Digital Literacies

What??? Again??

2009-08-11T12:49:00.001-07:00

I have moved blog spaces AGAIN.
Fourth time I think. I am now posting here

It's lovely. Do drop by.

Researching both ends

2009-08-11T09:39:00.000-07:00

When I first started researching online texts I was drawn into looking at sites created by young people. This was way back in about 2002. I was looking at teens' personal websites (not blogs) and discussion boards relating to babyz... all sorts of weird things like sites for Wiccan teens. I was really interested in all the stuff they were collaborating on and looked at the texts really closely - was totally bowled over by what they could do. S I wrote about all these online texts and about what the kids were doing and how they were playing and learning online.

Then I started doing a blog myself and getting into Flickr and so was writing about Blogging and Flickring (and eBay, and YouTube) . This was good as I realised very quickly how and why young people were getting so seduced by, absorbed by technologies.

As time has gone on, I have realised that it is important to not just look at the texts that are being produced, but at the processes by which they are being produced. A text that is online reflects a social process. It has been produced within a social context that cannot be presumed or assumed. In order to understand online text production, we need to know about the provenance. The meanings are also rooted outside the text, often in social happenings and events that exist outside the online space. As researchers of online spaces we have to understand that those spaces are often rooted elsewhere and the texts are not always self-standing, independent and self explanatory.

So I have realised that you need to look at the texts, but also at where they are produced so look at both ends.

Nevertheless in what I would call 'mature' online spaces, - spaces which have a social history, an often intricate set of networks that have been woven within the web, - these can be comprised of texts that root into the virtual space itself and have independence from geographical place. Not all mature sites do this of course, since some social networking function alongside or in support of offline activities and relationships.

So I draw a distinction here between mature sites and less mature sites ... and texts which have roots in online and offline spaces; and texts which have roots just in the online world. I think that sites / online texts which root only in the offline world are less likely to survive.

Pic from Emblatame

Social networking websites, texting and e-mails are undermining community life,

2009-08-03T12:47:00.000-07:00

.... the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has warned .....

See the BBC report here.

It's a funny old world. Surely people who use facebook are aware of the difference between making contacts on Facebook and making 'real' friends. The archbishop's concerns are around the way people are using text instead of face to face interaction....

Archbishop Nichols said society was losing some of its ability to build communities through inter-personal communication, as the result of excessive use of texts and e-mails rather than face-to-face meetings or telephone conversations.

He said skills such as reading a person's mood and body language were in decline, and that exclusive use of electronic information had a "dehumanising" effect on community life.

Interesting idea - 'excessive use of texts or emails' .... I admit I get fed up of too many emails but this is because they signify an increased workload over the decades. This is not about reduced capacity to communicate - maybe even the reverse.

I am not aware of the research that says we can no longer read each other's body language - and must admit I doubt this. I would argue that Facebook (and other sites) are not used instead of face to face communication for most people - but 'as well as' . It is about keeping in contact when it is not possible to see each other. Thus for the majority this kind of virtual contact is additional to other kinds of interactivity. Take Twitter users for example - the 140 word quickies mean that we can keep in touch on the hoof and that we are able to balance a whole range of complex relationships whilst doing other things at the same time. We are perfectly aboe to read the body language of others as well ... especially that rolling eye movement when people discover you are addicted to Twitter!

Further it cannot be underestimated how powerful it is to meet somebody for the first time who you previously only knew online. But anyhow, that aside, it is the case also (e.g. see Sonia Livingstone's work or Benkler ) that most young people keep in contact with just those people who they already know through face to face networks.

Finally, there are many people whose only networks are through online interactivity. I am talking here of people who are isolated through disability, illness - or even because they are carers - who find great friendships in online communities. To be forever reading in the press that such relationships are not good enough or are of lesser quality is a value judgement that puts such individuals in a deficit space. It is bad enough to be isolated without having condemnatory remarks made about what may be the only relationships that exist beyond the home for some people.

Nice little vid showing how the world can go ALL WRONG if we start behaving in RL how we behave in Facebook.... (don't have nightmares now) ....

I love YouTube

2009-07-30T15:07:00.000-07:00

Why do I love YouTube?
I think its because people can have such a laugh making daft films.
A lot of the time they laugh at themselves and spoof big budget movies.
It is often an opportunity just to play and to celebrate amateurism.
I think this is what attracts so many people to watching YouTube as it links you to others and (sorry this is cheesey) you share a kind of humanity through your solidarity at being amateurs together!

Identity stuff: I also think we like to look at representations of ourselves on screen - having been mesmerised for decades by enigmatic folk on the tv and in big films - we can see that actually there is nowt special about people who appear on screens.

Bless us and all who sail in us

2009-07-27T12:28:00.000-07:00

This is Guy and I happy at our book launch a few weeks ago... many thanks to Lynda Graham for the picture. This was also the day when we launched our new research centre - The Centre for the Study of New Literacies at Sheffield. We were so lucky to have Anne Haas Dyson from Illinois University and Angela Thomas from Sydney. They both gave fantatsic keynotes, focusing on their research. We had so many of our friends ad colleagues - teachers and academics, come along to wish us luck with the Centre. It was a great start for a centre that we hope will be a catalyst for research as well as a showcase and discussion forum. We plan lots more events for the coming year - not least a conference in July 2010.
We hope that students from the MA in New Literacies will like to come along to events - and that our doctoral students will be playing a role in the Centre too.

Repositioning the value of individual knowledge

2009-07-23T09:31:00.000-07:00

A company called 'Common Sense Media' publishes a lot of stuff which I think is rooted in old school values that need to update and move on with the times.

They are of course not alone in continuing to value autonomous learning over collaboration; assessment of each individual's grasp of facts & knowledge; a desire to separate learners in an attempt to ensure that they can be evaluated more easily. This is what schools and schooling have been based upon over centuries.

But nowadays I think we need to value collaboration and participation far more; we need to think about how we teach students to read critically and to share knowledge; to show where they got ideas from so that others can look too. We need to be teaching them to understand that many people working together can achieve so much more than individuals working competitively. We need to show learners that it can be good to produce texts in collaboration and to amend them time and time again to add detail, to refine, to bring up to date (etc)

Thus in this article about hi tech cheating, the emphasis in my view needs to be on making sure kids acknowledge their sources. Showing them that it is of value to research and find information, will mean there is no need to deceive others. In this age of always on acess to info, there is no need to set such a high premium on reproducing facts. By continuing to insist that this is what is important, we are teaching kids skills that belong to past centuries.

Just in case you think I am totally utterly barking mad .. I do agree we need to know lots of things without the need to look up stuff online all the time - but I am arguing about a principle here. This is the principle that we need to relax a bit on knowledge stuff and concentrate far more on helping kids to use sources carefully and in a critical way.

End of rant.

Btw - does this sign mean 'No Arm Swinging'? Or is this an example of alternative readings? (Answers on a postcard please.)

Presenting the data

2009-07-22T09:29:00.000-07:00

Many researchers are now asking the subjects of their study, not to be subjects, but participants.

Amongst other things, this is an attempt at making the whole process of research a more equal relationship - so that research participants get a say in how they are represented and in what data is used. They may also even help to design the research tool - such as put together the questions for interviews and so on. Researchers might otherwise risk representing participants in ways they are not happy with - or indeed which misrepresent them (this is an abuse of power imo).

More and more researchers are also using visual data as part of their research evidence - for example, giving people cameras to record aspects of their lives or to present the way they see things.

I love the site Duckrabbit as it shows what can be achieved when people are shown ways of representing themselves through words and images. Here the work is described as journalism - but there is sometimes a fine line only between ethnographic research and sensitive journalism which seeks to document people's lives rather than sensationalise.

Maybe the researcher and their participants will then look at the films as if pure data and discuss what they show. However I don't believe in 'pure data' and so think discussion between researcher and participants - around what is ahown and what is not, would be very fruitful.

Interesting also to wonder, is what is the effect on research participants of making their own films? How does the process of making the films affect (or not) the way they see themselves and their lives? And is this the same as the effect of the final product? (Does the product reflect what it was intended to?) Can the research process be transformative or therapeutic? Asking and thinking about these questions takes the research on a stage further.

Twitter and social capital

2009-07-21T03:53:00.000-07:00

One of the things that Twitter does, is allow you to display your social capital. Of course this is what Donath & dana boyd were getting at when they wrote about social networking in general, being about 'public displays of connection'.

But I think that Twitter is a somehow more nuanced display and database of one's connections than a lot of other spaces. Maybe because of the starkness of it all - just the tweets and the identifying name/icon at the side. It looks like an RSS feed.

The display of one's network is not necessarily why we get involved; but I do like to see the displays of others - just in case I want to pick out a few people to follow. How do I select?

I look for the tweets which have interesting links; or maybe I recognise a name as being someone whose work I have read elsewhere. In making selections I capitalise further on my existing networks and thus extend them - according to what I value. I can accumulate additional social capital by building on what I already have.

In my son's case, he will select according to who links to the funniest jokes; the riskiest videos; the most obscure music sites (etc.)

The reason why some people talk about hating Twitter is because they hear about twitter feeds which are populated by people (and knowledge and cultural references) that they do not value.

So. as Bourdieu says:
Social capital is the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition – or in other words, to membership in a group – which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectivity-owned capital, a ‘credential’ which entitles them to credit, in the various senses of the word.

I know that the term 'display' is a bit of an uncomfortable one - but most people do choose to keep their twitter stream public. We are increasingly happy to share what we say with many others. A lot of the time we assume our tweets will be read just by those we know - but are also aware of the potential of new followers. We display our stuff partly so that we can get to know likeminded others. (And this is why we all LURVE Web 2.0).

Just one more point before I go ... it seems strange to think about copyright and plagiarism in association with Twitter. Since what is valued is not just knowledge - but being a good sourcer of further supplies of knowledge - one necessarily credits where one got the information in the first place. If you Tweet - or ReTweet - as in quote someon'es Twitter stream, then you refer back by hyperlink to their origianal tweet. This gives you credit for picking up the source and the info, as well as crediting the originator. See copyright discussion here sourced via evestirling and digital maverick.

Can't do a post without a video ...

Twitter Rocks

2009-07-20T13:10:00.000-07:00

Have been getting into Twitter big style and find the following benefits:

1. Can select tweeters to follow so that they fit a particular profile - for me this is people who are interested in talking about Web 2.0 and Education;

2. I can quickly and easily add to my contacts in a relevant way by looking at other people's tweet feeds;

3. There is a constant stream of interesting things to read about - ever changing and frequently reporting on stuff as it happens;

4. I can keep up to date really easily;

5. I can ask questions on my Twitter stream and will quickly get lots of answers;

6. The 140 character limit means that it is a quick job to scan each tweet;

7. Most stuff is public but if need be I can contact people privately - allowing a back channel;

8. The search facility works very well - I can look quickly at who is talking about 'New Literacies' or use a string like 'lost my job' - great for research;

9. Tweets can point to other online material and thus publicise stuff in a fairly unobtrusive way;

10. As far as schools are concerned - teachers can get students to tweet on particular topics - only needing to write a little bit and learning how to be concise;

11. Teachers can encourage kids to communicate to others what they are learning in school.

That's it for now. Apart from of course.... Flutter:

Making TV viewing more of a community experience

2009-02-23T05:32:00.000-08:00

While I was watching a Mike Leigh film on tv on Saturday night (I know I should have been reading on a Saturday night of course), during one of the advert breaks they suggested that we all go online and write our views of the film so far.

I love this. What a neat idea. As it happened I was Home Alone and so this potentially offered me a way of viewing and sharing an opinion with others at the same time. In the past, critics of tv viewing habits sad that we all had 'square eyes' or would ruin our eyesight and all sorts of other things. They implied that watching tv was bad for you and 'rotted the brain'. Certainly they assumed it was less good than reading a book. I loved the way this suggestion to go online acknowledged that people have opinions they want to express; that they watched in an active way and that they were not just 'receiving messages' in a one dimensional way. I also loved that the telly was giving us opportunities for sharing our views through online networks.

So much for those who argue that the Internet fosters isolation.

