Working on my presentation for the

on Tuesday (soooo soon!) has relight my thinking on tagging. As I was leafing through Facebook and contemplating how this site illustrates the community and collaborative spirit of contemporary literacies (i.e. transliteracy) I began to visit people's "stories" (well, feeds of their stories) rather than linking directly to people and noticed how they are tagging their status. I say "tagging" rather than narrating because the stories are more like bits of information which the reader pieces together to create a story or profile of the person/organisation. As an example, friend a "is loving his anonymous gifts" and friend b "is a pirate. Aaaarrrggghhh." These two phrases, seem to me, to work as identity or status tags, giving the reader an idea of what's going on rather than the *whole* (I mean in an entirely problematic postmodern critical kind of way) story. Does the (over)use of the copula "to be" signify anything about people's states; in perpetuum?

Adam Mathes notes that tagging is wild, it is uncontrolled: "A folksonomy represents simultaneously some of the best and worst in the organization of information. Its uncontrolled nature is fundamentally chaotic, suffers from problems of imprecision and ambiguity that well developed controlled vocabularies and name authorities effectively ameliorate. Conversely, systems employing free-‍form tagging that are encouraging users to organize information in their own ways are supremely responsive to user needs and vocabularies, and involve the users of information actively in the organizational system. Overall, transforming the creation of explicit metadata for resources from an isolated, professional activity into a shared, communicative activity by users is an important development that should be explored and considered for future systems development." 

For more information on tagging check out this handy tagging 101 video.

Bookshelf

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web By Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms By Dr Will Richardson

Knowing Knowledge By George Siemens

Tagging Books by Heather Green

On the 8th of June NLab held the Women, Business & Blogging conference with a welcome from Humanities Dean, Heidi Macpherson.

Why have a conference with the focus squarely on women you might ask? Well, Jory des Jardins of BlogHer gave us lots of reasons:

“WOMEN:

 …outnumber men online

 There more women than men online, overall as well as:

 Among marrieds

 Among people with kids at home

 In every age category but 65+

 …outspend men, online and off

 Women spend $5 trillion a year (U.S.) and control 83% of household spending.

 Women who blog are 30% more likely than average female Internet users to shop online—and spend more when they buy.

 …outpace men online

 Women are equally as likely as men to “Read a blog,” and “Create a blog”

 Women write between 46% and 53% of blogs

 Women’s use of words on a blog “far exceeds that of men”

(source: Jory des Jardins presentation at the Women, Business & Blogging conference)

But, how does women’s use of the online environment fit with the internet overall? Again, Jory had some great points for us:

“Web 1.0

• Use marketing dollars to draw traffic

 • Then drop them when they show up; pray they return

• Page views/clickthroughs • Invulnerability

 • The press release

• Ordained expertise

Web 2.0

• Devote resources to interaction

• Invite them to comment & interact; showcase them!

• Comments/posts/ links

• Authenticity

 • The public press corps

• Distributed, “nichified” Expertise"

(source: Jory des Jardins presentation at the Women, Business & Blogging conference)

Interestingly Jory reminded us that virtual identity is everything and whether you know it or not, we each have an online identity. Eileen Brown, a Microsoft Evangelist, gave us all a very good reason to maintain *professional* online identities – she for one googles prospective employees…hrm. Note to self – do not post when drinking (actually that was a tip from Eileen!):

“Blog frequently (a rhythm of blogging, not necessarily every day)

Answer every comment

Don't sell

Link. link. link

Traffic isn't the goal

Be authentic

Expect criticism - be humble

Don't blog when you're drunk / down / angry

Blog Smart

Never delete a post”

(source: Ruth Page’s post of Eileen’s presentation)

Meg Pickard was the first speaker of the day and really set the scene with one key question: “how do consumption, interaction, curation, and creation work together in the online environment?” Meg has a slide that illustrates this concern very clearly and (yay!) she’s put it up on her site so I’ll add it here:

Meg drew her presentation to a close by focusing on the “holy trinity of community management” – how “human solutions,” “technical solutions” and “content solutions” are all required, it isn’t just a case of either/or. Here’s a slide courtesy of Meg’s blog post: 

To elaborate her point of how content, publishing, and community are all changing in this landscape of web 2.0, Meg concluded with Michael Wesch’s “classic” video:

As one of the conference organisers I hope the conference worked out as well for others as it did for me. It was stimulating to hear three different talks on technology by three amazing women. It was also great to have opportunities to meet with other delegates and share stories. The best bit (not that I’m swayed by Meg’s delicious looking photos who I went and copied and took some tasty pics of my own) was the wine and cake *networking* session at the end of the day…yum….

Here are some blogging basics to get you started:

1.     TERMINOLOGY

An excellent resource: The Giant Blogging Terms Glossary from Quick Online Tips.

 2.     USING THE TERMINOLOGY List three blogs

­­­­­­­­­­­­___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________­­­

___________________________________________________________________

Explain your choice of blogging platform.

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________­­­­

___________________________________________________________________

Where might you have a plugin and why?

