Struck

I've been re-reading Donna Haraway's 'Manifesto for Cyborgs' as background for a chapter I'm writing. I was struck by what she had to say about minituarization, and how in some ways it prefigures the widespread diffusioon of mobile technology. I quote: 'The silicon chip is a surface for writing; it is etched in molecular scales disturbed only by atomic noise, the ultimate interference for nuclear scores. Writing, power and technology are old partners in Western stories of the origin of civilization, but minituarization has changed our experience of mechanism. Minituarization has turned out to be about power; small is not so much beautiful as preeminently dangerous, as in cruise missiles. Contrast the TV sets of the 1950s or the news cameras of the 1970s with the TV wristbands or hand-sized video cameras now advertised.' (30)....mobile phones, ipods, tablets...AR. Drones....?

Stuck!

Having been confined to quarters with a wretched stomach bug, things have ground to a halt. All I've been able to do is sleep and read (and all the other things, too). So I finished Murakami's 1Q84 (volumes 1 and 2). When you're immobile and lying flat, a 620 page hardback can really sap your strength so this morning I decided that I'd get Volume 3 on the Kindle. I've no idea how heavy it is in print, but I knew right away I'd made the right choice. Amazon talk about the Kindle as a platform for selling content - and yes, I paid about the same as I would have done for the print copy, so more profit to them - but for me delivery is faster, the thing is easy to hold (I only need one hand) and it won't take up any of the space in the house that is no longer available for books. What's more 1Q84 is printed in a really small font which I can't adjust on the print version. That's no problem at all on the Kindle. So that's how I followed up World Book Day, and everybody's happy as long as they believe that a book is a book even when it's not a book!

Writing Symposium

Last Friday's UKLA research symposium gave us multiple perspectives on children's writing. Debbie Wells-Rowe opened with a critical multimodal analysis of young children framing and annotating photographs of themselves. That was followed by Cathy Burnett's look at digital texts in the classroom, and the sorts of negoataitions that surround textual production. In the afternoon Debra Myhill took us into some of the methodological issues around her project on Grammar and Writing with older children. Although the over-arching issues weren't immediately apparent, each speaker brought a different methodological lens, and each in her own way troubled the definition of writing itself. But for me there was something very interesting about formal and informal adult pedagogies and how children and young people respond to these in their text-making practices. In most cases there were multiple adults, as well - the adult in the writing process, and then the adult as researcher (sometimes they were the same person), and then of course the adult audience at the symposium itself!

Writing about trash

I'm currently writing a piece based around The Trashmaster. The Trashmaster is of interest from several points of view: it is an example of ‘machinima’, a movie made with videogame engine, and it is also the first of its kind to cross-over into mainstream cinema. Like anime music video (AMV), in which anime cartoons are edited and dubbed with rock music, machinima has its roots in DIY fan video production. It is is an 88 minute movie made from the popular, and in some contexts notorious, Grand Theft Auto IV videogame, and features a ‘vigilante sanitation worker’ involved in a battle against corruption and crime.

Virtually psychic

With a bit of help some of the problems associated with Barnsborough seem to have been circumvented. Yesterday, Chris, one of the teachers we're working with found his way in. What was strange was that when Chris materialised in the world I was on one of my periodic visits. I'm so used to being on my own in the world it was really good to have company! As if that wasn't enough of a coincidence, when I logged in this morning to check the enrolment tool, there was Chris, again, doing the same thing. I must be virtually psychic. With his help a further difficulty was resolved. Next it's firewalls. And the screenshot shows the scene of devastation at the petrol station!

Literacy as digital practice: the extra-textual

When I find myself constantly gnawing at an idea, it usually means its got something to offer me. This is the case with Cathy's notion of how, in literacy as a digital practice the textual, the material and the connected inter-relate. Her articulation of this is the best starting point, but I wanted to just try out my thinking around these ideas, which I'd like to suggest constitute something of an 'extra-textual' dimension. I'm saying extra-textual to make a distinction between, on the one hand those factors that are traditionally rendered as contextual (following, for example Halliday & Hasan), and, on the other, those that constitute the text itself (grammar, multimodal design and so on). Straight off, then, there's a bit of a problem, because one the dimensions is actually called 'textual' - so for me that might work better as the point of appearance of the text, the interface, place of inscription or surface. But essentially I think this is a sort of 'where' question. Where is the text? The next dimension is the material dimension. This the 'what' - the thingness or physicality of the text, the mobile window, the sheet of paper, the hinged screen and so on - and, of course, all those things that surround it. Finally, the connected dimension is about how the text connects to other people and other spaces. Now, I have a feeling that you could apply these extra-textual dimensions to non-digital texts, but that would be a further elaboration of the basic idea. At this point in time I just want to get my head round the basic notion.

