DrJoolz Snapshotz on Life

Well there’s the caterpillars in my garden:

(Hundreds of the buggers) . They make me go ‘Hmmm’

Then there’s streetart and how fantastic and generous the artists are to put it out there for all to see (even though some people just walk past).

And isn’t it amazing that some people can concetrate so hard that they can read a small screen for hours in the middle of New York’s Chinatown:

Then there is the range of cakes available in Starbucks:

(And how is it that Miles always leaves a bit?)

But also there is the difficult pithy problem of trying to sort out what digital literacies are.

I think that if you come at the definition from technology based disciplines and epistomologies, digital literacies are skills and knowledge needed in order to make technology work It is about ‘how do you use the web?’ Or ‘what can I make my mobile phone do?’ ‘What is the best way to use Google?’ or ‘ What is better, Google or Yahoo?’ (etc.) Or ‘how do I do a podcast?’

Whereas if you come at it from the angle of a literacy/language specialist, , you are thinking about
‘What kind of text does technology produce?’ and ‘How does this affect the message?’
‘How do texts change when we have more technology available?’
Do readers respond diffrently to digital texts?
What do we need to learn?
What are the social implications?
How does the meaning change?
How do the different modal properties work together?
What are the affordances and constraints?

If we have a broad definition of text, does that mean that we need to broaden our notion of literacy? I am happy to think about speech as spoken text and I am happy to analyse speech in context and therefore take into account the range of modes that contribute to the meaning of that text … e.g. what people are wearing; where and why the speech event takes place (etc.) But I do not think this is literacy.

I think literacy involves writing/reading. But I also think that because context contributes to meaning, that literacy is never JUST about writing. So we have to think wide. But not too wide. Just because something is digital does not mean it is literacy. Just because something is communicating meaning, does not mean it is literacy. This does not mean I value the written word more than other types of communication. It is just that literacy is something in particular.

Thanks to Flickr, TT and I are meeting lots of wonderful people again in the next few days… Those who we met here in April/May earlier this year are meeting us again. We have brought Miles this time and so far we have done the tourist stuff - the Circle Cruise, Central Park, Wall Street etc etc. But today it gets unusual as we meet Moufle and her cousin in Washington Square where there is some sort of Drama going on. Later it is off to Celso and C Monster’s appartment for dinner, then over to New Jersey to a party … some sort of TV launch for Franck. Oh yes. So excited.

(It’s all good Babes)

This is a view from the hotel window:

This was a woman on the cruise:

And just to prove they make everything big in New York:

Meet my son.

In relaxed mode.

I am loving this website which belongs to an angry geisha. A feisty young woman, a chinese American who is SICK of people expecting her to be sweet .

(She is sick of people reading her wrongly.)

Check out the anti geisha’s site and see the pix of the brides.

Meanwhile, in the UK, sunny Sheffield (Land. Of. The. Superfluous. Fullstops.) some people are very obliging.The person below, is not so much angry. as Here. To. Help. Fullstop.

I wonder why she has ‘No’ on her pocket. Do I detect some resistance??

These are not the girl gamers. These are three excellent academics who were part of this conference last week.

And that conference, (as keen readers will know) was closely followed by this.

I am not going to repeat myself further but want to just mention that I went to an excellent seminar yesterday, which Catherine again presented, on girl gamers. It was called

‘Would the real girl gamers please stand up? Gender, LAN cafes and the reformation of the girlgamer’.

and evolved out of research done by her and Claire Charles. (The presentation was originally done by Catherine and Claire together) You can also see an associated paper in Discourse see here.

As if the funky title were not enough, the seminar had some really compeling data and an interesting story to tell about some girls and their involvement in gaming. The data was drawn from an Australian cafe and focused on a particular LAN cafe where some girsl of south east Asian background, were keen and expert gamers. In a setting where it is nearly all Australian white men who play these games, these girls were quite a contrast to the usual sort ogf gamers. Catherine was looking at issues around how and why these girls are involved and looking at issues around feminine identity etc. Most of the girls got drawn into the gaming via their boyfriends but ended up loving the games andthe action it offered. Catherine’s work looks at the tensions in playing the shoot em up game, for girls who were fashionable, petite and in the main, strongly identifying with their culture’s mainstream notions of identity. Fascinating stuff and I did see parallels with my own work as in this paper here and here about ‘Negotiating Femininities online’.