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________­­­­

___________________________________________________________________

3.     MAKING SENSE

 Fill in the missing words using the words in the box below:

There are over 15.5 million ______ out there but not everyone knows how to read a blog. Blogs usually appear in ________ chronological order and are updated frequently.  Each blog post follows a house style and includes several elements like a title, the post body which is usually _____ including sounds, images, videos and/or text, tags which describe what the post is about, a _______ providing a static url directly to that particular post, a _______ stamp and author signature. Perhaps most important is the element of interactivity which allows all blog readers to add a ______ to posts (although there are a few blogs out there that don’t allow commenting).     

4.      WORDS USED WITH BLOGS

 Answer these questions.

 What is a blog reader? [hint: think of bloglines]

 ___________________________________________________________

 __________________________________________________________­­­­

___________________________________________________________________

What is it used for?

 ___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

    ___________________________________________________________________

What is bookmarking (give examples of platforms)?

 ___________________________________________________________

 ___________________________________________________________­­­­

___________________________________________________________________

How would you bookmark a particular post?

 ___________________________________________________________

 ___________________________________________________________­­­­

___________________________________________________________________

Give at least three examples of social bookmarking sites:

 ___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

Tagging in Practise – How would you tag this photo? Click on the image to visit flickr.com where you will be able to add your own tags to this image.

5.     PARTS OF THE PROCESS

Take this blog for example:

Who is the blog author?

 What is the date of the most recent post visible on this image?

 What is the title of it?

 Can you spot tags for the newest post?

Bookshelf

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms
 by Will Richardson

Classroom Blogging: A Teacher's Guide to the Blogosphere
by David Warlick

Digital Media in the Classroom
by Gigi Carlson

Literacy in a Digital World: Teaching and Learning in the Age of Information
by Kathleen Tyner

The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog
by Rebecca Blood

Check out these posts of note:

Blogging in the Classroom

Ways to Use Weblogs in Education

Using Blogs to Integrate Technology in the Classroom

Classroom Blogs: A Resource List

Start Blogging in the Classroom

At the recent Transliteracy Colloquium we discussed the necessity to not only understand a variety of representational modes but to critically interpret that flow of information simultaneously.  In an era where convergence is palpable in almost all aspects of life literacy includes a vast range of signifying devices.  As Kress says, literate in today’s world means “reading” (as interpreting) “words, spoken or written; image still and moving; musical…3D models…” 

While young people might be “digital natives” what about people whose first language is not tech-speak? 

UK “digital communications” regulator Ofcom has produced (published on 02|03|2006) its first audit of UK digital media use (including terrestrial TV and radio). Over 3,000 people were interviewed in an attempt to assess the extent of adult media literacy in the UK.  Ofcom defines media literacy as the ability to access, understand and create communications in a variety of contexts. Headline findings include:

• age is a major factor in understanding and using specific technologies. Mobile 'phone use is highest amongst 16-24 year-olds;

• little recognition so far of the possibilities of synergies between different digital media technologies;

• only 25% of adults understand how commercial internet sites are funded – compared with 75% who understand the basics of TV funding and regulation;

• the internet remains the main focus of interest – and concern (about viruses/email scams etc.) The preferred means of learning about the internet for adults is via friends and family rather than formal education or training.

Now look at the main findings of an Ofcom audit on media literacy among children between the ages of 8-15:

• Some 72% of children aged 8-15 have access to digital TV at home, 64% have access to the internet at home, 47% of parents say there is household access to digital radio services, and 65% of 8-15s have their own mobile phone. Just under half of 8-11s have their own mobile phone (49%) compared to 82% of 12-15s.

·         Just over one quarter (28%) of all children aged 8-15 have digital TV and the internet at home and have their own mobile phone. This is considerably more common amongst older children, accounting for 36% of 12-15 year olds compared to 21% of 8-11 year olds.

·         Half of children aged 8-15 own a games console (50%), and a further third (34%) use the one in the household.

But amazingly: “Parents who do not have blocks in place give reasons for this largely relating to trusting their child, although around one in five of these parents say they do not have controls set because they’re unsure how to do this or were not aware it was possible.”

A recent study headed by Jackie Marsh at the University of Sheffield, finds as is the case with literacy practices related to print-based texts (Cairney and Ruge, 1998), children were immersed in the use of digital literacy for a range of purposes and so were acquiring understanding of the uses to which particular media and artefacts were put.

Perhaps this is why media studies is enjoying a revival with the number of students taking media exams (at 16 and up) has doubled since 2002.

So, digital native or not, participants in the online landscape must learn to navigate this new environment.  Not only becoming literate in terms of the multimodality but literate also to experiences (like cyberbullying etc…) thus new media literacy or digital literacy is about becoming literate as readers and creators.  In other words, transliteracy might be the way teachers and parents can respond to the changes brought on by technology.

Listen to Professor David Buckingham talk about the challenges of changes in the media environment and how media teachers need to respond to them: http://www.mediaedassociation.org.uk/david.mp3

Listen to Former head of BFI Education, Cary Bazalgette opened challenge to the Media Education Association to ensure it embraces the primary sector and helps teachers build on the success they have already enjoyed in teaching media education in primary schools across the country: http://www.mediaedassociation.org.uk/cary.mp3

Images and Representation: Key concepts in Media Studies by Nick Lacey

Media Education in the U.K.