Mind you - I did not do any review because I was multi-tasking - on my laptop surfing whilst also watching tv. I wonder how many other people do this habitually?

Twitter, Cancer and other Viral Stuff

2009-02-22T05:25:00.001-08:00

Gosh. I wish I had known this before. Apparently going on Twitter and Facebook (etc) can lead to Cancer. It has got everybody all of a flutter (as well as twitter) commenting on articles and on blogs all over the place. (They should know better).

The National Health Service ran this summary of the report; it seems that the 'study' upon which the report is based is largely data free. The report argues that social networking sites actually ISOLATE people. Gosh. So much for my little blog post yesterday. Even the infamous badscience blog gives the 'study' a mention but does try to exert self control.

Gosh. Why oh why are people so scared of online social networking? They are funny. Honestly I sometimes think they are joking. But it's not really funny that they are saying these things cause cancer. I am having enough trouble keeping off the red wine. (or on it).

Twitter can help save lives as well though - since it allows surgeons to communicate quickly and effectively, supporting each other across the network as they operate.

Just to show I am not a complete cynic, I like this website about science.

Dipping my toe in the water

2009-02-21T12:15:00.000-08:00

I would have imagined that anyone having three months off work would immediately take to incessant blogging; uploading zillions of back logged photos onto Flickr and even .... even .... starting to write the book she had been thinking about doing for a while.

But no, no no. This is not what has happened to me ... so far. Just the opposite. I have been hiding under the keyboard and feeling strange and in a funny space of not being at work and not being able to think in joined up sentences. I have been off work now for about 7 weeks .... but look at this ... I am blogging.

What has helped me feel brave enough to plunge in again? The culprit is Twitter ...or specifically people I know Twittering me ..... allowing me to just dip my toe in and help remember how nice it is to get glimpses of your friends online... getting messages through of just a couple of lines has helped me back in somehow and maybe just maybe, when I get back to work I won't feel so twitty having first been tweeting and blogging my way into digital literacies again.

So this is an interesting little use of social networking ... a vehicle for helping people to make their way back into communities after absence.

What have I been doing meanwhile? Not a lot ... but I have read this (yesterday) by mad old Janet Street Porter; this (REALLY hilarious); and this (not hilarious but totally not put downable) . I have over the last weeks been forced into reading articles about Jade Goody like this and it has driven me batty. How can anyone bear this stuff??

I have been eating healthily in extremis lately and so I have been reeling from looking at this blog which beautifully illlustrates the path to fattiness and obesitydom.

Barbara Ganley and slow blogging

2008-12-01T03:56:00.000-08:00

First heard about Barbara Ganley a few years ago when I was invited to, but could not make, an edublogger event in London. Occasionally you get invited to these things and cannot bear that you did not go as the write ups make it seem that if you were not there, then you missed a crucial heartbeat. Lucvkily she is now into slowblogging and so we may be able to catch her up. Slowblogging is like slow food (the opposoite of McDonald's I suppose).

At a time when I am wondering whether I should take a new direction in what I am doing or how I am doing it (my fiftieth birthday has pre-occuppied my mind in the same way as my tenth and my 18th(!) seeming more important than the others), I discover that at age 51 she has given up her job in academia and gone it alone.

It seems though that she is getting it together as there is this call for papers (California - very nice) which seems like a very good proposition to me. - all part of her venture into Centers for Community Digital Learning.

Anyway here is Downes citing some edubloggers he likes:

25 EduBlogs You Simply Don’t Want to Miss!

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: future blogs)

Why No WiFi?

2008-11-29T04:21:00.000-08:00

So why is it that our swanky hotel charges a drastic fifteen quid (approx $25 US) to access the Internet using an ethernet cable and that we can get online down the road in the Film House for no charge at all?

Is the ability to find reasonable Internet access (wifi) part of a new cultural capital. geekiness has its real dividends as we sit here booking cinema tickets and arranging which exhibitions we will see; looking at Google maps for quick rouites and photogenic spots.

We are the new frugalistas. Just like our Mums and Dads, counting the pennies, but keeping our hands in our 501s as we go. As ever we sport an ironic turn of phrase and chant to each other in unison "There is only Art, my love".

Gender Bender ...and other gizmos

2008-11-24T01:47:00.000-08:00

Interesting piece of software ... something that uses Artificial Intelligence to determine the gender of a blogger...

I put my url in the site here and it turns out that my blog is determined as having a male author.

Well I was surprised. It is clear they just do it on language then - I suppose I don't use the word handbag enough.

Something that made me laugh this week was the 'Why don't you look that up on Google' meme. The idea is that you send this link to people who persistently ask you questions that they could easily look up themselves on Google. The solution does not necessarily keep you on speaking terms with the person - but it made me laugh anyway.

Check it out here on 'let me google that for you'.

I got that link from Paul who is the fabbest person you could ever ask to work with.

Finally what a relief to know that 'Teenagers' Internet socialising is not a bad thing.'

But what about the over fifties? Am worried sick. Actually though ... why do people assume that the young are most vulnerable to addictive behaviours and so on? The evidence is, on the contrary, that adults behave extremely addictively sometimes, it is not something just to do with youth.

Can't remember if I have ever blogged Charlieissocoollike. But if I have, here he is again:

Demonisation of children

2008-11-18T13:34:00.000-08:00

Barnardo's has issued a video in defence of the young - against comments that position the young as problematic and transgressive:

This comes at the same time as the continued moral outrage about 'Baby P' lines the newsagents' shelves and pours constantly out of tv and radio news. Here the outrage is against social services and other agencies.

Children are alternately positioned as victims and as perpetrators of irresponsible acts.

So which is it?

This is a blog post trying to speak out against the lack of subtelty of media discourses where there seem only to be goodies and baddies.

2008-10-30T11:28:00.000-07:00

Just thinking about yearbooking myself.

Aside from the clear detrimental effects the Inmternet is having on our language, the Internet is also having a disgraceful effect on us getting all above ourselves and hoity toity.

Now the yearbook I think is a lovely example of new technologies giving a new twist to the old -
there are amany examples of the 'book' online - such as some sites quaintly ask 'visitors' to sign the 'guestbook' and so on - and a great many ask us to sign in - and then out - as we leave. (and don't forget we still insist on referring to web pages.)

But I digress.
What I am talking about today (if I can only keep on topic) is the way we are constantly invited to DISPLAY ourselves in so many ways.

And don't we just love it ... filling in those facebook profiles, (you can even pay for help)uploading dozens of images laying a trail of our online self all over the digital web.

Thus we have sites and pages on eBay - with a profile pof our buying and selling; we can have a YouTube profile and a space to customise; we have our fabulous blogs and Flickr streams blah blah blah.

I am thinking about how we have these cubby holes, these HUBS, which store our digital selves and we lay threads frpom them, reaching out to other spaces. There is this idea I am playing around with that is about writing and multimpodal text making where we develop an online self - the self as textually constituted - that pays homage to our off line life and each infleunces the other. Jill Walker writes about 'distributed narratives' and this is an idea to which I keep returning - and I am thinking now about distributed identities - that we produce through text.

But hey look at this - this is a grand way of the Internet playing with identity.

Be wary of leaning on your laptop!!

2008-10-24T12:15:00.000-07:00

This evening as I was answering comments on my last blogpost I heard a voice saying 'who is that? and 'Who is there?'
I could not work out where the voice was coming from but then realised I had leant, without noticing, on my pc mouse. This meant that I was accidentally talking to Mrs Cassidy in Canada -.
WoW!!!! The Mrs Cathy Cassidy.

I wonder when I won't get excited about stuff like that? Will I ever take these technologies for granted? Part of me never wants to just get accustomed to it all. I want to always feel the magic of an event where I can be at home on my sofa, and talking to a teacher in her school in Canada. I don't want to think of it as ordinary or mundane. I think it is fabulous!

Mrs Cassidy's blog is just fantastic - as are her students of course who must be amongst the luckiest kids ever!! It seems that the yackpack gets used quite a lot by people, check out this post.

Check out yesterday's video:

But the thing I really love about Mrs C's latest finds is pictaps.

If you are interested you can put a walkie talkie channel on YOUR blog too .. how about it?

iDentity, iText

2008-10-05T23:56:00.000-07:00

A few years ago someone said that I had no way of knowing that Riverbend was a real person - that she could be lying about her identity.
This same person also suggested that I could not authenticate tommigoodwin who had been keeping a blog Senitel 47.

At the time I was fed up to be doubted like this - to have it suggested that Iwas being duped. But in retrospect I see this was an understandable suspivcion from someone who did not spend much time online - and it made me work out how Iknew that these bloggers were not 'fake' - whatever that might mean.

I realised that I had undergone a subconscious checking prodecure - just as I might in other areas of my life - just as when I meet someone new face top face - . In face to face situations I am not naturally suspicious of people but I guess obver time you learn how to pick up inconsistencies and can then spot someone who does not seem quite who they say they are - the person they say they are is not the same as you see enacted. Goffman writes about this as 'telling' signs - you can articulate one thing but your behaviour tells another.

What I find interesting is the way we want always to move beyond the text onscreen, back out to the lived life beyond the virtual world. When I was studying English Lit many years ago, I was atold always to keep to the text. To analyse just the text and not worry about the author's life. This is now an unfashionable approach I believe - I think now that in English Lit they learn that context of the writer is part of the meaning of the text.

And so too I suppose onscreen. We have to take into account the context of the writer.

Thus we tell people in our profiles where we live and who we are . People read this stuff and are angered when it is not true.

Just thinking aloud today - for once in months.

Un-banned

2008-08-14T06:17:00.000-07:00

Stuff that is banned becomes unbanned on YouTube. Am researching for the writing of a chapter about YoTube for the book Guy and I are putting together on 'Web 2.0 for Schools' - (for this series.)

have used the search term 'banned cartoons' and fascinated to discover this Betty Boop cartoon:

Obviously banned for its racist content. Interesting also is the discussion that follows in the comments section.

More disturbing was the discussion which followed a news report about a banned diversity training video... this is a more recent film which was supposed to be used as a staff development/ awareness raising piece. However people complained about the assumptions that white, 'blue collar workers' are more likely to be racist than black or hispanics. The discussion that ensues on YouTube is quickly taken over by white supremists. Following links from their discussions quickly took me down avenues too dark to paste into my blog. Gut wrenching stuff. Anyhow this is the original news report:

Certainly all sorts of issues here to consider in terms of using YouTube in schools - I would not feel confident that I could deal with the possible outpourings that some of the videos and comments that YouTube might incite from my students. There are important issues to consider about how to introduce YouTube and how to guide students' use of the site so that they come to a critical reading of some of the hateful material there.

And I have to admit, this kind of stuff forces one to take a moral position - something I find a real challenge. I like to think that as a teacher I don't dictate to kids what to think but give them the resources to think about and to think with and then let them go. But actually when push comes to shove, I would have to take a clear ant racist and anti sexist stance - and I am not sure what this looks like without either allowing some of these views to be voiced in my classroom (and all that implies) or without banning this stuff. Hmmm.

And finally ... maybe Ihave a lot to learn from sites like this which Rosa told me about.

All spaced out

2008-07-30T10:27:00.000-07:00

This font conference is marvellous....

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Does it count as new literacies if fonts come to life and interact with each other?
And another thing ... when did we ever before word processors, know the names of more than twenty fonts? Or of any fonts? And when did the word 'font' become so commonplace? Huh? Hh? Not so stupid now, are we? We know new stuff.

Multilingualism

2008-07-27T06:33:00.000-07:00

It is not just about different languages. Sometimes it is idiom.
Occasionally I have no idea what a New Yorker is saying to me and they have less of a clue about me.

It is a question of what you expect the other to say in a particular situation - like 'on the right' was not understood by our cab (taxi) drtiver, who was listening for 'take a right' - and we referred to a flat when we should have said 'apartment'. All this stuff makes a huge difference as to whether you have to turn the car round and change direction...

Waiting for a tube ("subway") in London we have to 'Mind the Gap'. In NYC we "stepaside".

I love how technology allows us to put these items side by side.

