Digital Literacies

It seems to be taking ages to get the year off to a start. The snow is still slowing everythng down and so I hardly feel I am off the starting blocks. In January there always remain a few post-Christmas traces…. not just the extra weight on my scales… but also stuff like unfinished chocolates:

and bits of tinsel still stuck between the carpet tufts. Beautiful as it sometimes is, the snow has been making it hard to get about. It seems quiet everywhere.

As I have been mentioning the last few weeks, I have been getting into Flickr again and been thinking about good shots to take and enjoying looking at things others are taking. I really love Sophies’ Photos and was interested in how this particular image draws on the book by Annette Kuhn – something I have used in an article I wrote for Discourse. What I have started to become interested in now, is images which show traces of what has been; which show a history. You have to be like an archeologist and look for clues – look at the layers of meaning, at the traces of what is there. This idea relates in some way to palimpsest; there is a good definition(illustrated) in the Palimpsest Flickr group here. Palimpsest might be this kind of thing:

this paring away of text is something that appeals to me and reminds me of the research process which involves tracings and the discernment of patterns – making sense from little things you gather. I am looking forward to February when I will FINALLY have the space to write my article on Streetart and spaces and how narratives can travel across time and space – often aided by online technologies. I talked about this kind of thing in Toronto – July 2008; details here.

And then I will focus on Facebook, where I will be researching how multimodal narratives travel across spaces via multiple, dispersed authors. Yes. That is what I will be doing soon.

Davies, J. (2007) ‘Display; Identity and the Everyday: Self-presentation through online image sharing’. In Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education. Vol. 28, No. 4, December 2007, pp. 549_564.

Getting to the end of the year, so I guess I am like most people and am looking back on the last one and thinking ahead to the new.
Last year was a funny old year; my first book out (authored with Guy); launched the Centre for the Study of New Literacies (with Kate); Got funding from ESRC for this series; put in a bid for FP7 funding. Momentously Rosa started getting out a bit more and even went to Devon on the train. Could not believe it. Here she is picking plums in Dorset (on one of the best holidays we have ever had):

TT and I had a great time in Paris too, at the start of this month. Went on the Eurostar and that was a first:

So much going on and it all seems more poignant having had surgery and treatment for breast cancer too. I like to think that I can show people that it is not too bad a thing to happen and you just have to get on with stuff and look ahead. And of course all my friends, family and colleagues have been wonderful. (I just thought I would mention it.)

In the New Literacies MA we are doing the Research Methods Module with the second year, and this week we are looking at Visual Methods and Ethnography. One of the activities is to take a photograph of your workspace and upload it with a commentary (the course is online).

Here’s my post for the activity:
OK so this is my image along with text which attempts to provide a ‘made strange’ commentary. It is hard to make this stranger than it already is as you will see. Luckily I was able to set up the image remotely and take the shot with me in it, (actually Gareth took it, tbh) for added madness. What you need to know, is that we are having building work done in the cellar and lounge and so all the belongings from those spaces are in the bedrooms. We have had to dispose of all the comfortable furniture (and loads more besides). My daughter has had to go and live elsewhere for a few weeks as she would not be able to cope with the mess, cold, noise & general discomfort. The lounge window is ‘out’ and there is a huge hole at the front of the house which has been boarded up but it is very ‘leaky’ so we are quite cold. OK so that’s the background. Here is the title, picture, and commentary:

‘Making the Best of It’

I am in what WAS the dining room of my house. Evidence of this is to the right of the picture, a table covered in debris – stuff to do with my work and Gareth’s cycling. Central, are the two chairs which Gareth and I sit on. He has the bigger one as he is the biggest person and this is more comfortable for him. In the very little amount of stuff we can access, you see our priorities. The folding bike Gareth uses to do his bike-train-bike commute; my precious bike (on a turbo trainer) protected by a curtain on the left; and 2 chairs central. I realise now it is even funnier than we first thought (and we do think it is funny!). We are sitting in a row, as if to watch tv. But we have no tv!! We should sit and face each other as we can then talk more easily; we are obviously totally used to sitting in a row in the evenings from when we had our tv.  I am wearing an apron and yet am working on my laptop – as is usual I am cooking tea at the same time as working. I am wearing an incongruous sparkly cardigan (and new shoes). The whole space, although totally disrupted by building shows our values for sport and work (and my penchant for fashion). It also shows our determination to carry on as usual and to position ourselves in the room in a manner that suits custom rather than purpose. (Oh and we are using the chairs we take when we go windsurfing). We are doing what is known as ‘making the best of it’.

Not thinking ethnographically for the minute … I actually think this picture is hilarious.

I do have sympathy for the views shown in this kind of article: The Ten Things I hate about PowerPoint. The Ten then things formula is pretty common across blogs. Like this. Or this. Also common are the critiques of teachers/presenters (etc) who are just trying to get through the working day. (I have much less sympathy with this.)

I do agree though that PowerPoint is overused and I think it has started to influence not just how we present things to people in terms of structure – but also how we conceptualise our ideas. It affects and structures our relationship with audiences. The bullet point was something I very rarely used to use. Yet these days I am forever listing things off to classes of students or at conferences. I think in lists. I think PowerPoint also keeps your audience at a distance. Keeps them as an audience. While you are messing about with clicking and laying with your fancy transitions and wotnot, you are not really talking to the people properly. If you depend on the technology to wow the folks, the chances are they will not be wowed. Not anymore. We are getting used to the flashy gizmos and sound files. It has got to the point that we filter a lot of these things out if it is not relevant; if it s overdone; if it is not accompanied with interesting ideas. Audiences are more demanding these days – and don’t really wan to be an audience. They would prefer to participate! (As Guy and I mention in our book – a lot of uses of technology in Education are about providing polished performances of old practices. Nowt wrong with being polished, mind you.)