On evidence

Research, like photography, is a selective record of things that have already happened. The writing of research is inevitably retrospective, and in this sense is always a partial history - a flawed recollection of the past, albeit one that is consumed in the present. And this is what makes research design such an interesting process. It is the point at which we are planning the future selection of evidence from which we will attempt to construct the story of something that hasn't happened yet. It details how we will select, collect and analyse the materials that we haven't yet collected. No wonder, then, that when we read research - even good quality research - it so often feels as if some realities have been hollowed out, or that there is an airbrushed image of truth. As with history with a capital 'h' it is usually the lived experience of the human subjects that is hidden, perhaps simply because this is always so complex and fluid. It is only really the most patient of ethnographers who can capture the fleeting shadows of human intentions, emotions and their various attempts to forge meanings. In the Julian Barnes novel: 'The Sense of an Ending', there's a great quote about history which is attributed to a Patrick Lagrange. It goes like this: 'History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation' (p17). Since the source isn't formally acknowledged, are we to assume that it is a work of fiction? Whatever the conclusion, could it be re-worded as : research is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of interpretation meet the inadequacies of data?

Siamese twinning

3 years ago my mother was taken ill, she was hospitalised, and never returned home again. She had 2 Siamese cats and I brought them up here to Chesterfield for safe-keeping. Within days the female cat did a runner, escaping through the bathroom quarterlight and all attempts to locate her failed. I never told my mother. And then just before Christmas, some three years on, I had a call from the RSPCA in Chesterfield - I was in Australia at the time - they'd found the cat! So now, after all this time, we're a 2 cat family again. Siri (we've no idea where she's been hiding out) is the one to the left. She's very shy and still getting used to us and the surroundings, but they say that Siamese are happier in pairs. I don't know whether that's related to the idea of Siamese twins or not.

Bare-knuckle fights and WoW

I caught an interesting segment on the radio today which was about bare-knuckle boxing in the early C19th. Given that I'm reading Bonnie Nardi's ethnography of WoW, I was tempted to draw some parallells - not, I hasten to add, about violence, but about popular entertainment and gaming. Big fights might attract an audience of thousands, and were a hugely popular affair mostly publicised by word of mouth, but what struck me about the history was the way in which the entertainment itself was embedded in a nexus of social practices. Firstly involvement in the fights was a fashion, but it also included many layers of betting and even the specific jargon of flash. Mainstream media eventually got interested, and there we can trace the beginnings of sport journalism. In an interesting parallel you can see how most of the broadsheet and weekend newspapers now have sections on gaming and digital culture

Everyday

I just wrote a paper called 'Mobile practices in everyday life' - and now, stepping back from that work I find myself wondering about that hook the 'everyday'. It's been useful for a number of us working in new literacies to use the idea of the 'everyday', the quotidian, in making a distinction between what people do informally in spaces that are not structured by the institutional regimes of education or work and what they do in schools, worklife and all the rest. Colin and Michele use it as a subtitle to New Literacies - it's even the title of their blog...and I know they will often make reference to deCerteau 'The Practices of Everday Life'. Apart from reminding me of the Buddy Holly song (above), I'm now wondering about the shortcomings of the 'everyday' as a concept. Firstly, although it's useful in identifying an often neglecting aspect of literacy (neglected, at least, by educators) it does set up a dichotomy. What we increasingly witness is practices that cross the divide, that blur those boundaries, The everyday leaks into institutional life. Secondly, there's a danger that we over-generalise. maybe a lot of everyday practices are actually those of the affluent, or to put it another way, the everyday is itself segmented and diverse. Anyway that's just completely undermined my own hard work...but virtual literacies will not be so easily undermined. In fact there's every indication that it may be slowly making its way from the virtual realm into the...into the.... everyday!

Where have I been?

My blog is like an old friend - I like to keep company with it on a regular basis - even if it's just to give narrative fragments of my (mostly) working life it seems important. Tamboukou (2010: 79) has this idea of 'nomadic subjectivities' which seems to me to capture that movement in and away from the activity of posting. So I've been at full stretch completing my part of the 'Virtual Literacies' edited book (watch this space for further details). It should be published by Routledge later this year. So, I had it mind a critique of this re-telling and privileging of book fiction, but I missed the boat; I also wanted to comment on the mixed messages of Gove's opinions on technology in education. But the moment has passed. But I was delighted to get urbanroller's permission to use his photograph. There's a genre - but this such a good version! Permission was given 4 years after my initial request. Ah, the age of instant communication.

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.'

What's cooking?

I'm not sure where the media obsession with food came from - it seems to fill the newspapers and swamp the TV schedules. Perhaps I shouldn't be that surprised. Food is, after all, the original consumer product. We consume it, we digest it....and we want more. That's as close as you'll get to a seasonal message on this blog! But I do think this particular mash-up is excellent. That's good entertainment value, and I consumed that!