The reason computer games are so engaging is because the primary objective of the game designer is to keep the user engaged. They need to keep that player coming back, day after day, for 30, 60 even 100+ hours, so that the person feels like he has gotten value for his money (and, in the case of online games, keeps paying.) That is their measure of success” (See The Motivation of Game Play).  Prensky goes on to explain that keeping students motivated is not the “primary goal” of teachers, rather their primary effort must lie in educating, in the passing on of knowledge. I disagree with this. How might teachers actually educate when students are not engaged? Part and parcel of good teaching is motivation and engagement, something teachers work into all lesson plans. While there are many ways to infuse classroom learning with motivation, incorporating gaming seems to follow a path that both engages students as well as incorporated digital media – something that satisfies teachers’ needs to develop 21^st learning skills.

As Professor Angela McFarlane says, “Games provide a forum in which learning arises as a result of tasks stimulated by the content of the games, knowledge is developed through the content of the game, and skills are developed as a result of playing the game.”

Rather than bring corporate games into the classroom (like those by Microsoft or E.A.) why not show students what is good (critical literacy) and freely available online, something like Mary Flanagan’s The Adventures of Josie True?   

“Join Josie True across time and space as she tries to find her missing inventor/science teacher Ms. Trombone!! Josie travels back in time to Chicago and then Paris, meeting fabulous historical figures such as Bessie Coleman, the world's first African-American woman aviator! Along the way, play fun activities to help Josie and her iCat in their search!”

TEEM’s Report on the Educational Use of Games provides an interesting evaluation framework.  “The framework includes a range of questions and issues under the headings known to be significant when evaluating software. Some of the questions may be redundant when it comes to writing about particular games. However, whatever the software, the purpose of the framework is the same. It is a document that presents a number of headings under which teachers report on their findings and experience of a program, and offers prompting questions that have to be considered when writing about each of the particular issues – content, curriculum relevance, design and navigation and so on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know Josie True was created specifically with an educational context in mind. Further evidence is available on the site which even has a “teachers guide” listing game segments alongside (maths) learning outcomes:

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

I wonder how something like Inanimate Alice might be considered alongside TEEM’s evaluative framework.  Especially since at the beginning readers are offered to play the game or “read only.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winning the game means readers progress to the next episode while losing is detrimental to both readers and characters:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Something for the next post…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bookshelf:

Educational Video Games: Coming to a Classroom Near You? By Paul Korzeniowski

“Education Arcade: MIT Researchers Are Creating Academically Driven Computer Games That Rival Commercial Products and Make Learning Fun” by S. Atwood

“Online fanfiction: What technology and Popular Culture Can Teach Us about Writing and Literacy Instruction” by R.W. Black in New Horizons for Learning Online Journal, 11 (2) (Spring 2005).

“Media Literacy: Essential Survival Skills for the New Millennium” by B. Duncan in Orbit Magazine, 35 (2).

Situated Language and Learning: A Critique of Traditional Schooling by G.P. Gee. 

Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Essays on Participatory Culture
Henry Jenkins

Critical Language Awareness emphasises the fact that texts are constructed. Anything that has been constructed can be deconstructed. This unmaking or unpicking of the text increases our awareness of the choices1 that the writer or speaker has made. Every choice foregrounds what was selected and hides, silences or backgrounds what was not selected. Awareness of this prepares the reader to ask critical questions: why did the writer or speaker make these choices? Whose interests do they serve? Who is empowered or disempowered by the language used? (Janks, 1993: iii).

With the multimodal environment in mind, we can extend the question of who is empowered or disempowered through the use of images, sounds, videos, as well as the demand for interaction (holding a mouse, pressing the enter key etc…).

Dominance and access come together in a different question that confronts teachers of language and literacy.  How does one provide access to dominant forms, while at the same time valuing and promoting the diverse languages and literacies of our students and in the broader society?  If we provide students with access to dominant forms, this contributes to maintaining their dominance. If, on the other hand, we deny students access, we perpetuate their marginalisation in a society that continues to recognise the value and importance of these forms.  This is what Lodge (1997) refers to as the “access paradox.”  These dominant forms include dominant languages, dominant varieties, dominant Discourses (Gee, 1990), dominant literacies and knowledges, dominant genres, dominant modes of visual representation and a range of cultural practices related to social interaction.

How might we encourage critical literacy in response to what most of our students see every day?

Here is an example from a popular mystery fiction/online game: Perplex City:

To understand this video which forms part of the online story, readers must be able to read as there are subtitles, they should be able to hear the protagonist’s voice, they should be able to interpret the images – the arrangement of the flat, objects contained within it, the narrator’s body language etc… – and they should be able to “read” the relationship between protagonist Violet and cameraman Kurt.  At the beginning, as critical readers, we are made fully aware that Violet is uneasy about her new abode and also that she feels she must answer Kurt’s silent interruption: “Well, yes, Kurt, I know it’s not my home exactly, but -”

How might we respond to these aspects?

• Location information – where is Violet, what does the setting suggest?
• Question motive – why is Violet there, why is she making a video, how is the message represented, through who’s eyes are readers receiving the story?
• Critically react to information – why does Violet lower her voice at certain junctures, look at her body language

·         Suggest alternative action

Teaching young people to be critically literate is especially important, not just in knowing how to ask questions about what images, words, sounds, etc… might suggest in terms of power in a storyline, but also how those words and images might disempower those young people.  Such is the worry that young people are not adequately critically literate that spy software for mobile ‘phones have made an appearance:

“Retina-X Studios, LLC, announced today the immediate availability of Mobile Spy, the first activity monitoring software for Windows Mobile based smartphones. The software allows users to monitor SMS and call details online in real time.

