DrJoolz Snapshotz on Life

I am in the middle of moving here.
maybe a move will get me back into blogging properly again…

I think for a while it has been hard to blog.

Partly work overload (i.e. a change of priorities I suppose) and partly not feeling able to write in that semi-academic semi personal way that I have customarily used for the blog.
Personal stuff has been, well, too personal, and I have not felt able to give it a lighthearted jaunty feel!!

But summer’s coming and I am moving round the block, solet’s hope that helps )

Henry Jenkins is producing a series of excellent videos which will be just great for the new online MA in New Literacies.

Here is Henry Jenkins talking about his project:

See here for example the series on video blogging - how to do it and why….

Anya mentioned the PEW website where I have discovered a LOAD of useful papers, research based stuff, plenty of quantitaive data, that will be invaluable for my presentation in Swansea later this month…

Anyway … time for a smoothie … mango and raspberry

ReadingFaust
Originally uploaded by tommigodwin.

Earlier this week I gave a short presentation about Web 2.0  and its relevance to English teaching… 

As is always with these things I came away thinking more closely about issues that were raised in questions and discussion. By doing a presentation it shakes you out of your smug comfort zone a bit. I think that after a while of living with my own ideas and evaluations of my experiences, I forget to articulate for everyone the processes I have been through to get to the viewpoints that I have. In other words I sometimes forget to explain properly and simply assume that everyone else is thinking what I am thinking and have learned things that are similar. So it is good for me to get out of my box every now and then and listen to people. 

So yeah … I was showing a series of blogs like this,  this and  this . I mentioned that Riverbend’s blog has also been published as a book .

and also that one of the things I like about the web is that you can see lots of people’s perspectives  and experiences-such as seeing life in Baghdad from a number of viewpoints. 

But then one person pointed out that I was taking a lot on trust and that the sites may be fake; i.e. they may not be written by the people who say they are writing them.  This is of course true and there have been cases where people have had fun this way doing ghost writing (as they do in novels too, for example) or writing ‘as if’ someone else. Sometimes they have been clear about this from the start that they are writing ‘in role’ or under a pseudonym … but others have been found out and had to confess - for example Lonelygirl15’s video blog.

 But back to my Web 2.0 presentation thingie. The example that was cited was this blog  from which I had just shown one screenshot. I was quite staggered really as I had never questionned its authenticity and I think that is because I have read it for so long.  And in fact it was only when I drove away after the presentation that I started to go over in my mind how I just KNEW that this blog was for real …. . I started t think about how I had come to my viewpoint and the journey I had travelled. I have somehow developed a way of finding blogs (etc) that I trust.

I began to think about how I have somehow created a kind of way of guaging authenticity and so on; how I do carry out some checks in a fairly sub-conscious way. I have decided hat these are the key elements: 

1. The reputation of the person which is seen through their associations with others… the blogroll; the comments; the links to other sites; evidence of the person’s engagement with communities both on and ofline.
2. The length of time the person has been blogging / flickring (etc.)
3. The consistency in what they say, how they say it - the use of language.
4. Photographic images of their life and others in it.

 This is how it happened with tommigodwin:

 Firstly just as with people I meet face to face, my default position is trust. There is something too, to be said about associations and the affinity space. So on a blog, one can look at blogrolls and other hypertext links to see if/how the person is networked with others. One reads the blogs of others and sees the complexity of the network - and if it is quite complex, it is hard to fake. Also if that person is associated with another blogger you trust - well, that helps too. There are a number of interesting links on the Sentinel 47 blogroll. Just reading through the blog and following links off the blogroll etc, I not only could read around the ‘affinity space’ but also found tommigodwin’s Mum’s blogs here. (She is ‘in’ education, has lots of blogs and is into cultural theory and digital media like me; moreover she has lots of the same links on her blogroll as I do!!) . Now I did not do this survey in order to check out authenticity .. but it all starts to accumulate as a picture one can trust It happens on a fairly subconscious level I think; it is only when one is challenged by suspicion that you start to re-count how you ‘know’ things. (I am glad I was questioned as it made me think about how I evaluate authenticity online.)

But then I also remember how I had initially come to see this blog having found a picture of a soldier reading Faust on Flickr.  And I  looked at many of the images on this Flickr account so I could see the extent of the real life being depicted.   When you see a set of images like this for example, it seems impossible to dispute authentcity.  These points all refer to my ‘Number 1′ and ‘4′ above.

Secondly I have built up an impression that has accumulated over time. The time issue is crucial I think; but of course on blogs time can be condensed so you can read across months in a short sitting. So you can scan across past posts and then see posts go up bit by bit as the days go on; this embedding in real time and so on is possibly also a good test .. are the blog posts reflecting aspects of things which we know to be the case in that time and place where the blog is set? I guess this is a ‘currency’ test.

Then thirdly  there is the language thing which is harder to describe; sometimes we think someone is a bit ‘fake’ in a f2f encounter just because of how they phrase things - maybe they are inconsistent or over- effusive or SOMETHING. This is all on a pretty subconscious level I think to do with previous experiences and encounters with others. Maybe also it is to do with what is talked about. (I guess this is the same radar we use to check out lying when we meet f2f with someone.)  