Totally agree that you can come up with snazzy stuff and ways of keeping things interesting. But I think we need to start thinking about the possibility of presenting without PowerPoint from time to time. See what happens when you do stuff differently – although please – don’t let this be a move back to reading a lecture from a little notebook.

Anyhow, I prefer KeyNote. Check out the animations!!

Amazing how many post its you can fit in around one thesis.

People get so nervous about their PhD vivas that this is the kind of manic preparation we feel driven to. Post it notes really come into their own in this situation; markers, colour coded and even with extra little notes written on them. It looks like an elaborate fringed ornament. Text upon text, multi-layered as well as multi-coloured. I am not sure if it also makes it multimodal – probably.

But anyhow congratulations to Jools Page for getting her thesis through on minor amendments. Marvellous. Her thesis is a brave one: Mothers, Work and Childcare: Choices, Beliefs ad Dilemmas. Jools follows (and tells) the stories of mothers who leave their children in the care of others while they work; one of her themes is about love – and she explores the idea of ‘professional love’ of carers for children. In this day and age where adults often feel they have to repress their emotions for children, even when choosing to work with them, I think this is a brave argument – that professional love is part and parce of what carers need to offer and that this is something mothers need to know their kids will get from nurseries (etc.) Considering these kinds of professions attract those who feel want to protect and nurture children it is bizarre that nowhere in the professional guidelines or training is love spoken of. There is a kind of embarrassment around it – and I Think it s great that Jools addresses this aspect head on in her work. Maybe, just maybe, it will have an effect and one day people will be allowed to bring this aspect of childcare to the fore in their work.

Lovely piece of work in my opinion and I am so glad it got through.

TT and I have to be out of the house most of the time at the moment as it is not very nice in our falling down hovel. We have “the builders in” and we are having to exist in a kind of bedsit existence – squashed into just a couple of cold rooms. Anyway it’s fine as we are having fun.

We went to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park today and a major bit of fun was to be had with my new kit… the Gorilla Pod. I cannot believe I did not take a photo of it in situ … but here is the kind of thing we were doing:

(Thanks to elanbeat for the image)

In the good old days when I was obsessed by Flickr there is no way I would have forgotten to take the meta photos alongside the photos. Interesting really, I was so obsessed by Flickr at one time and could barely go anywhere without taking loads of photos – and of course planned trips in order to take pictures. These days though I have calmed down – mainly because I just cannot squeeze in the time anymore for blogging, flickring, Tweeting and Facebook. How did I used to do it? So strange that already I am looking back into my early Web 2.0 days. We are all maturing in our uses and working out which bits we can fit in our lives and which we cannot. The obsessive start I had was a necessary one for me I think; I learned so much from being immersed. I still have not written everything I need to about Flickr even though I have written a couple of papers and maybe three chapters on it.

Anyhow, here are the pix we took using my little sony cybershot and the gorilla pod:

A Grand Day Out

It was a bit fiddly at first and we had to get the hang of it … I forgot to do the timer for this one:

adjusting the gorilla pod

And this one is funny as we were tentative wondering if it worked:

Anyhow it was good fun to learn how to use a new toy … and this kind of self portraiture is becoming a ubiquitous practice … albeit that normally we see people making the shots using outstretched arms and a curved spine away from the lens!

More stuff about Flickr coming again soon – we have a trip to Paris planned for the end of this month and I am teaching some stuff for the online MA in New Literacies on image based ethnographic research.

I have been trying to negotiate second life - although the way I do it, it is more like half life.  At The University of Sheffield I use the InfoLit area set up by Sheila Webber who kindly lets us education folk onto her island.

It is very stylish and cool and today I went on a trip in the new hot air balloons. It was truly fabulous – Sheila whispered to me as my guide while I sailed safely round.  It helps having this kind of gadget I find; especially as I have been known to get stuck on the bottom of the sea unable to get out however hard I jump or try to fly!!  This afternoon I discovered how to get to The University of Idaho which was fun. I met a student of marketing and technology there. It was all very quiet everywhere today though and I can totally identify with the new Getting started Guide (from JISC) which hilariously notes that

get a sense that there are some really interesting locations in Second Life but that you just can’t find them. Most of them seem to be either deserted or a disco

I mainly roam around on my own not talking to anyone. It is quite lonely but then again I dread meeting someone as I constantly walk into walls, bump my head on stuff and generally behave like a buffoon.

It maybe gives an insight into what it may be like to be disabled when you go to a meeting and cannot (for example) get your sound working. Everyone else is talking and you have to type as your microphone won’t function. You are disadvantaged and slow at communicating and everyone has to wait for you to type.  Or they skillfully move about the place whilst you turn in circles, walk in the wrong direction, and certainly cannot behave as smooth and slick as anyone else.

I need to keep practicing though as I do want to use this in my teaching  – we have a unit in the Online MA in New Literacies where we explore new digital literacy practices in Virtual Worlds.  Jackie Marsh leads that section but I want to join in this year as well!

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:

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).

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.)

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.