The software is completely hidden from view. After being set up on the phone, it records all SMS text messages and call information. It then silently uploads logs to the user’s private account which they check online without needing further access to the phone. Mobile Spy runs in total stealth mode and no entries are shown inside Windows Mobile Task Manager.”

We need to educate all users, not just young people, to be critically literate so to avoid possible dangers (cyber bullying, predators, fraud, theft, privacy):

 www.gridclub.com/freearea/Presentation.ppt

As Tessa Jowell convincingly argues, “Children should grow up challenging everything. Questioning everything.”

Bookshelf

J. P. Gee, Sociolinguistics and Literacies. Ideology in Discourse.

H. Janks, (ed.) Critical Language Awareness Series  

Vivian Maria Vasquez, Negotiating Critical Literacies with Young Children  

Some Concerns:

1.  How do teachers (and parents) help nurture a framework for understanding the participative experience of social media?
2. What are some ways students of all levels and of all backgrounds may develop awareness of how new media (including gaming, messaging, myspace-ing) colours real-world perceptions?
3. What are the ethics involved in creating and maintaining online identities?
4. How to protect learners not yet fully “transliterate” of the possible threats arising from the creation of online identities?
5. What does “privacy” mean in the socially networked environment?
6. How do virtual realities (an example might be Second Life) affect “real” realities?
7. What competencies should be highlighted in the digital age? (Should we applaud “browsing” and rapid feedback?)
8.  What does “ownership” mean in the online environment?
9. How does ownership affect the information/content available?
10. How might students evaluate the validity of information found online (reliable sources, objectivity, validity)?
11. Is it necessary to illustrate (to students) the historical context of new media; where did it come from, do patterns emerge between the growth of new media and the original appearance of “the book”?
12. Who lives in the virtual world and what does that suggest about access, culture, type of information available?
13. What behaviour is acceptable online (that might not be offline)?
14. What is missing from new media? Whose voice is silent?

It is clichéd to note that technology (new and old) profoundly affects/influences/directs/prompts how we think and how act.  While new media technologies might greatly improve our lives and our work, issues arise in the context of “reality” especially with respect to identity, information, business. Conceptions of reality have been changing radically, not least if we think imagine Haraway’s metaphoric cyborg becoming more and more *real* everyday.  Think of Kevin Warwick fitted with cyborg technology enabling his nervous system to be linked to a computer in 2002 and Stelarc’s home-grown human ear grafted (with the addition of a blue-tooth device) to his forearm. 

Within 30 years we could have “direct links” between neurons in our brains and computers.: “By 2030, a thousand dollars of computation will be about a thousand times more powerful than a human brain. Keep in mind also that computers will not be organized as discrete objects as they are today. There will be a web of computing deeply integrated into the environment, our bodies and brains.”

“When it comes to media, our children are mass consumers.

On average, each of them spends 1,500 hours a year watching television. Roughly 17 million children and teens have Internet access in their homes, and most of them use it daily for everything from researching school projects to playing online games to sending instant messages or chatting with their classmates. They go to movies and watch music videos. Headphones and CD players have become so much a part of the middle and high school students' "uniform" that backpacks are now designed to accommodate the gear.

But for all their exposure to mass media, American youth and teens spend precious little time analyzing the messages they're bombarded with every day.”

 With more and more teens involved in the creation, distribution, management, and exhibition of content and identity, it becomes crucial that teens are taught how to think about media – how it shapes culture, values, gender, literacy (etc…).  According to Daniel Rossi, director of the Midtown Manhattan campus of Satellite Academy, a four-year public high school with four New York City  “[teens’] opinions – about violence, about commercialism, about issues of race and gender – are often developed as a result of the media images around them […]but many aren’t even aware of it until they slow down and analyze the process.”

It is not so much about “protecting” teens from what is available on the internet (or on tv, computer games, music, and, yes, even books) but teaching them how to engage in a critical dialogue with what they see, hear, read, and experience. Just because teens (or anyone for that matter) engages, participates with media (current, future, and old) cannot be equated with a desire to articulate what that participation entails. 

“It’s not enough, though, to just talk to children about the media they’re consuming. Parents, teachers, and other interested adults need to give them opportunities to become creators of their own media – and then to talk about those experiences, too. ‘Everything we see, read, or listen to is the result of someone’s creative work […] The more our children participate in the creative process, the greater chance they have to understand what’s involved and the more they’ll realize that nothing is preordained, nothing just appeared.’”

Five Key Questions to Pose about Media:

1. Who created this message?
2. What techniques are used to attract my attention?
3. How might different people understand this message differently from me?
4. What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented in or omitted from this message?
5. Why was this message sent?

Source: Center for Media Literacy (CML).

In an interview about journalism in the “digital age” Rebecca MacKinnon, Assistant Professor at The Hong Kong University's Journalism and Media Studies Centre explains that it isn’t so much about teaching people how to use new technologies – it’s more than showing someone how to use an rss reader, a blogging tool, Dreamweaver – it’s more appropriate to “thin[k] about how to build things in new ways…and how to innovate.”

