This new website lets you upload documents and pdfs to your hearts content so you can publish all your articles yourself.
There is one in the eye for mean editors who refuse to publish your work!! But anyway, just to test out how it works, I have uploaded an article that is already published in elearning. It’s about Flickr. I wrote it, but is it against the rules for me to put this online? Does anyone know? Is it mine to put up? (I know I should know the answer to this question.)
So anyway I like the idea of being able to make all my writing (including chapters etc) online. But I am unsure about coptright rules if the stuff is laready published.
I have phases where I really like particular words or phrases.
For ages I liked ‘counter-intuitive’; I liked the sound and I liked the meaning. I liked the idea of something transgressing or challenging expectations and assumptions. I liked the way it is an unusual word, but possible to understand even if you have never heard it before.
When my daughter was about 5 she asked me what my favourite word was. I told her it was ‘incarnidine’ - just because I thought she wanted to know an unusual word. Anyway of course I asked her the same question back and she answered
“Hellandbuggeration”.
This is of course very rude and she heard it from my Mum. Anyway family traits aside ….
My favourite words at the moment are:
Palimpsest
Apophenia
Provenance
I like the words as I like the concepts they refer to.
They all involve an idea I am interested in at the moment.
In a way, ‘palimpsest’ refers to texts that have a visible history; the word originally was used to simply describe scrolls or parchments where original text had been scraped away and a new one written on the top. There would be tracings of the old script still visible. I like this idea of the old and new co-existing. The idea of layered histories, layered narrative and the present being suffused with the past.
There is even a palimpsest group on Flickr here. It is obviously something many people are interested in … and it seems that some are extending the idea of text as being something other than just words… like this.
I have contributed some pictures to the group including this one:
Maybe I have apophenia but I do see a connection between apophenia and palimpsest - since it is so often the case that when history seeps through to the present (as in palimpsest) it seems alien somehow. Sometimes the way history jars with the present makes it seem unconnected - but may actually be closely connected in some way. We may not always know the derivation of words we use in daily life - but they often have a history of meanings that have adapted over time and then come to mean something new. They have travelled a journey of usage and come to signify something differently.
such as this:
Arranged into topics from business to war to flowers, the author explains the most likely origins behind everyday words and expressions. “Laconic,” for example, means brief and blunt. Its origins, more than 2600 years ago, take it back to the Greek Wars. The Laconians, when told by an ambassador that “if we come to your city we will raze the walls and kill everyone.” The Laconians reply? “If.”
Finally I like the word ‘provenance’ ; it is a term originally used by art historians to refer to the ‘biography’ or history of an artefact, such as a picture. The provenance of something describes the sources from which something comnes - where the work of art has been, who owned it, etc.
I like to think about the ways in which things carry stories within them so that they are meaningful not just because of what purpose they serve now, but because of their history and previous uses etc. I like to think about the ways in which the past is inscribed in the present.
Strangely enough, I am interested in all these ideas in relation to social networking and online texts as we can now see connections being made across texts which weave meanings together and bring together ideas and sites together in many new configurations. We can easily link to other people, other texts and ideas. We can embed old texts into new ones.
On the Internet there is a criss crossing and patchworking going on that seems to defy boundaries and logic. One moment a text can stand independently and in the next minute it can appear in someone’s blog; or on a wiki; or even in many places all at once. And you can pull threads through the networks to trace the paths back, or to trace new paths ahead.
I love wikipedia.
I love the way anyone can contribute.
You can contribute in many languages.
You can look up practically anything you are interested in - and it is usually there … like
If you want to you can register on wikipedia and start adding to the knowledge base by editing a page. It is as easy as ABC (which is not easy for everyone.)
But
sometimes
naughty people mess about like when I once looked up info about Alison Krauss. She is a fantastic singer and VERY modest.
Someone had deleted all the ‘proper’ text and replaced it with ‘Alison Krauss causes cancer.’ (And I doubt the veracity of this claim).
But the wiki community quickly sorted out the silliness and the text was back in order within the hour. (I this kind of incident is a small price to pay for the uptodateness - especially in comparison to the staid and non contemporaneity of leather bound tomes on library shelves - The Encyclopedia Britannica goes out of date before it is printed.)
With so many people reading and contributing to wikipedia I think it manages to be a dynamic and incredibly uptodate encyclopedia; but no doubt it does enshrine certain idelogical values.
And some people have had ENOUGH . They have set up their own wiki which is more Christian;more Conservative and apparently more pro American.
And so what ever you think of these values, at least they are explicit that they have them.
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.)
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.
(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.
(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.
