DrJoolz Snapshotz on Life

So many useful online resources… including The New Literacies Sampler. which Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel just put up.

The book came out a few weeks ago but people can download ity to use if they wish. Thank goodness for that as it has SO MANY excellent chapters by wonderful people. (It was great to be allowed in to publish with this bunch of brainies. It is really great that Colin and Michele managed to make a deal with the publishers to put the whole thing online. (Wonder how they diod that??)

Here is the list of contents…

Chapter 1: Sampling “the New” in New Literacies
Colin Lankshear & Michele Knobel

Chapter 2: “You Won’t Be Needing Your Laptops Today”: Wired Bodies in the Wireless Classroom
Kevin M. Leander

Chapter 3: Popular Websites in Adolescents’ Out-of-School Lives: Critical Lessons on Literacy
Jennifer C. Stone

Chapter 4: Agency and Authority in Role-Playing “Texts”
Jessica Hammer

Chapter 5: Pleasure, Learning, Video Games, and Life: The Projective Stance
James Paul Gee

Chapter 6: Digital Design: English Language Learners and Reader Reviews in Online Fiction
Rebecca W. Black

Chapter 7: Blurring and Breaking through the Boundaries of Narrative, Literacy, and
Identity in Adolescent Fan Fiction
Angela Thomas

Chapter 8: Looking from the Inside Out: Academic Blogging as New Literacy
Julia Davies and Guy Merchant

Chapter 9: Online Memes, Affinities, and Cultural Production
Michele Knobel & Colin Lankshear

Chapter 10: New Literacies
Cynthia Lewis

Often the covers of text books are really awful but this one is divine as is the one Jackie Marsh and Eve Bearne also (who took the picture of the street art at the front of her book whilst on holiday.)

Eve and Jackie’s book is here.

This is some info about it:

Although social inclusion has been high on government agendas for some years, there have been few attempts at policy level to examine the issues relating to literacy education. Many social and cultural groups feel alienated from traditional models of literacy education and some learners continue to underachieve. This book develops insights into how to address these challenges.

Terms such as social inclusion and social exclusion are defined, explored and related to literacy education by contributors who are renowned in the field. They deal with issues of literacy and social class, race, gender, language and sexuality. They offer insights into current concerns in these areas, and they outline curricula and pedagogical approaches which aim to address underachievement and disaffection. The book challenges traditional deficit notions of at risk communities and argues that the onus for change needs instead to be at policy level.

The contributors are Viv Bird, Victoria Carrington, Barbara Comber, Julia Davies, Eve Gregory, Amanda Hatton, Kate Pahl and Mark Vicars.

Anyway see what you think.

Originally uploaded by iz*source.

Oh how lovely on Valentine’s day …

But there is no need for us to forget what we are REALLY here for … the lurve of WEb 2.0

You Tube is NOT just videos of people at weddings . It is a rich resourrce for info of all kinds. Here are two useful bits about web 2.0

I really like this one:

This one is a bit less funky but a bit more controversial.

You can get a MASTERS degree without ever leaving your home!!
It is for people working in literacy education - maybe teachers; maybe advisors; maybe in the community; in a policy capacity; in learning centres … or something else.

You can do the course all purely online and it will be led by the most FUN people.
(Who can also be serious)

Details of the course here.

Go on … have a look.

You get to use web 2.0 and learn about it at the same time. You get to research things that you are doing in your own professional practice.

I am a bit behind on reporting this but Demos has recently  (beginning of January) brought out a new publication (authors Celia Hannon and Hannah Green) called Their Space.

You can download the article for free as a pdf ..

It does what it says on the  tin and more:

Their Space: Education for a digital generation draws on qualitative research with children and polling of parents to counter the myths obscuring the true value of digital media.

 Approaching technology from the perspective of children, it tells positive stories about how they use online space to build relationships and create original content. It argues that the skills children are developing through these activities, such as creativity, communication and collaboration, are those that will enable them to succeed in a globally networked, knowledge-driven economy

I think it’s really good and Hannah and Celia talk about it here on the radio.

MMMmm nice. I like this online magazine about the most ‘contagious’ ideas, gadgets and inventions… it comes out quarterly and  is really intended for people in marketing, but it’s fascinating for cultural researchers too. 

But here is a wonderful new wiki … a media literacy site perfect for teachers into new literacies and digital technology. You can simply read about new ideas, see examples of projects or be more pro-active and add to the site.

Check out the page on digital storytelling resources.

Excellent.

The fridge may seem as if it is just an appliance to keep your stuff cold; but actually in many homes the fridge is the place where domestic acts are played out, displayed and negotiated. The fridge door is a text where multimodal communicative acts take place and is an expression of life in a partcular household.