Why Teach Media Literacy? Educators’ Responses:

 Bookshelf:

Teens & Technology Fact Sheet

Critical Literacy in a Digital Era: Technology, Rhetoric and the Public Interest
Barbara Warnick

E-Literature for Children: Enhancing Digital Literacy Learning
Len Unsworth

Literacy in a Digital World: Teaching and Learning in the Age of Information
Kathleen Tyner

Mediated: How the Media Shape the World Around You
Thomas de Zengotita

New Practices New Pedagogies: A Reader
Malcolm Miles

Teaching Media Literacy in the Age of YouTube
Posted by Chuck Tryon

                                          Sonia Livingstone, 2003, 15-16

Important to all learning is the notion that what we learn builds on what we already know, just as new technologies build on existing features.  The current online realisation of participation transforms literacy (in my view) from a personal experience to a community endeavour highlighting networks and collaborative reading (in all senses of the word).  These skills thrive alongside the existing foundations of print literacy, film literacy, social literacy, critical literacy, and technical literacy.

As Peg Syverson, Associate Director of the Computer Writing and Research Labs at the University of Texas, Austin explains: “Can I prove that online writing courses improve students' ability to write traditional essays? No, I can't. I also can't prove that driver's ed. courses improve students' equestrian ability.... What we're doing is preparing students for the kinds of writing they need in the future” (qtd. in Electronic Literacies: Language, Culture, and Power in Online Education, 155.)

Bookshelf:

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson

Digital Media in the Classroom by Gigi Carlson 

Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins

Flexible Learning in a Digital World: Experiences and Expectations by Betty Collis and Jef Moonen

Electronic Literacies: Language, Culture, and Power in Online Education by Mark Warschauer

“A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies," Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Future edited by Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis.

§  54% of bloggers say that they have never published their writing or media creations anywhere else; 44% say they have published elsewhere.

• 54% of bloggers are under the age of 30.
• Women and men have statistical parity in the blogosphere, with women representing 46% of bloggers and men 54%.
• 76% of bloggers say a reason they blog is to document their personal experiences and share them with others.
• 64% of bloggers say a reason they blog is to share practical knowledge or skills with others.
• When asked to choose one main subject, 37% of bloggers say that the primary topic of their blog is "my life and experiences."
• Other topics ran distantly behind: 11% of bloggers focus on politics and government; 7% on entertainment; 6% on sports; 5% on general news and current events; 5% on business; 4% on technology; 2% on religion, spirituality or faith. Additional smaller groups focus on a specific hobby, a health problem or illness, or other topics.
• 1 in 5 school aged teens have a blog
• 38% of young people with online access read blogs

Thus, bloggers are young (under 30), are keen content creators and consumers and find making connections a key part of why they blog.  With teens making up a large portion of the blogosphere, inevitably it follows that they play an important role in this kind of participatory culture.  As bloggers, MySpace users, and Facebook profiles, they “engage in content-creating, sharing, and remixing activities more than their nonblogging counterparts.”

With the focus on sharing and making connections, teens are firmly enmeshed in a participatory culture or what Henry Jenkins refers to as “convergence culture”: “a cultural rather than a technological process.”  “The flow of stories, ideas, information, communities, brands, intellectual properties across media platforms has created new forms of ‘transmedia entertainment.’”  Vital to a participatory culture is the notion that all contributions matter (at least on some level).  It is this approach which seems especially suited to a pedagogical slant; in the classroom all contributions matter and, naturally, must be encouraged. 

Crucial to teaching and learning in a digital age (more specifically, a digitally literate age), educators must be prepared to recognise the importance of participating in content creation. Teachers can offer a class blog which students update and podcasts for students to use as study aids or reminders of what occurred in the lesson. Students should be taught to articulate the skills required to fully participate in the online world and they must also recognise that media (new, as with old) shape perceptions and play a certain role in emerging knowledges. 

Important to issues of literacy is the shift in focus from individual knowledge to communal expression.  Digital literacy and transliteracy and multimodal literacy involve skills accrued through collaboration and networking like the kind facilitated by blogging and social software platforms like Facebook, Flickr, and MySpace.  These platforms help build the skills necessary in the classroom. 

As Howard Rheingold says:

''Education – the means by which young people learn the skills necessary to succeed in their place and time – is diverging from schooling.

Media-literacy-wise, education is happening now after school and on weekends and when the teacher isn't looking, in the SMS messages, MySpace pages, blog posts, podcasts, videoblogs that technology-equipped digital natives exchange among themselves.

This population is both self-guided and in need of guidance, and although a willingness to learn new media by point-and-click exploration might come naturally to today's student cohort, there's nothing innate about knowing how to apply their skills to the processes of democracy.''

More on Participatory Culture:

Bookshelf:

The Virtual Community by Howard Rheingold

The New Media Literacy Handbook: An Educator's Guide to Bringing New Media Into the Classroom by Cornelia Brunner, William Tally, and William Talley

Blogging for Teens by John Gosney

Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Essays on Participatory Culture by Henry Jenkins

The Digital Classroom: How Technology Is Changing the Way We Teach and Learn edited by David T. Gordon

I too cannot ignore new media (I don’t think anyone can). On a pedagogical front it is most important that students become and are encouraged to be digitally literate and transliterate (for example) in order to take into account both the story and the medium in which it is represented. What follows is my attempt to bring a digital fiction into the classroom.