It's been a while...

2008-07-25T16:11:00.000-07:00

but hey, I have been busy.

Thank Goodness I have a short break now before the new academic year. (Although Guy and I do need to finish that book (2009, we hope) Web 2.0 for Schools: Learning and Social Participation for this series before end of August ... but it's coming along ...)

This last few weeks I have been to this conference hosted by UKLA - did a keynote with Guy that links into our new book (did I mention that?)

And then moved on to Mississauga, near Toronto where I did a summer school with Guy, Colin and Michele. That was fun. here is the slideshow of my keynote on the interface between Flickr and Streetart (and stuff).

Traveller's Tales

view presentation (tags: streetart memes digital literacy)

Am now in New Jersey, having a fabulous time meeting Flickr Friends and partying.

Been looking at streetart as usual:

had our first ever facebook party. Met so many interesting people.

(Thanks to TT for image.)

ScreenCast: 1, YouTube: 0

2008-06-13T00:34:00.000-07:00

Oh dear. I had one of those days where technology got the better of me. I spent the ENTIRE day trying to send a Keynote presentation to YouTube.
I managed to get it on there with NO SOUND, but apart from that: NOTHING.

So, despondent and deflated was I that TT suggested I use JING.
Hooray!!

What a good idea.

I just ran the presentation and recorded it on the screen and uploaded it to Screencast.

Five minutes, job done.

Marvellous little package is JING. And so too Screencast. All free. All easy.

Now... go tell your friends about the OnlineMA. in New Literacies:

street art stuff

2008-05-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

Really love this little people streetart project which Tim told me about. (Thanks Tim).

I am putting together an article about the convergence of streetart and new technologies for the Visual Culture journal. Last week I presented in Manchester on this called: Location Location Location: streetart and online spaces - a traveller's tale.
So I am really enjoying the Channel 4 shorts at the moment on streeart:

Am going to London at the weekend and will do this tour and hope to look at the exhibition. SO EXCITING!!!!

DCSF on Youtube

2008-05-16T02:39:00.000-07:00

I didn't realise that the government had videos on Youtube ....

here is the launch of the Byron report :

and here is something from the outtake genre of video ...

funny what you come across when you aren't trying.

vegetables as instrments

2008-05-15T02:35:00.000-07:00

Obviously, we all know vegetables are good for you:

(OMG do not make the mistake of viewing the WHOLE of this video...)

This is perhaps a new take on the 'five a day' rule:

As you are aware, vegetables are great for your health, but it turns out they have a great number of other uses too. Plenty more where this came from:

I wrote before a bit about memes here and here and here. Just wondering if the whole veggies as musical instrument is also a meme.

I am pretty sure that the 'How to ...' format is a meme of some kind... which THE PERKLETS have heroically joined in with.

I think that the term meme is a term to be used to describe a social phenomenon but is NOT something that determines what should happen. That is to say I think a true meme evolves through and across groups, but f it is kind of DIRECTED, it does not seem like a true meme to me As in this example here.

Or am I being too purist about this? If you want to row about this check out this

How Not to

2008-04-23T02:39:00.000-07:00

... After exploring 'How to ' genre videos on YouTube and VideoJug, I could not resist sharing this wonderful promotional video, from a couple of people who make family videos for others:

there is certainly something to be learned from this ... which is about how many of the videos on websites reflect that we know a lot about self presentation, about how to engage the audience,a nd about what works on film. (There is nothing like watching other people's errors to make you realise what knowledge you have.)

For the umpteenth time yesterday I was part of a conversation where people were saying that it was terrible that there was so much rubbish 'out there'.

What is meant by this, is that on the Internet there is a lot of stuff that people do not want to read, see, watch, hear, etc. It means that there is a lot of stuff that they think is not good enough.

These opinions implies that for some, the Internet should have some kind of system that sets a minimum standard. Maybe that some people cannot participate or that each text has to be checked somewhere or somehow. I do not agree this is necessary. (I do agree that we should not have pornography or violent acts etc - dunno who judges these really though). I think these comments often come from those who use the Internet mainly for work and it is deemed to be a SERIOUS place. However for others it is the place where they play and really act in a way they cold not elsewhere. And for some it is a place where they do ALL these things.

I think anyway that we are all learning about how to judge sites. We are all finding sites that cater to our tastes and that these sites change over time (Flickr) and also that our interests tastes change as well. Why do we need to have the Internet ape printed publication rituals and values? I challenge the necessity for this and although I sometimes see sites I think are of low value for me, they are of value to others. The Internet represents a huge range of people, interests, desires, values and culture. I would not want to say who could hang out there or not.

So yeah. I am happy for the Yotubers of all shapes, sizes, denominations and stuff. Anyway. I like to research it.

How to .....

2008-04-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

Seems to me that so many people live their lives against a little commentary in their head. (I am not talking schizophrenia here. I mean that little self presentational narrative .... no? OK...)

I confess.

When I cook I often pretend to be on the telly.

Yes.

I do.

I cut the veggies and cook the pasta and explain to my imaginary audience what I am doing. I offer top tips as I go, giving of course, a sexy little smile every now and then. (To many of my viewers this may seem like a nervous twitch or manic mannerism.

Buy hey.

Who can account for taste?

.............

Anyway.

Some people go further. Not only do they do commentaries all the time.... but they also actually film themselves (probably doing several 'takes') make the videos, and then upload them to YouTube... or VideoJug (etc.). Take for example, 'How to shave your legs':

I love the way the video 'How to remove permanent maker (sic) from walls', actually begins with the person putting permanent marker (aka 'maker') on the wall.

Check out the first comment though ... 'Why am I watching this?' (And at the time of writing over 1,200 people HAVE watched this).

Well indeed you may well ask. It is a good question.
Why are people watching this? (Of course a lot of people are NOT watching, I concede, but .... I think a lot of people tune in to LOADS of these ... and also comment.)

I think it must be something to do with knowing that we are not bonkers and that actually everyone is ordinary and has a lot less in common with Sarah Jessica Parker and all other 'celebrities' than they do with all the ordinary people filming themselves and living ordinary lives. I think it is something about affirming our place in the world and getting a sense of who we are and how we fit (or not) with the rest of the world. There is also something marvellous about the immediate publication and sharing process that is alluring. And to watch it is to reject the shiny and saccharine feel of polished and professional film. Maybe we are sick of it.

Others of these 'How to' videos are spoofs. Some of them are very funny, comedy type things and this one really makes me laugh... How to give a great man-to-man hug....

There is a genre that has been popular on UK TV for a long time now that has this very 'underproduced' feel to it ... but which in fact is carefully choreographed. YouTube is clearly, for some, the nursery slope for 'real' paid film work and people are wanting to get 'spotted' I reckon. This one has more that 23, 500 views.

Then of course there are the slightly competitive how to films ... this one is a scream, with someone demonstrating how fast he can fold his 'bike Friday'. (Others in this genre include how to's on Moonwalking, hula hooping, and such like. Well loads of stuff really. The 'how to' is a great formula for a little video. )

I am actually quite scared that TT might be putting a video up soon... he is so proud of his little foldaway bike.... here it is all lit up....

Random stuff on the net ...

2008-04-18T14:10:00.000-07:00

such as:

the worst album covers ever

the cooking by numbers idea

the industrious counting machine

They are all great. I haven't used stumble upon or ages. But it was fun today.

But not as great as this:

they are the young (and gorgeous) relatives of a student on the MA in Educational Research which I teach in. They are fab. (This is the first in the 'How to' investigation.... watch out for more.)

Sheffield University Students Love YouTube

2008-04-13T07:43:00.000-07:00

It is a year since the Information Commons opened at The University of Sheffield.

What better way of celebrating than viewing a YouTube video filmed in that luscious space...

The popularity of YoTube is immense and in a recent piece of research I found that this is the favourite website of 24/24 interviewees aged between 16 and 18 . What is the attraction ... well for the most part it is WATCHING videos and then talking about them on MySpace, Bebo or Facebook. It is a vital part of online conversation. Videos most watched are music videos ..' so you don't have to buy them' and 'funny videos' . they did tell me that they would love to make videos and upload and would like to learn how to do this in school....

Seems to me that just as on other social networking sites, people do stuff in order to upload to YouTube... not ust about recording stuffalready going on. Look at this bit of naughtiness as students trespass on the roof of the infamous Arts Tower.

Rant

2008-04-02T08:31:00.000-07:00

This is not about New or Digital Literacies.

It is just a rant .... by way of a change.

Inspired by Karl bemoaning the attitudes of people on telephones.... he complains that despite changes in law about gay rights, attitudes of some people and organisations seem to lag behind.

I fancy having a moan about the phone call I had the other day:

Caller: Hello Can I speak to Claire Rosie please?

Me: Hi , Is that the Learning and Skills Council?

Caller: Yes. How did you know?

Me: because people from the LSC always call my daughter by that name. It’s not her name. It’s XXXX.

Caller: Oh I see. It’s XXXX? Is it? But we have Claire Rosie down here.

Me: Well I am afraid that’s not her name. It’s XXXX. Anyway I am afraid she is in bed asleep at the moment and so is unable to speak with you. Can you call after 4?

Caller: In bed? At this time?

Me: Yes That’s right. I am afraid she is unwell.

Caller: Well actually that is what I am concerned about.

Me: Oh really?

Caller: Yes I have unusual notes here saying that every time we ring someone says she is in bed. So I want to check what is going on.

Me: Yes, that’s right. Every time you ring she is in bed. I think it is me people usually speak to. I am afraid she is in bed as she is unwell. When people ring I usually suggest they call after 4 as she is usually resting until then.

Caller: Until 4 o clock? In bed? Really? Now? (Absolute Disbelief; consternation etc.) How can she always be in bed this late?

Me: Yes. That’s right. None of us are happy about it. But that is the way it is. She is in bed. She is ill. She has been ill for eleven years and we are not enjoying it. I am sorry it is inconveneient but this is the nature of her illness. We are not trying to trick you.

Caller: So you are trying to tell me she has been asleep for eleven years?? (Sarcastic. Incredulous. Calling me a liar type of voice).

Me: No I am not saying that. I am saying that she is in bed till late and I keep telling people from the LSC to ring after 4. The reason why you even know about her and have her name (wrongly) is that she is signed on to do an online course – which as it happens she has been too ill to complete.

Caller: Well when can we speak to her about the course?

Me: After 4 o clock. But hang on a minute. I think you are being unbelievably rude here. How dare you sarcastically say ‘ Has she been asleep for eleven years?’ You know she hasn’t. You know she is signed on for a course. Why are you speaking to me like this? Have you any idea how painful this conversation is? (Really flipping mad aty this point. Nearly crying as usual).

Caller: There is no need to take it the wrong way.

Me: I have not taken anything the wrong way. You have said the wrong thing and I have taken it the appropriate way. I have spotted that you are being rude and I am responding.

Caller: I am sorry you think I have been rude. You would not believe the people I have to deal with. I just need to know what is going on and I am sorry you have taken that wrongly.

Me: Etc blah blah …

You get the gist? This is what some (a very very few) people are like if they don't think your illness/disability is of the right kind.

maybe she should have read this:

Unbearably good StreetArt

2008-04-01T04:18:00.001-07:00

the loveliness of this idea as a piece of streetart by joshua allen harris... oh it is delicious....

(Thanks to the food of the future for this).
There is also this video which shows an hour in the life of a Banksy piece:

There is some doubt about the authenticity of the guy in this video ... and it's probably and April fool thing

Really loving the way these pieces spread round the web these days.

There's nothing like a good meme or a good piece of gossip.

Eleven GOOD Reasons not to ban social networking sites

2008-03-28T04:15:00.000-07:00

I went to Lewisham yesterday and talked to Primary ICT co-ordinators about New Literacies, Social networking and the future ... I had enjoyed the weekend preparing for it ... putting together a list of sites and examples of wikis, blogs, and so on. The conference participants were really welcoming, enthusiastic and fab. I really enjoyed talking with them.