I was also really fascinated to hear how common Internet cafes are in Australia, and have also observed the same in Toulouse, Rome and Berlin. I have also heard Claudia Mitchell talk about girls in South Africa in Internet cafes. I am now wondering why UK youngsters do not go to Internet cafes to do their online gaming. Or do they? As far as I can see all the attempts at getting Internet cafes going in the UK (including Edinburgh) were either closed down, or just used by occasional individuals. Nothing like the kind of rush of boys queueing outside the cafes to go in, in Toulouse. Apparently they all gather to play team games on the web, so that they can collaborate over tactics (shouted across the cafe) and then play teams from elsewhere via the Internet. So does anyone know of Internet cafes like this in the UK? If not, why don’t they exist? Does anyone know?

Across all of the talks I have been to lately, I have been thinking about the way in which the local is being played out on a global stage. Something which Jennifer and Anne alluded to at UKLA.

I just got this great link from Naomi. It is, as she says, ‘oh so very sex in the city’.

I like the map of Central Park, emphasising the ‘real life’ angle of the novels; it also reminds me of the opening credits on soap operas which invariably begin with a panorama of the locality of where the soap opera is set (think about ‘Eastenders map of the Thames; ‘Brookside’’s ‘close’; the Coronation Street rooftops etc.

of two excellent conferences,here and here. it is always hard to get back to work. It is wonderful when you have a chance to be with people who are happy to talk about shared research interests for a-a-a-a-a-ages. And especially f they are also prepared to go out and get drunk with you as well.
It was also so nice to receive e mails from Flickr people on my return, telling me they like my paper. And to see this.

Sometimes you feel you have to blow your own trumpet.

So this is me, trying to look on the brightside of life today, when in fact I think someone pisst on my fireworks.

Frankly you will LOVE Kitty Blue here.

It is endearing and delightful.

And funny.
And off beam.
And cutting edge.

Here are flowers for you and you can only loookat them if you promise to read yesterday’s post which is v. important .

Frankly at the United Kingdom Literacy Conference at Nottingham University last week, I was bowled over by Naomi Hamer’s talk on tweenie girls’ books (and stuff).

It was great, Naomi is doing really exciting stuff, loking at the way in which popular fiction texts aimed at tweenie girls are increasingly merging a range of text types within their covers. However the stories move beyond the pages and into merchandising on a grand scale so that the fiction on the pages moves seamlessly in and out of the books onto screen, web pages, consul games, cell phones and more. So the stories move out into other text types, but different text types are also within the pages so that we see chat rooms represented; collages of all kinds. She referred to ‘fluidity’ and the ‘blurring of of lines’ across and between texts and back again.

Naom was slick and fast in her delivery and so confident of her data and theory … it was wonderful. And I want to think some more about all of this … which linked in fact with the work DrKate reported on from her Barnsley creative arts work with artists and schools. But it also takes in the notion of artefacts as text. (Something I have also witnessed and even taken part in on Flickr.)

I have found the wonderful Clarice Bean site here and you can buy MARVELLOUS stuff here. (I like the accessories best.)

I am afraid Guy was a bit immature and tried to steal Naomi’s book from her.

(Sadly, that kind of behaviour can spoil it for everybody else.)

Now just before I go now … here is the wonderful Vic:

She looks like a filmstar.

A bit of a plug …

Anya did a great job editing the latest edition of elearning. I am looking forward to reading Guy’s thing on online identity and Kevin Leander’s and Amy Frank’s article which looks at identities and images online. I could really do with a day to read all this stuff, just looks so front line.

(Guy has a good bit on ‘identity threats’: and mentions

five themes of < ...>scare stories:
• Your virtual property is never secure; it can be stolen or maliciously corrupted by viruses.
• Your personal details are easy to locate, so easy that Internet criminals can steal and use your
identity (your money).
• You are constantly under surveillance: where you go, what you do and what you say is always
tracked.
• Your personal safety is at risk; children and young people, in particular, are at risk from sexual
predators.
• You shouldn’t trust who you meet; people aren’t who (or even where) they say they are.

He argues that online activitis provide new challenges asnd possibilities, including exciting ways of offering self narrative and presentation. and It is a very good article as you may expect.)

Anya/ Angela’s own piece on online and offline worlds merging together also looks great; and of course this fits so well with all her current work on Second Life about which she has been madly blogging for a while. (Dana wrote earlier about the ‘wrinkling binaries’ a phrase I still really like.

And yes I am so pleased that my Flickr article is now out … one I wrote for UKLA last year and altered a just a little for the journal. I cannot bear to read it again of course and have already spotted a horrendous sentence where I use the word ’space’ four times. Oh well. But I am pleased this article represents what I think has been a turning point in my research, where I feel i have really started to realise what I want to look at and why. And of course because Flickr has been such a passin for me.

finally, this is for DrKate .. a ‘found object’ in Williamsburg, New York.

Looks to me that there is a story here.