(NB you can tweak this lesson to make it more level appropriate I'd be interested to know your and your student's reactions)

*****************************************

Digital Literacy Lesson Plan: Connection between story and medium in “Episode 1: China,” Inanimate Alice

Student Resource:

Digital Literacy: “Literature in a Hypermedia Mode: An interview with Marjorie Luesebrink” by Thomas Swiss and “Electronic Literacies” by Caitlin Fisher

Modes: “Examining a Picture” by Dr. Martha Driver, “On Gold and Silver Ages and the Elements of Hypertext” by Jennifer Ley (see page 2) and “Hypertext and the Art of Memory” by Janine Wong and Peter Storkerson

Media Type: Online, internet connection required

Objectives:

After completing this lesson, students will be able to:

• Identify and become familiar with multiple modes of representation.
• Critique the effects of various modes on the narrative.
• Give examples of explicit calls for participatory reading in Inanimate Alice.

Introduction to the Lesson:

Direct students to the resources listed above: “Literature in a Hypermedia Mode” and “Electronic Literacies.” Alternatively, print copies of both of the above for distribution in class. Divide class into small groups of two or three and have each group read one of the resources. Have each group share two points from their readings with the class (create a list on the white board). Ask for students’ reactions to the points garnered. Initiate a discussion of whether students think the points are relevant only to digital literacy or apply also to print works.

Teaching Strategies:

1. Begin by going over (with students) elements of representation: images, sound, video (streaming video, flash), animations, text, and links. Refer to the student resources listed under “Modes.”
2. Show students Episode 1: China, Inanimate Alice – this will take approximately five minutes.
3. Allow students to work in pairs and navigate the story on their own.
4. With the whole class explore the use of “sensory inputs”: sound, image, and text in this episode.

Some Directions:

• Notice that the music begins on the third screen. Why do you think it appears here? Turn your volume off (or turn the speakers off) and look at the third screen closely - what effect does the music have on the general tone of this screen? Does it lend a sense of urgency which otherwise is not there?
• On the sixth screen the arrows which allow the reader to proceed appear on the road. Why do you think they are placed here and not close to the text as in previous screens?

• Screen seven is in stark contrast to the preceding scene in terms of sound. This node is almost silent. What sounds do you hear? What do you think that noise is? What might it suggest about Alice’s home at the base?

• Screen eight enables the reader to proceed to the next part of the story relatively quickly. If the reader waits, a painting evolves on the left-hand side of the screen. What do you see emerge? Do you notice a difference in the colours used for each layer of the painting that appears?

• Midway through the narrative the reader and Alice must take photographs of all the wild flowers they can see. When you read the story for the first time, did you know you had to take the pictures or did you think it was only for Alice? How many flowers did you see? Was Alice’s mum driving too quickly for you to take photographs of all four flowers? Did the music help you concentrate?

• When Alice writes her list of things she’d rather be doing, does she sound like an eight year old? What else (hint, look at the font) helps us think she is only eight?

• Examine the final two screens of the story. How do the various modes help you understand that this is the end of the story (even if the words do not say: “the end”)? (hint: listen to the sound, notice the jeep driving off the screen, see the darkening sky)

Follow Up:

v Critical Thinking. Give an example from Episode 1 that demonstrates Alice’s comfort with technology. What other examples can you find to support this view? What message do you think the creators are trying to convey?

v Summarising. What, according to the story, are some of the benefits of technology? How does the story persuade readers that this is the case?

v Extending. Certain critics of hypertext suggest that the reader becomes disoriented resulting in an unintelligible narrative. Do you find yourself displaced when reading Episode 1 of Inanimate Alice? How do you think the creators attempt to guide the readers through the evolving narrative? Do you have your own suggestions for making the path through the narrative clearer? Explain your answers.

v Evaluating. Episode 1 of Inanimate Alice makes use of a variety of modes such as sound, image, text as well as demanding reader participation. In what way are these modes related? If you had to choose a single mode that adds the most to the story, which would it be? Explain your answer.

1) Student Assessment/Reflections   1) Use the Student Reading Response handout to encourage personal reflection on the reading process. Have students share their likes and dislikes of the online reading experience with partners. If the technology permits, have students post their responses on the class blog.   2) Inanimate Alice is just one example of an online fiction. Ask students to add their own choice (or more) to a class list on the class blog.