I gave examples of:

Flickr.com - photosharing;
Bubbleshare; - photosharing where you can add speechbubbles etc
Voicethreads; - photosharing and you can add sound and text;
Evoca; - podcasting;
21 Classes blogging software;
Blogger - blogging software;
You Tube - video sharing;
Making the News - podcasting and more;
Radiowaves - podcasting and more;

Well all seemed OK and at the break people talked to me about how they were going to try some of these ideas. Am excited at the thought that a few said they were interested in doing the online MA in New Literacies at Sheffield.

Then came the presentation from Kent Local Authority who talked about how they had totally banned all social-networking sites in every school in their region. (And Lest we forget ... Kent still has grammar schools and wotnot). They had distributed more than 100 thousand leaflets to parents which includes information on discouraging use of chat-rooms and social networking sites. The leaflets promoted the use of pcs for educational purposes only and suggested also that young people should not ever use computers unsupervised. Here is an example poster.
I feel OK about most of this but am unhappy about only going to websites that the teacher has set out or to never use chat is not really responsible in my view. We have to teach students how to independently research in a safe way.

This is the policy document.... here. Again a lot of good stuff but some areas where I think that they have used a hammer to crack a nut and I do hate the idea of banning things. (We once burnt books you know.)

This is all on the same day that the much awaited report from Dr Tanya Byron brought some similar approaches - with children constructed as totally manipulable, passive, uneducable dupes. The Guardian reports:

Byron, who shot to fame with the BBC series Little Angels, was asked by the prime minister, Gordon Brown, last year to complete the study. She will say the pace of the online revolution has left parents as "the internet immigrants" and children as "the internet natives", often causing worries for parents struggling to stay in touch with technology.

There is a funny thing going on here, with on the one hand children as expert in technology, but unable to make any kind of moral choice. Also I am not keen on the terms native or immigrant; they have negative connotations at the best of times and undermine the complexity of what it might mean to be competent. Education is what is needed for everyone, including parents. We need to run classes for them too. Classes where their kids show them things and we show them things and we all learn from each other. I definitely think we need digital literacy researchers involved in future research in this area, not just psychologists who see children in quite strange ways sometimes!! (Dr Tanya is the one who suggests that to teach kids to behave you can sit them on their own in a room - I am just not into this kind of punishment malarky I have always believed in talking to kids in a reasonable way at every stage.)

So without spending my whole day on this blog rant I want to identify reasons why I think Social networking sites should NOT be banned from schools:

Social Networking is here to stay. People will use them even if they are banned in school. Children therefore need to be taught how to use them safely.
Students use social networking out of school, - so do many parents and this number will increase. We will (continue to) alienate learners if we ban what they value.
Some children do not have access to the Internet out of school. Schools are places where we should try to balance out inequalities and provide equal access. Children (and adults) increasingly use the sites to continue social activities begun elsewhere (and vice versa).
Students can be shown the value of citizenship journalism and the need for other voices than those officially constructed by mainstream media. This is an important social literacy practice for citizenship education.
In a classroom context students can be shown how to enjoy, control and be wary of the power (their own and that of others) in online text production and consumption.
If teachers use SNW sites in school, they can talk with students an ongoing basis, without using scare tactics, about how to stay safe online.
Students can be taught to read online texts critically and discern 'hidden messages' - for we know that some insidious sites, such as Nazi sites, KKK sites appear innocuous at first. If we ban all sites like this, they will only read them unsupervised.
The nature of literacy is changing; to ignore social networking sites is to exclude a whole area of literacy practice from the educational domain - thus making the school curriculum a dinosaur. Multimodal texts are easy to produce using social networking software.
There are excellent educational benefits in using social networking software - even when it is not used to actually network with others - such as using Voicethreads and embedding work into a blog.
Social networking software is changing all the time and thus brings constant fresh and exciting FREE material into the curriculum.
Children are motivated by using such software - especially boys.

Let's hear from the kids: Top Ten Reasons to Use Blogs in the classroom

There is a need to treat kids as responsible people and to show them things carefully. Not ban things as you will never be able to keep it all out. So you need to teach them to protect themselves and to ENJOY what there is online and not pretend that the Internet and pcs are only there fore boring educational sensible things.

And that's all I've got to say about that really. Apart from that the slideshow for the conference is here:

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Swoon (again)

2008-03-24T08:16:00.001-07:00

Here's swoon talking at MOMA about her work:

and part Two:

I am currently drafting an article called:

Location Location Location: Changing places, modes and meanings of streetart as digital image

Briefly it's about the use of online spaces to promote and share streetart and the ways in which the online space impacts on meanings of the art and how this then is brought back to the street.... that is to say, that I have seen how streetartists use Flickr to promote their work; to talk about their work; to show their work. They influence each other online; they see how flickr people respond to their work and and how they love to photograph it. And this can impact on what artists do next - and they certainly participate in photographing and 'collecting' the art in Flickr spaces. This whole process creates an interesting and dynamic archive online where images are replicated, arranged, labelled, organised and tagged. The art work becomes part of multiple narratives and acts differently for different people, meaning different things.

Themes in the article will be:

Different modes and moving texts from one place to another
Re-articulation of materiality
Meanings change
Presentations of identity
Transforming spaces
Interaction of items with environment and interaction of people with the art (or not)
Changing over time
Mash-ups
Replications and memes

I will submit it to Visual Communication and hope for the best.

And, I forgot to mention, I found out about the Swoon videos, because another street artist, anaperu told me about it in a comment on this picture here. So there we are. More evidence, my dear Watson.

Shareware

2008-03-24T05:16:00.000-07:00

Have been looking at the new 21 classes blogging software. Looks like a great new package for the teacher who wants to use blogs but is nervous about keeping control of things. Looks easy to use and privacy settings are changeable very easily.

Here is what I have just set up.

Jackie told me about Voicethreads a way to combine sound with images - and again user-friendly software set up with schools in mind. Here's my space.

You can embed what you do on voicethreads, into your blog or website:

(I know it's a bit rubbish but I rushed this!)

Next up .... we all know the frustration of our pcs and software going wrong. Check this out.

And for easter ... there's this link. Enjoy!!

Literacy for Lifelong Learning Conference

2008-03-14T15:12:00.000-07:00

I have had a fantastic time over the last few days at the Literacy for Lifelong Learning Conference here in Jamaica - The University of West Indies Education Department. .

When I get my photos and my head sorted out a bit more about the experience of being here, I will post more about the trip, but for now, here is the slideshow which I used for the keynote presentation. (Click on the orange and blue shareware icon to go to the shareware site and see the show on full screen)

I will add more links into this post when I get home so that conference delegates can access the paper I have written relating to the keynote presentation. and also the powerpoint I used and and resources I referred to in my workshop.

But in the meantime .....I also mentioned the book in my workshop by Marsh and Millard - see here.

And Kress's book here.

Exciting, accessible and intelligent is Lankshear and Knobel's book on New Lteracies .... as well as their book The New Literacy Sampler ... which is also available online to read here.

The World of Dolly Parton sleeveface

2008-03-04T13:13:00.001-08:00

The World of Dolly Parton sleeveface
Originally uploaded by Stephen Sleeveface

So is this a new literacy practice I wonder?
You get an album with a big face on; hold it to your head ... and you're a popstar!!
Ace.

It's a group on Flickr and a blog.
It must be a meme.

As after the sleeveface blog ... there have been loads spring up. Check it out on Google.

If you don't know how to do it ....go on You Tube. Or look here >>>>>>

so are you gonna have a go?

Huh?

Plug for Gamma and Street Art and New York City

2008-03-02T06:44:00.000-08:00

It made me laugh to see on Flickr that Elbowtoe has done a wheatpaste of Gamma Blog.

This was shot by Rebecca aka RFuller RD

Anyway, this is the spitting image of Gamma in my opinion and being so reminded of him, I nipped across to his blog, only to find he has left this fab video for us to see - featuring streetartists from NYC.

OPEN AIR from knox on Vimeo.

People often talk about Sheffield as being 'like a village'. Well somehow when I am on Flickr, the whole world seems like a village.

Does that mean I am a Geek?

New Take on New Literacies

2008-02-19T03:53:00.000-08:00

A kind of reverse grafitti is shown here with a acharity for the homeless cleaning up walls covered in streetart ... but leaving a new trace... just the shape of a homeless person crouching for warmth.

In another example of text reproduction, see the antics of this photocopier here ... and before you switch it off assuming how it will end ... please view to this very short film's conclusion.

And so we have two very different examples of new literacy practices - involving the use of memes and text reproduction.

Flash Mob

2008-02-18T09:55:00.001-08:00

The message was spread mainly via Facebook for everyone to KEEP STILL and FREEEEZE yesterday at 3.30p.m. in Trafalgar Square.

People turned up from all over the country to take part in a massive piece of art work - a community event which begins online, moves off line to the real world and is reported and documented online again.

Enabled by the web these flash mob games continue through the world.

forwarding emails

2008-02-14T01:44:00.000-08:00

When I first got an answer phone in the 1980s, I would spend ages recording what I thought were whacky messages for all callers. Some of these were quick and quirky, some of them ... well, best forget.
But I got over it and stopped that rubbish. People don't have to listen to me burbling on any more. And I am sure they are happier for it.

Same with 'joke' emails. When I first went online (when was that? It seems like I have been here forever, but I think t was 1995)I used to love getting 'forwarded emails' with cartoons and songs and links to sites. I would forward them happily to whoever else I thought would like them - the grand total of people on my mailing list being around 20.

But then I got wise and I stopped. At over a hundred emails a day we really can do without the sexist wise guy cracks about women drivers and blah blah. I especially don't like ones that tell me the world is evil aand the world is coming to an end. If these people really liked me and knew me, they would not send me these things and so it is not fun or sociable at all.

I suppose I find it all intrusive - again this is why I am not keen on facebook with its facility for sending messages out indiscriminately. It is time for people to become more careful and sophisticated in their use - especially as there are so many of us 'in here' these days. I include myself in this criticism actually - someone who too happily uses 'reply all' sometimes!!

We have now got over the novelty of t'Internet - OK so I am a miserable sod, but these e mails are driving me batty (.com)

Nettiquette here.

This is a totally unrelated image - taken at a conference a coupla years ago.

Popular Culture in the Classroom

2008-01-27T04:59:00.000-08:00

So0arcOz has a great post here about a tv programme that I have not seen - maybe it is only available so far in Oz, but it is a satirical sopa opera based in aschool.
I love that the kids in this school have the same uniform as kids in a local private school near me.

Aaaanyway I think the programme looks just spot on for use in the classroom as it provides hot topics for kids to discuss and would also be a good media studies topic in itself - 'what makes popular culture so controversial?'

Check it out.

Hilarious. I really wanna watch it on our tvs in the UK. Please can we buy it Mr BBC?

Bebo as suicide risk?

2008-01-23T06:52:00.000-08:00

The Today Programme had a piece about how some kids are arranging suicides online - an 'internet suicide cult'. (Listen to the first three minutes of the 8.30 section).

It refers to the 7 young people who have recently committed suicide in Bridge End, Wales. They suggested that it is websites that seems to be encouraging the spate of suicides. This is obviously a very serious business. And for some, BEBO gets the blame.

The MP interviewed suggested that young people 'lose reality' when they are online. The MP also said that she wished that young people realised that they could talk to 'real people' who could help them when they are stressed. (Mind you,closer reading of the newsreports shows that most of these people also knew each other in face to face contexts too.)

The Sun reported in this lascivious way. The Telegraph also ran this on the story. And they let readers leave comments. One person writes:

Posted by Steve (UK) on January 23, 2008 2:47 AM Report
this comment
It seems that many kids find it easier to talk to a computer
than to their parents. It is no longer sufficient for parents to leave their
adolescent kids to find their own way in life, hoping that they will eventually
turn out like themselves. Kids are being enticed by role models in the media
(including "cool" aliases on the Internet).