Searching limits

At the CSU technology symposium, we were once again alerted to the ways in which our casual searching behaviours may be shaped by search engines such as the mighty Google. This time it was Judy O'Connell issuing the warnings. So we learn to be sceptical of the JFGI approach. But since then I've got interested in something else about searching - and that's related to modality. I've been using the image above a bit lately, and have got quite interested in its provenance. A contact tells me that it shows the warehouse inventory process - possibly at a shipping line. Well that's OK, so far. But what I really want to do is search for the image and find out more about it. Of course Google (can I still mention it?),will allow me to search for an image related to a word, but it won't allow me to search with an image. Hence the modality issue. So I'm wondering if anyone's come up with a way of searching with an image? Maybe they have. Since some photo apps can now recognise your friends, image matching should be possible - and of course images are tagged and labeled. I wonder.

Beyond binaries

This is actor Jack Thompson, ending with a Riverina rhyme. Many thanks to Barney Dalgarno for this link. At the risk of undermining the entertainment with some analysis, it does seem to be a good example of something that's simultaneously recognisable but different. Same/not same. So the overall form and structure make sense; the liberal use of the adjective insert (we'd recognise it as the expletive-as-infix) are familiar. But unless you've been to Tumbarumba, or tuned into the patterns of Aussie conversation, they constitute the unfamiliar. Interestingly our patterns of thought (or socio-cultural dispositions) work in these sort of binaries. But isn't there really just a continuum of familiarity? In fact could this be a wider problem? At our symposium yesterday some familiar binaries popped up at regular intervals (global/local; online/offline; actual/virtual; me/not me; material/immaterial; mobile/static). We encounter these and we rather clumsily start talking about blurring the boundaries, but even this language tends to get in the way of the fluidity we want to talk about. We need to replace the light switch with a dimmer switch. But maybe we really need a new language, or a new philosophy for doing this. Perhaps, at the end of the day, this is part of the problem with affordances. It's a sort of on/off concept, and it doesn't allow enough space for fluidity, the evolution of new practices and conventions, human agency and so on.

Affordances symposium

I had a great day at the symposium organised by the Technology and Teaching Practice Group at CSU. The presentations were great and in fact the whole day was very stimulating. I realise that one thing I really like about technology-focused discussions is that you don't have to deal with the book fetish. Of course, there are other things to get hung-up about - but today, which was about affordances (not my topic of choice, I must admit), included some quality discussion. The fact that the symposium was held at the National Wine and Grape Industry Centre, could be misleading. But there wasn't a bottle in sight. The only nod in the direction of wine was the barrel-shaped podium. Oh, that and the vineyard outside!

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.

Strange places

OK, so when you have a bit of down time, what do you do? Well, I'm always drawn to the places with the most interesting names. I remember watching the film 'The Last Journey of a Genius' in which the famous physicist Richard Feynman went all the way to Ulan Bator in Mongolia - just because he liked the sound of it! Now I don't pretend to be a genius - far from it - but I get the idea. So I had to go to Tumbarumba, up in the Snowy Mountains, only to discover that it isn't much of a place. But it does at least have the 4 Bears cafe, with its absolutely amazing collection of bears. I suppose that, in itself makes it worth the visit!

More Ziggy?

Reading Bauman is a bit like listening to Leonard Cohen. He's either gloomy and predictable, or sad and beautiful, depending on your frame of mind, or mood. So when Christina passed me Education in Liquid Modernity, I wondered what listening to the honey-tongued purveyor of post-modern angst would tell me about my own state of mind. Well, I like his six features of contemporary life: the rapid changes of short shelf-life; the way power, politics and the state begin to peel apart; the noticeable decline of collectivity; short-termism and disposable planning; an anxiety about the future; and the shape-shifting individualism - always adaptable but always in fear of irrelevance or exclusion. But although I liked them, each one may not be quite as certain as it sounds against the strum of his intellectual chord shapes. Perhaps: 'it is better to think of knowledge consumption and production after the pattern of fast food' 316 (on-demand and just-in-time). Still Bauman's conclusions are slight. Of course, we know all about the student as consumer in a marketised system - but what else is there? Bring on Johnny Rotten for a bit more energy!

Unlearning literacies

What might the study of literacies look like if it was set free from its histories of theory, its well-rehearsed models and research routines? That was the question we generated yesterday, with our talented colleagues at CSU - and, of course, that is a challenging tack to take. Moving away from familiar text-centric approaches became a key theme for me as we thought through how complex histories and diverse meanings are negotiated in social contexts. Not only do learners - and in a sense we are all learners - bring their own learning histories, social and cultural capital, and resources for meaning-making into new situations, but also these play out against the backdrop of powerful global and local flows that position them and carry the stories of how they became who they are in a social, cultural and historical sense. At the same time, the material resources for meaning-making play their part in constructing, communicating - mediating our relationships with others. Here, the available technologies, the modalities of representation and the codes (languages and scripts) can be seen as the tools or resources. This remains a sketchy outline of a detailed conversation - but it leaves me with a sense of how textual approaches might be displaced in order to allow us to develop a model of literacy that (re)places social interaction and meaning making at its centre. To be continued.