For me, digital works must be…erm um…digital (go figure). But, for me, I am more drawn to works that appear on the web so that they offer some kind of connectivity or are at least situated within a wider realm. CD-based poetics or hypertext or games may be no less narrative but, to me, they may not offer quite the same possibilities especially in terms of linking *out.*

Here is a selection of some of my favourites:

Dreaming Methods: Their tag line says it all -  “Writing Fused with New Media.” See especially their Journal of Dreams 

Last week’s post alluded to notions of temporality via the discussion of the “Project Storytelling” begun by

In much discussion of time and narrative the meaning of the word “time” remains vague; often relying on an unwritten premise that time is a unitary, explicable phenomenon composed of beginnings, middles, and endings (usually in that order). In formalist criticism time is something that can be mapped (Genette), a way of endowing linear sequentialities to narratives that shift between and across tenses. Rather differently, postmodernism collapses, ignores, or destroys temporality; in Diane Elam’s words, “postmodernism is the recognition of the specifically temporal irony within narrative.”* But what happens in web works like Claire Dinsmore’s High Crimson:

M.D. Coverley’s Fibonacci’s Daughter:

or Caitlin Fisher’s These Waves of Girls:

where time is neither constrained to linear (temporal) trajectories nor collapsed? Listen to the chorus of voices that spills forth in this excerpt from These Waves - time becomes a perpetual unfolding.

The Iowa Review on New Media, Games, and Interactive Fiction offers this view of hypertext temporality:

In most hypertext fiction, the role of chronology in structuring the narrative is greatly diminished in comparison to print fiction conventions. In the absence of chronology, the authors of fragmented multilinear narratives need to offer their readers other tools for navigating the text. In an environment described as cyberspace, developed with home pages on web sites, geographical metaphors make almost intuitive sense. Any textual link is of course itself a means of navigation, but authors of web hypertext typically offer readers other orienting strategies as well. In addition to a calendar and character-based means of navigation, Bobby Rabyd a.k.a. Robert Arellano's network novel Sunshine 69 [1996] also provides a map of the San Francisco Bay area, enabling the reader to organize their reading geographically. The reader traverses Matthew Miller's "Trip" [1996] by first choosing a state in the US and then by choosing specific interstates to change course. The collaborative hypertext novel The Unknown [1999] likewise used geography as an organizational strategy, and the road trip as a trope. Stuart Moulthrop's Reagan Library [1999] can be navigated both by textual links and by moving through a three-dimensional Myst-like Quicktime VR world. In Moulthrop's most recent work Pax [2003], the user clicks on bodies rising and falling through space, momentarily visiting each avatar's consciousness in the process of assembling a patchworked story of American consciousness during the war on (or in) terror. The collective narrative project Mr. Beller's Neighborhood includes hundreds of individual contributions of short fiction and nonfiction set in specific locations all over New York City. The reader can navigate to stories by selecting a New York neighborhood or by zooming in on a satellite map of Manhattan to the specific street address where the story takes place.

Seemingly, hypertext temporality becomes a topology to be spatially mapped. While “space and place” form a well noted part of web works, I don’t think their presence denies temporality (or quite suggests an “absence of chronology”). While spatiality is as important to narrative critique as the analysis of plot, temporality must persist as part of the web fiction equation. The ultimate “shape” of a hypertext is inextricably bound up in an individual process of interactive reading and decision-making, which occurs in the mercurial dimension of time. Time is the element that must be added to the raw configuration of nodes and links to produce a textual realization – a finished structure.

If web narratives are constantly constituted and reconstituted within each reading experience then the narrative comes into being only in/during the reading experience (which is also true enough for non-web works but in a different way). How might the flow of reading affect the chronology of the story - the development of the plot?

Have a look at these examples and share with me your view of narrative time/chronology:

High Crimson by Claire Dinsmore

Fibonacci’s Daughter by M.D. Coverley

These Waves of Girls by Caitlin Fisher

The Star Islanders by Nikki Mondschein (here are two interesting interviews with the author)

luxariegrey

Providence

Sister Stories by Rosemary Joyce Carolyn Guyer Michael Joyce

*Diane Elam, “Postmodern Romance,” Postmodernism Across the Ages, ed. Bill Readings and Bennet Schaber (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993) 216-31.

**Robert Kendall, "Time: The Final Frontier," SIGWEB Newsl. 8, 3 (Oct. 1999), 8-12. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/951440.951442.

“part technical supervisors, part copy editors, part writers. We were able to block the truly offensive contributions - porn vandals for the most part, replacing perfectly good nouns with genitally precise nouns. They went away in the end. Our intention was never to police content. We stood back and watched while good writing was deleted or made ridiculous then made good once again. We edited punctuation and spelling and grammar and sometimes saw great ideas emerging as a result. We wrote contributions of our own.”

What I see as key here is the notion of ambiguity; blatantly obvious not least from the positioning of Kate’s post, in the Guardian “books” section. As I noted in an early comment on the penguin blog, “A Million Penguins” is an experiment thus ambiguity should be its middle name. I’ve personally struggled with the word “novel” as images of Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf don’t seem to fit in with my idea of digital narratives - especially those with a myriad of authors (although yes, you might say Woolf made an early attempt at this in The Waves). The latter seems to encourage a different kind of reading where flow is a feature and dipping in and out in no particular order is part of the strategy.

 A million penguins or a few people writing together on the same project can illicit confusion, linear trajectories, and even “resists rational enquiry.” However, collaborative authoring can help focus ideas, generate feedback, and, occur in real-time. With technologies like wikis and blogs comes an important shift in emphasis: rather than the individual “author” there is now a team of creators. EmilyElzbth began the YouTube “Project Storytelling” but posting the beginnings of a story (in video form) and encouraging other authors to continue and develop the story with their own videos. Chrisht69 offers this and phaedress adds part three here: A very definite example of distributed authorship.