And there is also this vile remark:

Posted by K.Evans on January 23, 2008 1:43 PMReport
this comment
"I don't know much about South Wales, but here in New South
Wales, Australia, my kids are too busy surfing, climbing, exploring, camping and
having FUN to be sitting, gibbering over some Internet site." Well, there's your
big difference! This is England and all such activities were banned years ago by
the government in case someone bumps their head and empties the local authority
purse in compensation payments. The streets are therefore silent regards happy
playing children, all victims of the 'no ball games here' culture. Instead we
have bored, badly parented gutter snipes drowning their empty, hopeless lives
with cheap alcohol and the other end of the spectrum we have those whose best
friend is the social networking site. Well at least they're not out on the
street either drinking, battering law abiding citizens or getting knifed eh!

Aside from the sweeping statements about a whole nation (do we call it racist?) there is also the assumption that those who go online are lazy, 'badly parented' and so on. Hmm. Interesting stuff - they used to say that about people who watched TV, or before that, read popular culture novels etc. (Actually am glad that K.Evans keeps offline in the main - although what is s/he doing putting comments on virtual spaces?)

The Today programme mentions that there are 'memorial websites' and that young
people are wanting to have a site dedicated to them, when they commit suicide. I
found what they were talking about here. And here is one that has been set
up for one of the teens who committed suicide in Bridge End. The argument is
that the teens are attracted to the idea of having such sites. They like the idea of a memorial.

It did not take me long to find weird stuff on Google by using key words 'suicide' and Bebo' - and certainly I think this blog is somewhat creepy.

Aaaanyway ... what do I think? I can only comment in terms of the Internet, rather than say something about teenagers' suicidal tendencies. In general it remains the case that teenagers' mostly interact with people they already know from face to face (f2f) situations. There is a smaller group who sometimes connect with some people who they don't already know from f2f situations; an even smaller group who exclusively talk to people who they only met and know from online spaces. So usually they are not confused by the virtual and the real. This makes me think that those who do get involved in this stuff, are already a bit 'lost' and impressionable.

Secondly, and most importantly, while I think that the Internet is GREAT and a wonderful opportunity in so many ways, it is definitely the case that parents and teachers need to understand what their kids are doing and guide them. Just as we give guidance to kids when they go out on their own, so too we need to guide them in the online spaces they go to. Many parents and teachers don't understand about how the Internet works and they need to know so they can guide their kids. BEBO and other social networking sites have, frankly, enriched the lives of far more people than they have hurt and I think we have to be very careful about what we say about popular cultural phenomena - an easy way to alienate the young is to tell them what they are doing is bad, dangerous and wrong.

So. The Internet is not about to go away. It is going to increase its presence in our lives. So we all need to learn how to read texts; how to protect ourselves and be aware of how persuasive/seductive some texts/ online cultures can be. This is the role of Education and Educators. Like me.

Oh wow!!

2008-01-17T02:11:00.001-08:00

What can I do?

I want a Mac Book Air ... you can actually copy a CD or software from another computer without any wires ... oh wow!!

| View | Upload your own

see this show or you can see on video here.

Learning and Teaching Conference

2008-01-14T13:56:00.000-08:00

Had a good day at this conference on Monday.

Did a presentation about the online MA, which seemed to go down OK.

View Upload your own

It is hosted on slideshare here.
In my presentation I was wanting to share ideas about how to make an online course, which uses 'clunky' software, into something a bit more like a web 2.0 experience. I also wanted to share thoughts about what we had learned so far as teachers.

In the actual presentation I went into the course space itself and did not just stay with the slideshow, but cannot show this here as it is all password protected. This system means that students can get on with their course without feeling that they are being overlooked by 'all and sundry'!

I love our course and feel I know the students better than I know my 'face to face' taught students.

New stuff to look at:

2008-01-13T12:11:00.000-08:00

First up, is Tumbla, a new piece of free bloggoing software. Looks clean and easy to use, supporting easy upload from mobile phones.

Next is Jacke Eames' new venture Intimate Boudoir. We all know the success of TV shows like How To Look Good Naked but this is a makeover without the need to go on national TV. So you don't have that humiliation but you do have the photographs to show your friends.
This kind of thing can be a real confidence boost I guess. And perhaps they will show you ways of having your photo taken without making you look like a hog. (I often look like a hog ... but then it may be the raw materials at fault. )

Definitely the shots on 'Intimate Boudoir' are well impressive and it looks like they really can work some magic. You choose from a range of packages, the most pricey of which comes in at just over a grand. A nice litle earner I have no doubt. Is is going to be a bit of a life coach therapy thing for some people? Maybe so.

You may remember this video from Dove, which I blogged sometime back.

There is a marvellous parody here. I like web culture. Yes I do.

Street Art as New Literacy

2008-01-06T13:45:00.000-08:00

I think that Street Art merits a place as a New Literacy - I think it has always had many of the characteristics of New Literacies, but more so now.

If we think of New Literacies as being some or all of the following - multimodal; able to be changed by people other than the original authors; that it is often replicated - either exactly or showing slight adjustments to suit context; its meanings change over time and when it is used in different contexts - and the text itself can change as the environment interacts with it or as others 'upload' / 'paste-up' /'stencil' (etc) new content near it....As Lankshear and Knobel explain here:

They can “travel” without requiring particular
people to transport them. They can be replicated independently of needing
other human beings to host the replication. The particular kinds of codes employed
in literacy practices are varied and contingent.

These days more and more street artists are conscious of their work being photographed and being put online. Like Celso. And this sometimes influences the way they DESIGN it, or where they place it - perhaps in places that are often photographed.

Often the streetartists are also very active on sites such as flickr, keeping an eye on the way their own art develops in the street (evidence of other art around it; art being added; the art weathering and going through an aging process) as well as how it is developing meanings in online contexts.
In this sense we see 'the fracturing of space' occurring as part of the whole streetart process.

See how goreb for example can look at all photos tagged with his name on Flickr. He and others can then see how popular the art is, how it is progressing in the environment - and see it as an online gallery like a museum collection. Look.

I love how Banksy has played with Flickr like this:

You Tube , Memes, the classroom

2008-01-02T07:03:00.000-08:00

Have been having a bit of fun looking around YouTube,
finding memes and stuff.

If a meme finds its way online or even
begins life on the web, it usually ends up moving into other types of space and
maybe back again.

here is some of the work from the clan du neon ... campaigning to save the environment by
turning off display lights in shops ... it looks fun!

So the meme exists partly online as
part of the whole clan du neon process involves filming the process of switching
off lights and to make the video available through YouTube.

You can see
more on this blog here. Or
on YouTube here.

Rosa told me about some other memes and we had fun looking up all
sorts of things ... such as the WonderWoman copycats. Jen Gray is Grrrreat:

I dunno where she learned those
moves. But wow.

There are more related videos here.

So what else?

There is the Pedro dance. It all began with the film Napolon Dynamite with this dance here.

It has all become a bit of an Internet occupation to mimic the dance and to put on'es own spin on it. See for example here:

But I like the ones which jam together several ideas like the ipod version:

There is this other stuff going on too .. around the controversial 'don't tase me bro' news story set in the University of Florida. Basically a university student was marched away from the floor when he was trying to ask Senator John Kerry some embarrassing questions. It has become quite a well watched incident on YouTube since the whole dreadful event was videoed.

There have been copycat uses of the line 'don't tase me bro' which tend to be used as a way of signifying the USA as a police state. Sometimes to comic effect (depending on your viewpoint)

15 Seconds Of Fame

I wonder what you think of the ethics of films like this.

This time have a look on a different video sharing site. Here we can take a look at Britney Spears using 'don't tase me bro' as a line in a song. Nice.

So, a lot of mixing and jamming here. Interesting in terms of literacy, shared and distributed authorship.

What of its significance to learning -

that the Internet promotes the sharing of ideas and the dispersal of information. That we can use and re-use and reformulate. That the power of texts can be increased and weakened through duplication.

Points of discussion:

1. Where do we draw the line in terms of ethical use of video material for parody?
2. Are political messages strengthened or weakened through their proliferation and adoption by online groups?

I like the idea of applying questions to texts such as:

What is the main message or content of this text?
What is the purpose/function of the text?
What media are used to convey the text?
Are these the most appropriate modes and media for the conveyance of the
text message?
Who benefits from this text? (e.g does anyone make money?)
What messages are prioritised and which information is undermined or
omitted? (Why?)
Does anyone suffer as the result of this text?

we can apply these questions to any text and we can teach kids to ask them. And for some texts we can also ask:

Why is this text so popular/unpopular?
Why do people want to mimic this text?
How do the original meanings and beneficiaries (etc) change as a
result of this text becoming a meme?

But .... Why would you want to do all this?
The answer is simple. Because in order to become literate,we need to understand social implications of texts as they are part of the whole meaning.

New York first off

2007-12-03T08:49:00.000-08:00

Home of the sugar dudes and so many other funky folk ...

We flew in last week and had a jet-lagged stop off at The Rodeo bar with C-Monster, Celso, RubyMae and Arfer. No time for the Delice Bakery unfortunately, but we did have time to check out what was going on with some of the street art in Wooster and Williamsburg.

Really nice to catch up and chat and get some info for a new flickr article I am putting together for Carey's journal Visual Culture.

We went on through to Austin where I caught up with Sarah and Dana at the NRC conference. Their papers were fabulous of course and will blog more on this soon....

A New Literacy Event

2007-11-20T05:44:00.000-08:00

Today I had a go at playing Supple!! Thanks to PJC my life will never be the same again. It's a bit like the Sims - but sexier. So that's the game for me, obviously.

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Check out the demo.

Thinking about events and practices, what might I be involved in here .. blogging as a literacy practice and prior to this I was involved in playing video games as a practice. The literacy event I was involved in was playing 'Supple' at my office computer and then writing this particular post - which involved embedding a video from YouTube. Usually it is pretty easy to embed a video from YouTube but today I had to fiidle around and work out how to make the code work... maybe I am a digital native as I keep on going till I resolve a problem lilke this.

Maybe one day I will be as good as this baby using the iphone:

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Amazing how this little baby is learning to manipulate text at the same time as he is learning to speak. Is this baby involved in a literacy event I wonder? As Barton and Hamilton also note is commonplace, there is a lot of talk going on around the literacy event, and this is certainly a social event we see here.

In terms of practices there is a whole load of nurturing stuff going on there (the practice of parenting and 'being in a family') and a sharing of a global global phenomenon from the broader context.

In the Nag's Head

2007-11-11T12:38:00.001-08:00

Amazing stuff down the pub on Ebay ...

I love the way they have a discussion board called The Nag's head. People in there can just chill n chat.
Lots of the people in there have no selling or buying history on eBay and so are just hanging out in the discussion rooms just because they can. It's like a free place where you can go in and loll about - only attracting attention if you break the rules.
It reminds me of the young people who hang out on street corners or in shopping malls. Those cool places where adults don't want them but they reclaim as their own. They change the nature of a place by doing different stuff in them - and sometimes they get noticed, sometimes they don't.
The other day I came across a thread where people were talking about brandings, piercings and body carving. Really. And there was a link to the most horrendous images. (I am not putting in a link as I don't want it connected to my blog.) Of body carving. But they basically can talk about anything at all...so here's one person moaning about her mother ...

Basiclly I just need to rant
when Im on the phone to her or Talking to her in person I could say something she looks at me blankly and then just starts ranting about something thats on her mind

Shes had a few problems with her sisters lately and resulting in her only talking to 1 out of 5
she constantly goes on and on and on And ON about them and TBH Im getting really sick of it

Its like nothing I have to say is important because she has this problem even my kids had to listen to it when she was here last week. Carl listened to it one night and then disappered for the rest of the week

or there is this one about people with no manners:

Really wind me up
13 people said their child was coming to Connors party today, i put on the invitation that i needed to know exact numbers by the 7th as i had to pay in advance, most of them i had to chase up because they were too lazy to tick the box saying i would love to come/ i cant come.
On friday i had 13 "definitley coming" i paid £161 for the bloody party £11.50 a child and 4 of them didnt turn up after their parents said they were coming

I am so temted to tell the parents tomorrow they owe me £11.50 each

and breathe

I think that people plan to meet on these discussion boards and then have a chat. I think they know each other face to face and use this as a spce to catch up. Which is a good idea I spose as it is free and there is loadsa room to put up jpgs and the like.

