajectory into the schools of Barnsley!

Merveylous myrth and pastymes

NWP fancy stencil
It’s the second time I’ve tried to trace enigmatic stencil graffiti on the internet. NWP had me foxed until I discovered that it stands for Nottingham Wood Pushers. Now that could mean absolutely anything to a group of teenage boys in the ‘burbs of Nottingham. Interestingly they turn out to be a social group of MySpacers with a feel for street art and other things on the fringes of legitimacy. The previous time I played this game was the Crude Black Millions episode described here. But both these (like the Street Piano story) show social groups organizing and communicating in a way that blends online and offline, cyberspace and meatspace - albeit for different purposes!

Disappointment

broken present
My excitement on getting a present from Ruth in the post this morning quickly turned to disappointment when I found the CD snapped in two. It was a copy of a Regina Spektor album…she appears at the Truck Festival this weekend (broadcast on BBC6). The other media thing that passed me by is that FilmFour is going free – that’s very good news – watch the countdown here! And I must say the playful anarchist in me likes the idea of real-world gaming based on water pistol fighting. That’s what Street Wars is all about, despite the hype. Now I’ve normally got a lot of respect for Mark Lawson, but his uptight reaction in today’s Guardian came as a big disappointment. He argues that: “the bizarre blurring of a child's toy with the world of adult life and work suggests that the video-game generation has got out of control. The traditional insult for gamers is that they should get out more, but perhaps this lot need to stay in more.” For a start the connection with video-gaming is tenuous, but also there is an important way in which play is politics. I for one would rather be squirted with water than anything more serious.

Visual memes

abus padlock on blue
Well I've just got into photographing padlocks after looking at someone else's collection on Flickr. That's made me look at padlocks in new ways - their material variety, their trademarks, product details, signs of use and so on - and of course their function and symbolism. At the same time I've been thinking about Kress's idea of motivated sign-making, re-making and transformation. But somehow that doesn't quite tell me enough about this padlock thing. It's more of a visual meme, a contagious image. But all it does at this stage is to remain a dumb image, a copy or perhaps to be more generous it communicates an interest, possibly a shared interest, an empathy or acknowledgement. On the other hand, photographing wall textures for the virtual world is more overtly purposeful. It means in a different way. Are these sorts of images easier to explain as motivated signs? And does this reflect the detail (or the context) of social participation? Or, do I completely misunderstand the concept of a motivated sign?

Commercialising participation

local comment
The idea of producing a gallery of photographs taken on mobiles to involve youngsters in highlighting what’s important to them is instantly attractive. So here’s the work of John, Shrek, Krusty, Jonathan, and Danny Boy. It’s part of initiative to involve young people in politics – yes- that is local politics. Alongside their photographs (are they all boys?) are the local councilors’ photographs (yawn). Councilor James Joyce - the name’s a laugh (parents must have had a sense of humour) - seems to be at the forefront of this escapade. OK, to be fair there’s an honest attempt at relevant participation using new media here, but then again it’s subsidised by O2, which makes me wonder whether it’s more about participating in O2 than in the local political process.

Either way

Whirlow 3
Following on this story on Saturday I was interested in the Indian government’s attempt to block blogs following the Mumbai bombing. Success, according to this article was limited: “Because there is no central point of control, such blocks are haphazard. In such a situation, it can be difficult to tell exactly what it is that the government has ordered to be shut down.” …which I suppose is both good and bad, depending on who might want to shut who up for what particular reason.

Remix/creativity

bungalow brick texture
I was pleased to find the Henry Jenkins blog. Here he self-quotes something he put on the PBS's Media Shift site, but I liked it so much because it hits on digital remix and creativity that I’m quoting it again, here:

“…children are become media-makers: they are blogging, designing their own websites, podcasting, modding games, making digital movies, creating soundfiles, constructing digital images, and writing fan fiction, to cite just a few examples. As they do so, they are discovering what previous generations of artists knew: art doesn't emerge whole cloth from individual imaginations. Rather, art emerges through the artist's engagement with previous cultural materials. Artists build on, take inspiration from, appropriate and transform other artist's work: they do so by tapping into a cultural tradition or deploying the conventions of a particular genre. Beginning artists undergo an apprenticeship phase during which they try on for size the styles and techniques of other more established artists. And even well established artists work with images and themes that already have some currency within the culture. Of course, this isn't generally the way we talk about creativity in schools, where the tendency is still to focus on individual artists who rise upon or stand outside any aesthetic tradition.”

Un autre monde

bandstand
Today I saw this, and for a moment RL and VL blended , and I could only walk in straight lines with arrow keys (we have a bandstand in the virtual world). I’m also starting to collect images, residential and industrial for the world, which is changing the way I’m looking at things. And because they need texture, I’m photographing walls, doors and windows straight on from about 4 feet away which in itself is a weird thing to do. So I'm no longer thinking that an audience might like the aesthetic or that I just might be doing something interesting - instead I'm thinking "will this be useful and could you photoshop it into the virtual city, and wouldn't it be cool to see my real house go virtual". I think I’ll call the set “Pieces for a Virtual World”. And I also read girlwonder today and a very interesting piece on a rather grim kind of civic participation in the wake of the Mumbai bombings. I don't know how this is all connected, but I suppose from a certain phenomenological point of view cohesion is ensured.

The end

just coffins
It’s so good to read about progress on the New Literacies Sampler (here), but I keep on wondering how the “Handbook of Research in New Literacies” is getting on. Anyway as you can probably tell, I’ve been trawling through the blogs, noting that Dr Kate has miscellaneous piles (you ought to see my study, Kate!) and that Infocult covers an article in the Washington Post on wikipedia - “Unlike, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia has no formal peer review for its articles. They may be written by experts or insane crazy people. Or worse, insane crazy people with an agenda. And Internet access.” OMG this could de-stabilise knowledge in a serious way…is this the end of civilization as we know it?

4357

orange on black
OMG, it’s so exciting designing this Virtual World! I was chatting with Rich (in the world) for about half an hour, yesterday. Not a day goes past without a visit! I also end up checking the Runboard a couple of times a day, too. We came up with another thread today which must have come from the Department of Esoteric Numerology. Sums of money, telephone numbers, maybe a scrap of paper in someone's pocket, the safe number, the formula, even the lottery ticket number is the same sequence of digits (how weird is that?) And the sequence is always 4357 - 'help' on the keys of a mobile. Of course only the creator and the Goddess (Claire) know the reasoning behind this....

Still posting on digital literacy here!