So, if there is no longer a social category of “author” (in Foucault’s sense) what remains? Is this a move towards “in-group” authoring or authoring with a collective mentality? What might diverse authorship mean for genres (the wiki novel is a case in point) (or is it technologies?), for plot (ibid!), for the final “product?” (Or should that be products?) If a wiki-novel or any collaborative project is so amorphous how might one critique it? Where does critical literacy fit in?

If plot isn’t so important any more, nor are beginnings which begin at the beginning…collaborative authoring might just be an off-shoot of postmodern or hypertextual tendencies: attempts to move away from hierarchy, from rigid divides between user/producer, from views of “the work” as a totality to a new conception of the novel as feral. Jill Walker sees hypertext as “wild” and “untamed” and "never fully under our control." Is it possible that “A Million Penguins” is just a feral novel: undisciplined but with plenty to offer.

appy International Women's Day - 8th March 2007

"Women are half the world's people who do two-thirds of the world's work. They earn one tenth of the world's income and own one hundredth of the world's property."

"Since 1857 when "women garment workers in New York demonstrated against working conditions" International Women’s Day celebrates the continued struggle for equality. Here are a few reasons why today, it still needs saying:

 • More women are struggling with aids

• More women are illiterate

• More women are poor :

• Women earn less than men.

• In Britain, part-time women earn 38.4% (£8.68) less than full time men (£14.08), hour for hour (even though the Equal Pay Act came into play in 1970!)

• Women are underrepresented in UK Parliament making 19.5% of total MPs with the Labour party having the highest percentage of women (but kudos to the Scottish Parliament closing the gap with 40% women and the National Assembly for Wales with 50% )

• Women are not in construction, plumbing, or motoring - only 2% of apprentices are women

• Women are missing from academia with only one in nine university vice chancellors a woman

• Women make up 25% of the civil service top management

• Women are off the beat - Only 10% of senior police officers and 9% of the senior judiciary are women.

• Women use public transport more than men but only constitute 29% of that workforce

• “Women lag in the boardroom” (click here for a bbc video)

• "Working mothers are left with the worst of two worlds. They can have jobs but rarely careers”

"At the same time that women produce 75 to 90 percent of food crops in the world, they are responsible for the running of households. According to the United Nations, in no country in the world do men come anywhere close to women in the amount of time spent in housework. Furthermore, despite the efforts of feminist movements, women in the core [wealthiest, Western countries] still suffer disproportionately, leading to what sociologist refer to as the “feminization of poverty,” where two out of every three poor adults are women. The informal slogan of the Decade of Women became “Women do two-thirds of the world’s work, receive 10 percent of the world’s income and own 1 percent of the means of production.”  — Richard H. Robbins, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, (Allyn and Bacon, 1999) 354.

We can all look forward to positive changes. On the 6th April 2007, just under one month from International Women’s Day, the UK is bringing in a new act, the Gender Equality Duty. This act pertains to both women and men – it’s about equality after all: “all public authorities in England, Wales and Scotland must demonstrate that they are promoting equality for women and men and that they are eliminating sexual discrimination and harassment.”

See how much you know about women’s history. Take this fun quiz from the BBC. 

And, c’mon men, when women’s rights campaigner Christine Bradley says “Women’s development threatens male authority. Although this is seldom openly acknowledged... the position of women exists not in a vacuum but in relation to the position of men. Eliminating discrimination against women is another way of saying eliminating discrimination that favours men. Not surprisingly, men don't like this. And where men hold most of the power, what men think has serious consequences for women,” she doesn’t mean you does she…

******* UPDATE ********

Pertinent to International Woman's Day - check out this upcoming conference:

Come to the Women, Business and Blogging Conference on Friday 8 June 2007 at De Montfort University to find out how blogging by women and for women builds networks, improves customer reach, monetizes creativity and infuses your business with Web 2.0 goodness!

Business is becoming increasingly interested in social media and especially in blogs. In Europe over the last year several conferences have explored the
potential of Web 2.0 networks to increase business opportunities - see LIFT07 (Geneva) and Le Web (Paris) for just two examples. But there have been no European events focusing specifically on women and social media - until now.

Women, Business and Blogging is organised by NLab at De Montfort University, Leicester. NLab was developed in the Faculty of Humanities by Professor Sue Thomas to connect creative businesses with writers and generate pioneering partnerships. In 2006 NLab ran a series of professional workshops and seminars on blogs, wikis, games and new media writing. In 2007 NLab is proud to present this first-ever European conference for and about women who read and write blogs.

Who should come?
This event is for small businesses, individuals, researchers, nonprofits, artistic and educational organisations interested in:
- women bloggers
- women in business
- women customers
- social media and networking
- creative communications
- innovation and cooperation
- customer relationships
- opportunities of Web 2.0 and the Long Tail
- usability
- you!!!

And, just to be clear, men are definitely invited. All the speakers are women, and we'll be talking about women users, readers and bloggers. But everyone is welcome to attend the conference and participate in the sessions.

Join the conversation
We'll be blogging right up to the day and beyond it too. Join the conversation at Tracy Harwood's Biz Benefits and Jess Laccetti's Blog This.

For more information visit the conference site.