So my point is that people re-fashion online spaces to suit their needs. Interesting.

Such is the fascination of eBay, that one of the most viewed images on my Flick stream, is the teacups I once bought from eBay:

YouTube stuff

2007-11-11T12:23:00.000-08:00

Bell Hooks is on YouTube:

some people mihght find that unexpercted, that intellectuals have stuff on YouTUbe.

But a lot of really good stuff in on there.

This video is a clip from a lomger video available from the Media Education Foundation

BUt you can check out quite a lot of stuff on YouTUbe from the Challenging Media section.

Rosa likes the stuff about advertising and the exploitation of women. Like this:

So, loadsa stuff about ISSUES on YouTube. You just have to know how to find it, I guess.

And I have used quite a lot of them on the New Literacies MA ... maybe I will soon put up videos of my own onto YouTube.

Wanna stuffa squirrel?

2007-10-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

Rosa enjoyed doing just that in the summer:

However, some people take this to extremes, and proving that you can find absolutely anything on the web, we have this for you: squirrel forms.

Camtasia

2007-10-11T16:43:00.000-07:00

I have been playing with a free down load of the software 'Camtasia'.

I have been making rough and ready amateurish videos for the online MA in New Literacies.

I have to say the videos are less Hollywood than they are YouTube. You can see through the cracks of production - very much so.

But that is what web 2.0 is all about isn't it?

Mind you I must admit I have not yet worked out how to put them in a YouTube friendly format ... so an example of Camtasia is here:

Camtasia

2007-10-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

Guilt

2007-10-09T13:40:00.000-07:00

People seem to feel guilty if they don't regularly update their blog/vlog or whatever online space they keep.
What is it about this stuff that causes people to feel guilty?? (It reminds me of when I was addicted to running and felt SO bad if I had a day off).

But this is something even more strange than that. There is something interesting here about feeling that there is a vigilant punitive audience out there (out where exactly??) judging you the blogger (non-blogger) for not being a proper daily activist. Is it that in not blogging you are lettin the side down? That you are not a proper geek? That you (horror) have nothing to say?

Now come on guys... let's have therapy on this. It is UP TO YOU how often you blog. I always seem to apologise if I have not blogged in a while (sorry chaps) and it seems to be a common thing look here at the wonderful Melissa.

She is SO SWEET.

When I was in NYC and talking to the magnificent Gamma he told me that if someone does not blog for a couple of weeks, he deletes them from his blogroll.

I was mortified. What annihilation ... much as I adore Gamma of course, this is a standard I cannot live up to and get all my other stuff done at the same time.

So different blogs do different things and people start them for all kinds of reasons. Do you feel guilty if you don't blog??

Online MA in New Literacies goes live...

2007-10-08T06:55:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah... I am so pleased with our new course which goes live today ... I am so so excited and am looking forward to the students playing around in there and doing stuff on New Literacies.

it feels like its been a long time coming, but now it's here, and we are ready to go.

We'll be doing lots of stuff about new practices around new technologies ... maybe analysing stuff like this very cool video here But I really love the way this video reinterprets aspects of environmental literacy to suit a lovely romantic story...

I love the way people are using YouTube as a way of being activist, or just exploring views. See this one here:

Why don't you do the green thing?? Walk to work ... you know you wanna.

ooops

2007-09-27T13:13:00.000-07:00

seems that nearly a month has gone by since my last post.... in the meantime I have had a makeover.

here's me out on my bike:

As I was making this video so that you can see what I look like now, all these creatures started following me.

A post for the nostalgic

2007-09-03T13:56:00.000-07:00

Hi there, Pop Pickers!!

How about a Rubiks cube table to go with your Rubik's cube cake?

You can buy it here.

If I have got you interested here and you wanna buy more shite for your home ... well how about a hanging Harry light pull?

Or maybe you could turn your gorgeous ipod into a piece of trash by teaming it with a cardboard classic:

yes, that's right. It is a cardboard boombox. And you put your ipod in it. Innit?

These items and more can be yours after one short trip to Suck.com here.

Happy shopping kiddoes. Fabulous, Pop Pickers

This is what life online is all about.

e mail meme

2007-09-02T02:03:00.000-07:00

At one time I used to receive loads of 'jokes', stories, images (usually sexist, laughing at how stupid men/women are) even prayers on email.
These have died down now - maybe as people have tired ofthese things, or maybe because I rarely responded to the ones sent to me (perhaps everyone else gets as many as they used to) . I think that what they do is kind of 'poke' people, reminding them of who they cpuld interact with if they want to, in the same way as facebook does I suppose. And maybe now a lot of this kind of phatic socialisation and development of in-jokes has transferred to facebook, Bebo and so on and on.

Anyway I got this today:

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids
in the 60's, 70's and early 80's probably shouldn't have survived, because
our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paint which was
promptly chewed and licked.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, or latches on doors or
cabinets and it was fine to play with pans.

When we rode our bikes, we wore no helmets, just flip-flops and fluorescent
'spokey dokey's' on our wheels.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or airbags - riding in
the passenger seat was a treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle and it tasted the
same. We ate chips, bread and butter pudding and drank fizzy juice with
sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside
playing.

We shared one drink with four friends, from one bottle or can and no-one
actually died from this.

We would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps and then went top speed
down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into
stinging nettles a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and could play all day, as long as we
were back before it got dark. No one was able to reach us and no one minded.

We did not have Play stations or X-Boxes, no video games at all. No 99
channels on TV, no videotape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no
personal computers, no DVDs, no Internet chat rooms.

We had friends - we went outside and found them. We played elastics and
rounders, and sometimes that ball really hurt! We fell out of trees, got cut
and broke bones but there were no law suits.
We had full on fist fights but no prosecution followed from other parents.

We played chap-the-door-run-away and were actually afraid of the owners
catching us.

We walked to friends' homes. We also, believe it or not, WALKED to school;
we didn't rely on mummy or daddy to drive us to school, which was just round
the corner.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls.

We rode bikes in packs of 7 and wore our coats by only the hood.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of...they
actually sided with the law.

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem
solvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years have been an explosion of
innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and
responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all. And you're one of
them. Congratulations!

Pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow as real kids, before
lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good.

For those of you who aren't old enough, thought you might like to read about
us. This, my friends, is surprisingly frightening...and it might put a smile
on your face:

The majority of students in universities today were born in 1986...They are
called youth.

They have never heard of We are the World, We are the children, and the
Uptown Girl they know is by Westlife not Billy Joel. They have never heard
of Rick Astley, Bananarama, Nena Cherry or Belinda Carlisle.

For them, there has always been only one Germany and one Vietnam. AIDS has
existed since they were born. CDs have existed since they were born. Michael
Jackson has always been white. To them John Travolta has always been round
in shape and they can't imagine how this fat guy could be a god of dance.
They believe that Charlie's Angels and Mission Impossible are films from
last year. They can never imagine life before computers. They'll never have
pretended to be the A Team, RedHand Gang or the Famous Five. They'll never
have applied to be on Jim'll Fix It or Why Don't You. They can't believe a
black and white television ever existed. And they will never understand how
we could leave the house without a mobile phone.

Now let's check if we're getting old...

1. You understand what was written above and you smile.
2. You need to sleep more, usually until the afternoon, after a night out.
3. Your friends are getting married/already married.
4. You are always surprised to see small children playing comfortably with
computers.
5. When you see teenagers with mobile phones, you shake your head.
6. You remember watching Dirty Den in EastEnders the first time around.
7. You meet your friends from time to time, talking about the good Old days,
repeating again all the funny things you have experience together.
8. Having read this mail, you are thinking of forwarding it to some other
friends because you think they will like it too...

Yes, you're getting old!! :-)

I admit to having quite liked reading this and felt a bit smug and thought 'oh yes!! That's true - especially as I started remembering spending days roller skating while pushing along my old dolls pram filled with stuff.There are myths and tropes about today's kids, yesterday's kids and today's adults. I guess the meme within this whole thing is the one that has persisted over generations which is that in the old days, people had it tougher and it did them good.

Certainly the author of 'Toxic Childhoods' has a rose coloured notion of the past and probably has loadsa conversations about the good old days.

But I am not glad I have thirteen amalgam fillings in my teeth; that my Mum used to cut a hole in the front of my winter shoes to turn them into summer sandals; or that Sundays were so endlessly endlessly boring; or that oneof my junior school teachers smoked in the classroom and that kids got whacked on the hands, legs or face if they did stuff wrong in school. Don't et me wrong, I enjoyed my childhood and it is quite thought provoking getting these kinds of email from time to time. (And it is this that shows my age - I can talk about my childhood and know that it was very very different in so many ways to that of 'kids today'.

Time to think about the new winter collections...

2007-09-01T13:24:00.003-07:00

shall it be Essentiel?

Ghost?

Milly?

Gosh. Summer is going and it never came.

Microsoft? Are you scared yet?

2007-08-31T01:47:00.000-07:00

At last another bit of competition for Micrsoft with Dell launching the use of Ubuntu an opensource operating system to be included on some of its machines. Perhaps this will see the end of such narrow competition ... yes I know that Apple's Tiger (grrrr) is lovely everyone .... but you know what I mean.

Ubuntu is designed by the people for the people (ha ha) or as Dell says, it:
lets multiple people change, improve and redistribute the source code, meaning the software is generally community developed and available for free

So of course that makes it cheaper. And competitive. I wonder how many other manufacturers will follow suit... and what will Microsoft do to bribe them to stay loyal?

In the meantime Brendadada has this piece on Flickr, where Yahoo's takeover of that initially wonderful online space has progressivley annoyed her so much that she has emigrated (with some friends) to
Ipernity. It looks like a very nice place indeed.

Interesting watching the debates about control of online spaces and so on and all this does have resonances for literacy practices and research about online text production and consumption. (So keep those articles coming Brendadada).

In the meantime, here is me zooming down the A57 by Stines in Derbyshire ... relieved to be on the downhill run at last ... and hoping we will have some kind of summer in the UK afterall

(Thanks to TT for the shot of me smiling at last and for telling me bout stuff for my blog).

Pimp that snack

2007-08-30T08:01:00.001-07:00

is such a great website. (here.) It shows how you can make a cake like this. Or a giant jaffa cake. Or a massive Munchie.

I found it on a link on one of the eBay forums, which was quite a random thing, I thought. This is how to make a giant toffee crisp.

Gasoline or Yoghourt?

2007-08-29T07:21:00.000-07:00

I would go for Yoghourt everytime:

I love the rough-cut film culture; this seedy side of life thing that YouTubers seem to do so well. It is like a ritual resistance performance which is anti- hollywood / anti glam/ anti sophistication.

A lot of online humour is self parodying and understated. But I also like this film as it has a bike in it and bikes are the NEW THING as far as I am concerned.

I also love the joke people were having on Flickr with this photo here

The comments made me fall about laughing. I just lurve hanging with the kids online.

And just randomly ... this was in my kitchen sink:

New stuff everywhere

2007-08-28T04:29:00.001-07:00

who taught him......???
Originally uploaded by hb19

Like this cyber school.

Accipio Learning is the UK’s leading provider of live, online teaching to secondary school students who are unable to attend mainstream schools. Accipio delivers its services through live, interactive lessons allowing pupils to communicate with teachers and peers in a safe and secure virtual learning environment.

I would be very interested to see exactly how interactive the lessons are. Wonder if it old school stuff just put online... or is it truly exciting??? Would love a tour.

And as regards other old stuff mnade to seem new ...

div>Radio 4's Today programme ran a piece about online Scrabble.
Apparently you can get an application to play Scrabble through Facebook now - and I ought to have a go. Apparently it is incredibly popular on facebook.
To me, this is quite fascinating as it is surely an old wine in new bottles type of scenario - which has been much criticised as an outmoded approach to technology (usualy used by schools). It is the notion of doing 'old style literacy activities' but using technolgy. Examples might be asking kids to type up their good work on a wordprocessor as a reward; having the kids do reading comprehension on a computer.This idea of using technology as a tool that could be performes judt as well using pen and paper or which does not take advantage of the affordances of new technolgies.