I am not just talking about the way we leave food stains on the handle, or where milk seeps out and round the rubber seal.  I am talkng about magnetic poetry; I am talking about postcards blu-tacked on the sides; I am talking about post-it notes as reminders; and I am talking about the way members of households use fridge doors as boards for creative expression.

The fridge door in my house changes over time; we all seem to contribute to the  changes. And the things around and on the fridge seem part of the display….

We improvise around the fridge. The latest addition is the ‘grape text’. I discovered it this morning when I came downstairs to make breakfast; it was the trace of my nocturnal daughter who was clearly in a good mood last night, feeling frivolous, when the rest of us were in bed, wanting to make us laugh while we were up and about in the day and in her absence (when she slept till 2p.m.)

The grape text is surrounded by other people’s jokes, and holiday mementoes. I know we are not alone as there is a flickr group here showing that other people do this stuff too.

Better late than never … I am finally announcing Google literacy which is described by Google as a place where you can:

Find books, articles and videos about literacy, or start your own literacy or reading group!

But in fact I am not clear what Google Literacvy is offering beyond Google scholar - and I think that ifd `i do a search on something related to literacy I would notr want to rule out info coming fr6m other disciplines.

For example , I ewould not want to rule out digital games as relevant.
which reminds me, it is half term in the UK and so how about a trip to London this week to look at the history of computer gaming?

This is a mangosteen.

Who would have guessed from the outside?

There is a big fuss at the moment about not being able to see beyond outer layers. Such as the news story here.

Quite an amazing picture this:

I wonder how the photograher wants us to read this? Despite, or because of, the veiling, camera looks as if it was being very intrusive. It gets too close to someone who seems to be hiding. But maybe I am wrong. maybe she is not hiding and I am making a wrong cross cultural assumption. maybe rather than hiding she is showing; showing us Islam.

I wonder what we look like through the hole in Aishah’s veil?

And I am wondering what are the points of view of the children Aisah helps in class? (’Points of view’ being an interesting metaphor in this case.)

I am just thinking about the scenes I have seen and remember from infant school days where teachers use exaggerated facial expressions and do a lot of smiling and visual feedback to the kids. But that may just be a cultural thing. In the news it reports about the teacher’s ability to do her job wearing a veil but we have not really heard about how the face is used in infant school classrooms.

If we think of the person as text, what kind of text do children need? And is there cultural variation? In the work of Kress, Jewitt and others, they include a look at the teacher’s body - e.g. spatial positioning, gesture and expression as part of the multi-modal analyisis of classroom as text. And certainly children are extremely expressive in terms of gesture and facial expression. I am thinking of Roberta Taylor’s work here. She has an article in the latest edition of English in Education -not online) Do they need a teacher as a model in this? Does it matter?

So.

Here is a thing from YouTube, showing Judith Supine at work on the streets of New York.

In this instance Supine uses found texts to produce something new; the art process consists of a reconstitution of the found texts which is then processed digitally and then put straight back on the streets. It is a kind of re-arrangement of the environment to make you sit up and notice. And the use of commercial art in this way is ironic; cutting up the magazines, transforming the beautiful models into something ghoulish, staring out from the walls at passers by.

Here is some stuff from MOO. If you are a member of Flickr then YOU TOO can get cards made with your own images. I used a big mix of images to see what I would like best and then plan to order some more of the ones I really like.

Today’s post has been about how we can use and re-use texts to make new ones with new meanings. I have become very interested in the idea of PROVENANCE; the way texts collect additional meanings from the journeys they have made and the associations they have picked up from being in other contexts.

More from Judith:

There is a lot more to understanding digital texts than at first meets the eye.

you may feel pleased with your technology skills when you can copy texts from one place to another, moving info around to various gadgets. After all the gadgets are made that way and digitality cries out for copying, manipulation and tweaking.
In fact it is all about sharing.

however you may be breaking laws without knowing and the French are getting mad about this, or so reports the New York Times.

the fact of the matter is that if for example, you download music onto your itunes software on your pc, and then transfer it to a machine made by anyone apart from APPLE, you will be in trouble. (and itunes is always invasively asking to be downloaded onto your computer…)

Those meanies have written stuff into the small print of the agreements you unwittingly ignore, which says that you promise not to download the music onto anything but an i pod. At any moment now, Apple can prosecute anyone not obeying the copyright legislation and they may also release mean things onto your MP3 layer or computer next time you link them together to download itunes.

They have done this already many times to unsuspecting people who attempt to use their software on more than one computer.

I fell foul of this when I tried to download Keynote onto my new Powerbook. I had bought the software for one Powerbook; when I upgraded that one for a newer model I could use none of the software again so had to buy all new. It basically just all refused to be uploaded onto my new machine.

Digital texts are great in one way; but they have a way of reminding us that we are dealing with businesses every now and again.