Now, I am not surprised that someone should say to me that we should be suspicious of what we read online; I think that it is true we must read with care. When I write this I am not being cross with the person who asked the question and am not trying to win an argument. I am being critical of my lack of refelxivity. What I am saying here is that I am sometimes not a very aware researcher/presenter as I do not always realise/articulate why I believe something. So I was grateful for the questions asked of me.  I had simply shown a screenshot of a blog and expected people to understand all the depth of the full text which went across years of blogposts and across out of the site into Flickr and into other people’s blogs too. I needed to describe all of that.

There are important things that need to be carefully articulated about how it is that we can develop skills to fathom whether something or somone is being genuine online. And we need to be able to teach this kind of thing … it is about being critical readers of texts.

Postscript…

Funny thing is, Rosa has recently utterly refused to watch the news on tv as she says it is the National Lies. Now I CAN see her point; and having moved from a position (when she was about 5)  where she believed the weather man decided what weather we had, and that the news readers told only facts, she has now gone all out into a mode of suspicion. There is a happy medium to aim for I guess and we just need to be alert to the notion that the TRUTH might not actually be OUT THERE, but there are many versions to sift through.

What wikis do and what blogs do is show us that here are many ways of seeing and being. More on wikis (and search engines)  later I think. That’s enough for now.

Go to Moo and get loads of cards done with your flickr pictures on… I am doing it. I sure am.

This fabulous little gadget allows you to present to yourself to others in a wavia cards which your online identity; this is you presenting yourself as web 2.0 savvy and as photographer with an allegiance to Flickr What does Flickr mean?

Well it has really worked hard to present itself as ‘other’; see here. It is the sign in page which refers to Flickr members as ‘old skool’ and mentions that:

Mmm thinking of people who rock and peole who present themselves as web 2.0 savvy and funky …. David Webman Cameron is NOT one of them.

Our dear little opposition leader has a blog, WebCameron (gettit?) which looks a bit like a series of You Tube videos trying to reach out to the young; no David, it does not work like that. We have to have other authentic funky stuff going on too.

Has anyone got any tips for David to help him funk out??

Honestly . You would not believe how behind I am.

I have no idea why we bother with schedules. The best thing is to remember that nothing ever gets finished.

I am so behind with my work ALREADY. It is only just the start of the new academic year too.

I am only up to date with my marking, that’s all. Which is a wonder as I marked a chapter today that was 37,500 words long. Not joking. You can guess what my first comment was.

I am behind with my blog (as you may have noticed.)

I am behind with doing photos … I have loads to process from conferences I went to in the summer - (sorry Muriel and Jackie). Mind you I have done this one of these two very sober young women.

I am behind with my apologies too … I went to digigran’s retirement party and had just a tad too much to drink. Think I may have said a few things lacking in a little circumspect.

But oh my giodness I am SO BEHIND with Flickr. I have not done any flickring for ages and I will lose all my friends.

That is what happens on web 2.0.

I have just found a new group on Flickr - ‘Educational Bloggers’ which is a gathering of people involved in education and who blog and who go on Flickr. (It is of course a bit counter intuitive to have this gathering on Flickr. And in fact they have already found that Flickr will not keep displaying things that are not photographs ..but anyway they are a gathering and they talk.) I think it works as a good links/address database of edu bloggers.

It is weird how often the same names turn up. Some of these people I have met in New York and some in Sheffield, and some, well I just know from their blogs. Like Mrteacher.

Another one, Josie, is the person who tell s me about edublog conferences - which I have not managed to get to yet. But will do.

And you should definitely see this here from Frances Bell which has a thing in today about getting student teachers blogging.

Another person I am interested in is ChristinA who sometimes comments on my blog … she is from Australia but I don’t think I know her from anywhere apart from the blogosphere…

I have not been blogging.
But I have not been watching BB or the football either.

Have been very busy and left you all to your own devices. Back from study leave after four hedonistic months of Flickr and blogging. Bound to make it hard settling back to work.

Critical Literacies Project has had a nice boost with a one day meeting last week. And today met the wonderful Mark again to discuss his bit of the work. He works here and has got the kids actually understanding what critical literacy is and using it to deconstruct the school as text. Yes. He has. He is well into it and has also agreed to work with me on introducing blogging and Flickr to his classes next year. I can’t wait now to go into school and visit again next Wednesday.

Have also been catching up with another project here where I have been looking with teachers at gender dynamics in classrooms and their impact on teaching and learning. We report to the full staff next Tuesday so that’s always a bit scary. (They don’t want to have their time wasted by nonsense.)

Also am preparing for giving a paper here - gonna be mainly about Flickr.

Play and Creativity online: A look at ways in which informal online connections enable learning and creativity. Drawing on research looking at a range of online activities, this paper will look at similarities and differences in the ways in which online activities are helping individuals to learn from others through their activities and liaisons. It looks at ways in which learning often happens through the exploration of content and through interpersonal connections, in unplanned and spontaneous ways.