Scrabble, on the surface ooks like an example of simply transsplanting something old into a new package. But is it?

A new literacy, as Colin and Michele argue, is about new ethos stuff as well as new technoogy. And I guess it is the fact that the game of Scrabble is being polluted with 'new ethos stuff' that has caused consternation in some circles...

On the Today programme, (at 8.20 here) there was a traditional guy (henceforth 'Tradman') talking about how terrible the idea of online Scrabble is and that 'social intercourse' was a forgotten skill and that people are suffering because they stare at their computer screens all the time (etc.) He recounted how pleasant it is to play face to face 'with a glass of wine' and seemed to speak as if he and his friends' activities (of doing just that) were in some way under threat. Strange.

The defender, and developer of the online Facebook application (henceforth faceman) said that the game was good to play online as these days people often do not have time to meet face to face.

Tradman said that people could cheat if they play online as they could look stuff up; faceman said that people would not cheat if they were playing friends and that if they did do so, they would only be cheating themselves.

Oh dear oh dear, what a puerile discussion. And doesn't poshman know that you can cheat in face to face games (I do).

The game is DIFFERENT online. And why one earth should face to face 'intercourse' suffer because people also interact online?? This discussion is really old hat and DRAGS ME DOWN.

Here's a poppy to cheer you up.

National Reading Conference in Austin Texas this year

2007-08-27T13:14:00.000-07:00

and so I have done a bit of research about Texas.

Found this video in the New York Times online.

Wonder if the NRC people will affect the Texans at all. I am looking forward to attending... I understand Austin is really different from the rest of the state.

Dinner on the underground

2007-08-24T05:27:00.000-07:00

Just an example of how the internet has changed people's lives ... you cannot tell me they would have done this without planning to put it on YouTube first.

People lead more interesting lives through what they do online as well as what they do in order to report it / show it online.

Anyway, regarding this video, I love the way the drama challenges the space and the rituals of the London tube.

C Dragon

2007-07-30T11:04:00.000-07:00

Amazing new software being demonstrated via YouTube video.

Watch it and be amazed ... (forgive the geeky delivery and the BMW ad at the start and end)... but this is the spiel that goes with it:

Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation. Its architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, shows it off in this standing-ovation demo. Curious about that speck in corner? Dive into a freefall and watch as the speck becomes a gargoyle. With an unpleasant grimace. And an ant-sized chip in its lower left molar. "Perhaps the most amazing demo I've seen this year," wrote Ethan Zuckerman, after TED2007. Indeed, Photosynth might utterly transform the way we manipulate and experience digital images.

wearable technology

2007-07-25T04:59:00.000-07:00

As if we really needed further signs that technology is overtaking our lives ... one of the most traditional stores in the UK, Marks and Spencer, recently featured this suit with HIDDEN ipod pouch on its website. (You completely MUST click on the link and see the close up views ... my friend told me that instore, this suit is held in the 'gimp' section. Oh dear.)

Here's a screenshot:

(I am worried they will take off the image - tantalising though it is.)

The secrecy of the little thing means that you can hide the fact that you are listening to 2pac of Misteeq as you make your way across the city to the next hi powered meeting. But discretion is all a charade of course; minimalist is stylish and it is obligatory to arrive with earphones IN, but to hurriedly remove them. The great thing is that in fact you can either be listening to a podcast of The Archers, to good ol' Melvyn on 'In our Time' or even Vegan Freaks.

I wonder though what was the sound when the "'Muslim juror' listened to iPod under hijab" as reported in The Times a coupla weeks ago. Apparently she now faces jail for this.

In the meantime I am delighted to announce that I too am giving the iPod another chance. After my long lasting railings and wailing about the demise of my first one way back in 2004 (after only using once) I took my courage in both hands and accepted a gift from TT...

Actually I love it. I am just putting fast music on it as it will be my companion as I attempt to shift the lard from my body down at the gym. It can clip onto my great big trousers which I hope will get baggier and baggier.

So wearable technology for the naughty juror - subverting the image of the benign, pure, innocent , veiled and oppressed female; for the business man who wants to pretend to hide his funky identity under his suit ... and then there's me at the gym. Listening to music liked by the 'woman of a certain age' down the gym trying to stave off middle age. (Alongside rows of other wobbly ladies on a Sunday morning.)

Well. Technology does help blend the boundaries of our lives in many different ways. The 'digital divide does exist, but it is certainly not a clear cut line through society and as participation widens and uses become more complex, theorists need to stop trying to put forward simple arguments about the impact on society and the self.

The End of the World

2007-07-24T08:42:00.001-07:00

You should definitely watch this. (It only takes a minute.)
And pretend you are from California.

(Took this photo in Williamsburg, Brooklyn NYC April 2006. Looks like the end of the world. This is now luxury apartments.)

So what actually IS streetart?

2007-07-05T02:35:00.000-07:00

The National Gallery is promoting its wares (does it need to?) and is putting 40 works of art on the street . Huge reproductions on vinyl are being placed strategically (streetegically) across London. The project is called Grand Tour and is an interesting one.
What makes it OK for some art work to be shown and not others?
(Banksy's work is now allowed in some cities.)

I presume it is a case of permissions from those who rule and those we must obey. But it is also interesting to see what might happen. Will the meanings of the art change when it is placed out there in the environment? Does streetart change when it is permitted to be there? Is it still real stretart if it has been commissioned? Is it less edgy? Does it lose credibility?

And when you put art out there on the street ... where does the art end? At the edges of the artefact?

I think the meanings of art work derive partly from its provenance - the way it is used, where it has been, how people read it - even interact with it. Will people be upset if someone adds a moustache to the faces on these classical /street art works? More info about the project here.

And are these mashups?

In the meantime other art makes the journey another way ... streetart is sometimes brought off the street into new places. For example there are so many people on Flickr who collect streetart images, collating and cataloguing. How does that change their meanings and their value? The currency is different I think when you bring an image to a webspace; it is partly about the creation of a new piece; partly seeing something first; even about adding to your collection.

People look at streetart differently in the new online context. The images look different when you see them on your pc screen; you experience the art differently and people have taken the shots from particular angles - cutting some bits out and focusing on others.

Certainly I have joined in with this craze of catching streetart (eyes peeled as I walk)...

I have been keen to show all kinds of stuff I have seen - people ignoring it:

People appreciating it:

and people abusing it:

But I am also interested in how LunaPark has recently launched an exhibition of her streetart photography, showing the streetart from a particular locality, in a hall in that locality. There is a reverence and a particular desire to show a full range of streetart in LunaPark's very meticulously catalogued Flickrstream.

Thanks to Gammablog for telling me about this exhibition....

I wonder if all the people who went to the exhibition were people who love streetart. I wonder if anyone went to it, saw it, and looked for the first time at what qualities so much streetart has?

I wonder.

And what of the streetartists? Lots of them love Flickr and learn about each other's art through that space. They have made new contacts with other artists, planned exhibitions and shown their work through Flickr. (Some have told me, but I am not revealing their ID.)

Interesting to compare bloggers with streetartists - they share a belief andor a need to say something - to put stuff out there which will be read - or ignored.

Some people detest Web 2.0 just as some detest graffitti /streetart as it has not been legitimised through the culture mangle. I blogged recently about Andrew Keen's book the cult of the amateur.... Keen is dismissive of those who dare to raise their voices and stick their noses over the parapet. (He is scared they will be better than he is.)

Just as with bloggers there are some good streetartists and some who should practice a bit more ... but who should decide the standard? Who should legitimise?

identity kits

2007-07-02T13:54:00.000-07:00

Vic mentioned this wonderful new project, which takes the 'What's in my bag' idea a bit further.

A long time ago I contributed this to the pool:

(Showing a bag I continue to use and will be using again this weekend when I go to this conference.)

It is clear that people do not reveal 'all' but construct images in a manner so that they represnt themselves in a way that they feel OK about going online. To do this, they need to think about how people might read the images - (what will they think? what associations do the objects have? what do they 'connote'?); they need to know something about how objects represent aspects of their persona; they need to consider what to leave out as well as what to include. Maybe they arrange things so they look smart/show their label/hide their label/ look casual/ appear expensive/cheap. And the inclusion of images of faces taken on a scanner connotes something ludic; maybe a cross-reference to office parties and 'parts of the body image making' and a presentation of self that says @I am game' 'I am fun' - 'I live life madly'.

I am really interested in the ways in which we display online identities and have noticed the continuities in the ways some people present themselves across sites. For example they may begin a persona on a flickr stream and then deepen it through displays in other spaces... like Niznoz's stream and his two blogs here and here; or Gamma's stream and his blog. They are serious reporters of the city; they show something of 'life as it is'; of the history and the way things are changing. NizNoz has two blogs, each with a different function.

People often use their blogs as a way of SPECIALISING. People use different parts of the web, different types of software to perform different tasks. And they are getting good at working out what is good for what task. This is a digital literacy skill; not everyone will 'GET IT' intuitively and so there is a role for researchers in working out what the conventions are and a role for educators in teaching about these things.

It has recently become trendy to represent oneself as a Simpson on Flickr and use the image as an icon of identity. YOu can get one via a new gadget available over at The Simpsons new movie website here. Obviously a lot to be written about re avatars and icons people use on websites, but no time here... must go.

But I'll just leave you with the image my dear partner in life made of himself on Sunday. What kind of impression does he give here? (Answers on a postcard please).

technology makes you mad

2007-07-02T11:30:00.000-07:00

Or at least some people seem to be going crazy.
Seb sent me this link the other week and you will laugh like I did when you follow it.

maybe Seb knows that emails have been driving me nuts lately.

The other one who is going mad is the guy who owns the cat called Mr Lee. Not just that he names his pet in an idiosyncratic way. But the fact that he not only has attached a web cam to his cat, but he blogs it all.

See here.

My little podcast thing

2007-06-28T15:34:00.001-07:00

I have just done my first podcast. I wanted to check that it was easy to do ... and it IS!! (I mention this new course in the recording.)

All I needed was to go the website, register and that was it. I recorded straight onto my powerbook and it just did it - no outside microphone or owt. Just stared at the screen and spoke.

So that's that decided. I am going to do so many of these things that you will be sick of hearing my voice. ( I would like to have a different accent.)

Things to say about it ... I don't sound like me. I repeat myself. I talk rubbish. And at the end I say 'Grrreat' instead of 'great'.

I think in fact that I need to script these things or at least make notes of what to include.

So yes, it is a learning experience. techNOLOGY = easy. TechNEEK - bad.

Makes me realise exactly how clever these young journalists are.

And in the meantime poor old Sheffield is still suffering. TT told me outallnight had some great shots of the effects of the flood as opposed to the floods itself ....

here is part of the busiest motorway in the UK - closed due to floods higher up ....

Well done to outallnight whose full set of flood photos are here.

Cult of the amateur

2007-06-25T17:22:00.000-07:00

That's one way to put it... this is the way journalist Andrew keen refers to citizen journalists, bloggers and generally users of the so-called web 2.0.

He has written a book Cult of the amateur about which he was interviewed yesterday on Radio 4 where he referred to, amongst other things:

“Useless and corrupt user generated content”
“Self promotion - narcissism”
“Bloggery …. an enormous threat”

Further he said:

“Kids are going on the internet and are believing everything they read we are creating an increasingly media illiterate culture … in order to understand the internet you need to be literate before you get to the screen….”

This does not seem to be the case at all in research carried out by a whle range of people who are finding that kids cross reference, read critically (if not sceptically) and that the fact of taking part in all of this confirms that the web is written by 'ordinary people' like themselves.

Keen's diatribe betrayed that underlying his fears were the loss of his lievlihood as a journalist ... and if this interview is evidence of the quality then he SHOULD be worried. He obviously think the printed word has more credibility on paper and that wikipedia isa sham n comparison to Britannica... well how many times do people get a chance to draft and re-draft issues of Britannica, I wonder? (I have sung in praise of wikis before.)

