Digital Literacies

Day One of the DuckRabbit training, run by Benjamin, went so well today. The object was to learn how to approach the production of professional looking sound and vision narratives – using digital images and audio.

I was hoping to get ideas about using digital narratives with young people who find it difficult to express themselves through writing. I was thinking that I could work with teachers and develop a project that would be fun but also provide a way for learners to express their ideas multimodally. This looks like something that has real potential. Check out some of the Duckrabbit exemplar slideshows here.

However it also made me realise how, in academia, we are so staid in the way we present our work and how we don’t tap into the potential of multimedia digital presentations enough. Today we learned how to get across a much more complex message in a shorter period of time by using multiple modes of communication – using multiple sound tracks alongside images, making them work together in providing a complicated narrative. I think that using something like this in academic conferences, folllowed by discussion would be really exciting. (Academics at conferences are always stressed out by not having enough time to present complex ideas).

We are planning already, an exhibition of presentational work at the conference for The Centre of the Study of New Literacies in July, so I may try this idea there. It will be about Flickr and Streetart and the way in which streetartists are influenced by Flickr. I am doing a paper on this at the multimodalities conference at The Institute of Education and the idea would be to do a presentation that would work with that too. This is the Multimodality abstract.

TT Photographing streetart

*And why is it called Duckrabbit?? See here.

Don’t you just love new toys?? I got a polaroid Pogo from Amazon – ordered yesterday and received it today. It is just so cool – and only 23.00 squid. Marvellous. I always loved polaroid cameras and this is probably the next best thing … maybe even better as you can choose which photos to keep as digital and which to print. As before, the papers you use have to special ones impregnated with chemicals. This means that you need use no ink cartridges. It takes just 15 mins to charge up and then it’s portable. Obviously I love gadgets and this is no exception although I cannot actually think why I will want to print off 3 x 2 inch paper copies of my shots, but I am sure that in time I will think of a thousand uses (or one would be good). Dunno how I missed these when they first came out … but I am glad I did as they were £100.00 when they were first out last December. So I have obviously saved myself LOADSAMONEY. This is mine:

And this is it in action:

Seriously you should get one. (NB It does not come with the music. You have to supply this yourself- mine is Feist).

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.