THANK GOD I said something vague in the abstract. I have a few ideas I am gonna use:
probably the can project; a six word story; the travelling wig game; and something else.

Will use some play theory stuff including things from Avant game. And also from this new book by by Diane Carr, David Buckingham, Andrew Burn, and Gareth Schott.

So that’s it.

Am back on theblog ….

Look here.
There is a bit of a row going on about whether or not young people today have enough privacy and whether they SHOULD have more. Will it be dangerous to give them more? have they too much already?

The debate is elaborated upon here in Dana’s local press.

They quote an 18 year old like this:

Kristopher Tate, an 18-year-old Palo Alto resident who started a site where users share photos from around the world at www.zooomr.com, said the risk of exposing one’s personal information was worth the payoff for connecting with the like-minded.

“We’re willing to give up some of our privacy to connect with people easier,” Tate said. “The realization that people can find you online isn’t that threatening to this generation. But there’s a difference between giving up information like what’s on MySpace and the government listening to a phone conversation.”

And also Dana FROM HER BLOG like this:

“Teens today grow up in a state of constant surveillance where there is no privacy,” said Danah Boyd, a Ph.D. candidate at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, who studies youth culture and online communities. “So they can’t really have an idea of it being lost. The risk of the government or a corporation coming in and looking at their MySpace site is beyond their consideration.”

Why not keep an eye on Dana’s blog? She is using it as a space to air her ideas and she is getting plenty of feedback.
(Don’t you just love the word apophenia?)

Oh yes and just one more thing … dana hihlights here a debate about wikis….and questions the view that online encyclopedias are the only way ahead …as

the essential collection of knowledge, meant to replace school books and other refereed knowledge containers

I have to say I am with Dana on this one. What say you?

Pretty on the inside

Originally uploaded by nkristis.

Sarah has this about a new blog she has set up for a new class. Also on her blog is a link to something she is reading at the moment on pedagogy and space. I have copied and ordered it too.
I have aalso ordered the book Kate is interested in on second hand stuff. (So by reading two blog posts I have managed to spend nearly fifty squid.)
I can’t believe that Sarah has been doing a Masters as well as a PhD… and teaching. Wow.

Both these books will help with what I am doing on Flickr and representations of domesticity. This is the abstract at the moment:

Public Displays of the Domestic: online presentations and readings of ‘the everyday’

Drawing on a study of a photo-sharing website (Flickr.com), this paper explores ways in which domestic life is represented and talked about through online screen based images, in an online space where traditional boundaries between the public and private spheres are being extended, challenged or eroded. The paper reflects on the presentation and subjects of the images; the narratives around them, and the affordances and practices which are impacting on the ways in which we see and represent our ‘everyday selves and lives’. The paper considers the impact of new technologies on the ways in which we are representing our identities and lives in online spaces. The paper views the interactions on Flickr as instantiating literacy as a social practice (REF) using the notion of multi-literacies, which is inclusive of a range of modes within its conceptualisation of literacy (REF). Thus, a multimodal approach to the analysis of images is adopted, following the work of Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996; 2001, and Van Leeuwen and Jewitt (2001) as well as Pink’s work on Visual Ethnography (2001 and Hine’s work on Virtual Ethnography (DATE). It also draws on the work of cultural theorists of the everyday (de Certeau, 1988) and of photographic representations of the everyday, such as Kuhn (1985) and Hirsh (2002). Third space theory (Soja, 1996) is invoked to explore aspects of the global/local practices on Flickr, and to reflect on the processes of online social learning, with particular reference to our reconfigurations of the domestic.

So I am interested in space as a metaphor to describe something like the development of shared meanings in spaces where collaborative social learning takes place - but especially the idea that a space gets created through the shared meanings.

Something else to say … I think the RAE is a pain.
We have all had to highlight the four publications we want to be counted in the RAE and these have been graded by an external assessor as a practice RAE from 1 - 4 with 4 as the highest. One of mine gets a 2, which frankly, is rather crap. Yet this paper is one that has been downloaded the most since last July in the journal it is in.. see here. Does this mean that the people who download are only after mediocre work? Does it mean they are all bad judges? Does it mean the RAE reader is wrong and should think again? Does it mean the criteria for assessment in the RAE are not useful? What does it mean?

Finally, just when you think you are clever, this can happen:

One guy fell asleep on the subway and so his friend gleefully took photos of him on his ‘cell phone’. He happily texted these pix around the place and kept looking at fellow passengers for approval.

What he did not know was that we were the clever ones, shooting him. (Did anyone shoot us?)

Have been to Leicester the last few days.
Seem to be destined not to blog much at the moment. Oh well in the meantime, while I collect together my thoughts and energies, here are a couple of photos from NYC.

There is loads of exciting street art on Wooster Street in SOHO NYC. Why not try and see some??
If you have no time for travel, then keep looking here over the next few days for whacky (and maybe some conventional) shots from my time in NYC.

This is the work of Celso taken by C-Monster