This all reminds me of the insidious Toxic Childhood crap we have had to bear over the last several months. This nonsense is so pervasive and makes me really angry. Satatistics like '1 in 6 children' have 'developmental or behavioural disorders' is sheer stupidity. (When they read books like this, why do people forget all they know about kids, their curiosity, their questionning, their non-sponge like brains? Why do they forget they were once kids? Why do they think their generation is not toxic?? )

Need a drink to calm me down.....

(Gratuitous photo and gratuitous drink. Need to Re-tox.)

More social networking in the news as we discover there is a class divide in the software people use -- e,g facebook or myspace. with facebook being for the toffs and myspace for the plebs.Hmm, I have both .. as well as Bebo! My observations are that it seems to be more an age divide, (Bebo first; then MySpace; then Facebook..) but then I have not done research on this. (Like Andrew Keen, we can all make stuff up.)

Anyway, going back to Andrew Keen's book title, calling something a cult, is somewhat dismissive. I prefer creative commons of citizen participation. Hear the smug interview here.... you have to have Realplayer and slide the bar to the last five minutes of the prgramme to go straight to the interview here.

Development...

2007-06-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

I had some today . It was staff development here. It began with a thing from the new 'Environment Group'. It was quite funny as it was all about saving the planet and global warming. I discovered that we must not drink from polystyrene cups; china mugs are the best and re-using is apparently MUCH better than re-cycling. (You see, I was listening.)

But all the while there was a storm outside and it did not seem the globe had warmed at all. We have had floods all day. And the development is that people had to be rescued from their ROOF TOPS in Sheffield (where we were and I still am.) I think it may be a classified environmental disaster. Oh no.

People have been quoting records of how many years ago it was so bad as this (125) and how many inches of rain we've had - (I can't remember)- and that it is equivalent to two months worth of rain in one day.
Statistics statistics.
Blah de blah blah.

In the meantime.... I did a little spot with Tim about blogging and stuff. It was quite fun and maybe a few people were interested. You never know. Bloggers are like smokers .. always looking for new recruits. (Maybe smokers can start blogging as a new hobby on July 1st...)

There is a conference on feminism and popular culture I would like to go to but have only just discovered... I found out about it by a gigantic surf around the TinterWeb on the trail of this image here...

Can you see how I found out about the conference, starting with this picture? (Clue below the picture...)

Another DEVELOPMENT was that Verity asked me about working on a bid to develop second life teaching ideas... cool or what?

And finally Jackie M has a blog. Hooray.

OK so the image was done by Tild but I found it here first. Then here.

Girls - nattering on the net

2007-06-21T06:16:00.000-07:00

Wow Thursday already. Time for an update. How about a trip to a website to see other people with the same name as you?
Go here.

Funny way to network... you can link up with others who share your name . It's quite fun to see what's there.

Maybe you are more interested in finding out that if you are in Britain now and reading this (which you are) you are more likely to be a woman between the ages of 18 and 34 than any other type of person... see here.

I am amazed by this:

They now account for 38% of game players. Women over 18 represent a significantly greater portion of game players compared to boys under 17.

This sounds whizzy and all counter intuitive, but then there ia also this list here:

iVillage Parenting Network
Huggies
The Full Experience Company
BBC Parenting
Galaxy Radio
hairboutique.com
Foxtons
La Senza
FCUK
Pregnancy-info.net

which provides details of where most women are going online. Not so funky, huh?

The original report is here.

For those who are just getting into social networking online, you could do worse than start on Club Penguin ... and to entice you ...

Dress up your penguin, decorate your igloo, be the first to discover new areas and lots more, when you become a member!

But what is NOT mentioned here is the introduction to capitalist practices through networking - the poor little penguins have to work to earn money in order to do anything much on the site - by making pizzas...

new technologies

2007-06-17T07:29:00.000-07:00

My New Apple does not seem to work as well as some of the others.

(I have been silly again. See full set here.)

Hometown Baghdad

2007-06-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

So this is a series filmed by three Iraqi twenty somethings in Baghdad. The films have been edited and produced by a US based company - targetting their films at a young US based audience. Distributed on the Internet it is a part of the new generation of citizenship type journalism that is now really proliferating as more and more people are gaining access to technology. Here is one of the men opening his new camera.

The Iraquis all speak English with an American accent. I assume they were selected out of the many who applied to be involved in the films, partly because of their excellent English and partly for their accents - which no doubt would give them a 'just like us' appeal for the target US audience. But at times the American accent seems ironic in the face of the sometimes anti-American comments the participants make.

Suffice to say, that not many Iraquis are really gonna be able to watch this stuff since few have computers, fewer have the Internet, and less still have Broadband, - and even then it takes hours to watch a two minute snippet (apparently.)

Distributed across more than one site, the primary home for these short episodes seems to be the blog, but each film is hosted by YouTube and it is really interesting to see the comments ther, under each episode. Some of them are unbelievably cynical . Many are very anti Muslim or anti Iraq comments. Many are empathetic to the Iraqui situation.

I was interested in how a comment on one of the films a comment refers to how YouTube keeps re-setting the number of comments:

timsmedia (2 hours ago)
the view count and comments on this vid have been reset AGAIN!!!!! obviously youtube are under orders not to let this video get too popular as its a nuisance to the American military-industrial complex.

At the time of copying this comment and writing this post there were only 23 comments and just over a thousand views. The last time I looked (last week) there had indeed been over two hundred comments and over 4,000 views.

The 36th out of the 38 films shows the dentist Saif's fiancee leaving Baghdad. Despite being a qualified dentist, he has not been given his cerrtificate in order to prevent him leaving. He considers giving up his career to save his sanity.

Mash ups

2007-06-13T03:59:00.000-07:00

Having moaned in my last post about the number of emails I get, this morning I was unable to open any of my emails due to a "hardware problem" at work.

Incredible.

I had no idea how to start work without it. I was totally incapacitated. All my work was online - hidden away as attachments to emails. Maybe I will never moan again about having so many emails... no don't think so.

When it did get going, I found I had been sent a link to this wonderful creation on Youtube:

An interesting take on the mash up where classic paintings of women have been digitised and allowed to dissolve one into another. I guess it reflects similarities and differences about women across the ages.

I receive increasing numbers of emails which contain links to YouTube and it is certainly a site which has become a household name. It is embedded into everyday life in a manner which no longer is associated with exotic or advanced ICT practices. Perhaps this is an example of 'blackboxing'; a term associated with Black Box Theory - which I was introduced to by Mary P and Jennifer Rowsell.

In the meantime, I suppose I need to be more circumspect when I use terms like 'everyday life' ... whose 'everyday life' do I mean? Nesta Futurelab has a report about Digital Divides which they say are increasing. Some people's everyday lives allow them no access to technology at all.
It is arguably the role of policy makers and education practitioners to to provide opportunities for everyone to access new technologies and use them in ways that are relevant to their lives.

The futurelab is in Bristol, so while we are down there (here?) let me show you some streetart from there:

This is from the StokesCroft area and even though this art is on the street, it has a frame around it as if hanging in somebody's house. Nice juxtaposition here taking style from one space and putting it in another. The work has been created by local people trying to re-claim the area and do it up in the way they want. It is as if they are saying' this is our home'. It is a kind of streeet art mashup of genres. (It is not just in technology that grass roots level creativity plays with boundaries and moves things around to express new ideas.)

113 emails

2007-06-11T12:42:00.000-07:00

It is all getting a bit unmanageable. I was on a Critical Literacies day all day. Fabulous to hear about all the projects in the group. And I was proud to talk about what Mark had been doing on our project in his school; great to get positive feedback on this.
In the meantime I got 113 emails in my work in box.
I just think it is so unreasonable the amount of stuff that comes piling in; individuals take the responsibility of field their work and no-one every seems aware of how much everyone is getting.
What can be done? Are we getting to a point now where people will start to protest and say it has to stop?

I have to go now in order to start gnawing away at the edges of the stuff again.

Final Conference

2007-06-09T14:01:00.000-07:00

Today, like Guy, I was at the final conference of the Play, Creativity and Digital Cultures seminar series.

It was so great to do all that wonderful networking - so good to see people again and chat on about our work. As usual I went away thinking it would have been better to have a two day event so that I couldghave longer conversations and see more presentations. Sign of a good event.

Kevin Leander had some great data from the classroom - talking about stuff kids are doing that is so much more creative and exciting than what is going on in the official 'lesson'. While the official 'curricum is in prgress, kids are multi tasking and dealing in far more sophisticated texts and inmteractivity than is being offered via pedagogy.

There was all sorts of wonderful stuff being reported; it all left me with the feeling that I want to research more closely with young people and their textmaking, focussing a bit more on where the needs are. I want to concentrate a bit less on the digital geniuses and find out what MOST kids are doing and consider where education goes from here to get everyone involved. I want to think about the ways in which educational provision can enhance experiences beyond the classroom and look at what aspects of informal learning practices are appropriate for classroom spaces and to think about how classrooms can broaden, deepen and strengthen what is happening out there in pockets of the wider community.

Rant

2007-06-08T11:43:00.000-07:00

Guy posted about this website where you can get essays written for you ... and the essays are guaranteed to be 'plagiarism free'.
"Are they 'aving' a larf??"

Yes. I think so. The website has lots of videos where a lovely lady explains to you how the site helps you learn by writing 'model answers' just for you... It is really spooky and although I am not sure how most students will afford the service, it is just another example of how those with the cash will retain their social status even in the age of democratic social software.

I am all FOR the sharing of expertise and so on; I am into the idea of learning from others and I understand that information these days is easy to access and ubiquitous anyway. Online textmaking has allowed us to collaborate over text making and a feature of this is that content is often multiply authored - making it hard to credit individuals. This sharing is based around ideals of democratic access and process as well as credit where it is due - to the group. It is about time we started thinking about assessing differently. I hate the whole idea of assessment anyway. Why not just teach people to learn and and help them explore ways of enjoying learning? Why do we have to measure everything? Asessment is of course all a social construct anyhow and abstract standards have become ludicrously reified. It's quite a weird currrency. (You can hear teachers sometimes say things like 'she is a level 4', for example).

Anyway ....paying an anonymous person to write your assignments and take the credit is something different.

I am shocked by the site but don't think it is an indication of the evils of the 'digital age'; it is an indication that we are shoving people off to university when they don't really want to do the courses. The whole notion of widening participation, while sounding like a great idea, has been far less about choice for 18 year olds, and more about obliging them to take part in something they perhaps don't want to participate in.

What are the repercussions for universities and the academics who work in them.... are they the moonlighters who are writing the essays for these crappy companies?

New stuff

2007-06-07T16:43:00.000-07:00

So yeah. Really like the way Blogger has all these new gadgets.In particular the whizzy Google fim things. Look at my sidebar and see those four frames - they are videos about web 2.0. To put them on there - I just went to my blogger template, selected 'New page Element' and chose the Google video option. I wrote 'web 2.0' into the search engine and got four videos selected for me. And Bob's your uncle. How cool is that? (v. cool).
so to speak.

And now for something completely different .....these are the sugardudes. Lovely little fellows. (more here.)

Blending Identities

2007-06-04T06:20:00.000-07:00

Tropical
Originally uploaded by Trois Têtes (TT)

Went to Peace in the Park on Saturday. Some interesting stuff to photograph and saw a wonderful band Just Potatoes. The lead singer had the most beautiful rich Blues voice but could also belt out Waits' Chocolate Jesus, giving a momentous performance.

(This is the singer from Just Potatoes.)

I found out about the event in several ways - all of which were to do with my 'life online' Firstly I took a photo last week of a a performer advertising the event - but only found out about the event after I took the shot for my Flickr stream (not yet uploaded); secondly I heard about the event on a discussion thread on Flickr; thirdly I heard about it via a contact on Ian Jones came up to me and said 'Hi you're DrJoolz aren't you? I recognise you from Flickr ...

So I went to an event prompted by online stuff... and when I was there I did stuff just so I could enhance my online activities... life online and off line have blurred boundaries .... and all this stuff about DrJoolz... Am I DrJoolz?? There is this thing about a textual self that I present ... am I becoming it? (Or is it vice versa)

Life Online, huh? Blending Identities.

(Thanks to TT for the images.)