i'm still alive, just not much
yep, i'm still around. i'm trying to finish my phd, get it out of my life and move on. bear with me. i'll be back in the near future. i'm sure no one is listening anymore anyway. until then, then
Well it's all changing. I don't know, random ephemera I guess.
yep, i'm still around. i'm trying to finish my phd, get it out of my life and move on. bear with me. i'll be back in the near future. i'm sure no one is listening anymore anyway. until then, then
Rising star, Danah Boyd (note the first named URL! 'danah.org' - now that says something like 'KMA, Mimi Ito is my advisor' lol), on social networking and class.
Even if the basic digital divide shrinks gradually over time, it is naive to believe that the virtual world can overturn fundamental inequalities of social stratification that are endemic throughout post-industrial societies’ (Norris 2001: 17)Norris, Pippa. (2001) Digital divide: Civic engagement, information poverty, and the internet worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Labels: internet, myspace, research, social class, social software, technology
Video from seminar at CCI - Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
Labels: cultural studies, internet, literacy, media, research, technology
Some responses to Graeme Turner's piece in The Australian last week ("Another way of looking at it", HES, May 30).
"ALTHOUGH I am not mentioned by name, it is obvious that Graeme Turner's reference ("Another way of looking at it", HES, May 30) to "members of the commentariat" ... points to critics such as me"
Indeed, some of the critical comments he cites that blame the parlous state of English teaching on the influence of critical literacy and postmodern theory are mine.
As I have argued for many years.
Labels: critical literacy, cultural studies, Donnelly, english teaching
Is it just me, or does Graeme Turner sound a little like a leftist, more reasonable (and repentant) thinking man's Kevin Donnelly? A case of arriving at the same end point but from a different direction?
The ‘critical literacy’ approach, as established in Australia, is a mode of discourse analysis developed by theorists from the discipline of Education and enthusiastically taken up by state education bureaucrats influenced by the branch of systemic linguistics identified with Sydney Professor M.A.K. Halliday. The success of this alliance is evident in the fact that the critical literacies approach has been placed at the centre of every senior English syllabus in the country. Displacing the previously dominant disciplinary formations – literary criticism, primarily, and, more recently, although to a lesser extent, media and cultural studies – its current pervasiveness has sparked widespread debate about its legitimacy, its usefulness, and the pedagogic consequences of its contemporary deployment through subject English in Australian secondary schools.
Labels: critical literacy, cultural studies, curriculum, english teaching, teachers
Bazza Jones on the state of Australian and Victorian Education. Sums up the state department like this:
The Victorian Department of Education and Training is strong in management and weak in strategic thinking, creativity or imagination. It has failed to address major problems in Victorian education.He also gives an interesting definition of education:
"Education is a combination of processes, both formal and informal, that stimulate the growth of mental capacity, influence the potential of humans, aim at individual development, understanding, and independence, encompass the teaching of specific skills and nurture knowledge, judgement, values and wisdom, transmit culture and social adaptation, but also encourage exploration, self-discovery, using time effectively and learning for a lifetime, strengthening self-image, and encouraging creativity, balance, open-mindedness, questioning, respect for others and humane common sense."
Labels: public education
More from Catherine Deveny on public schools.
Labels: private education, public education
Labels: adolescents, computers, crisis, internet, media, technology
Catherine Deveny's thoughts, in response to Shane Maloney's gutsy straight talk to the nobs and toffs at Scotch.
Labels: Howard government, politics, private education, public education
Exciting news. A special issue of Language and Education has just been published: Young people's engagement with digital literacies in marginal contexts in a globalised world'.
ABSTRACT In this paper, we suggest a view of young people’s digital technology use as negotiated social and literate practice. Rather than emphasising the boundedness of school and home spaces and literacy practices, we argue that young people’s practices that develop around their use of digital technologies flow across these spaces, making simple distinctions and binaries about use in each domain problematic. To help illustrate, we present ethnographic case study snapshots of 15–16-year-olds from contrasting schools in and around Melbourne, Australia. In our thinking, we bring together insights from a range of work in the hope of prompting a reframing and rethinking of the relationship between home and school and the other spaces young people inhabit and create. We use Bakhtin’s ideas about ‘dialogic negotiation’ and Bourdieu’s notion of habitus to suggest that texts, meanings and practices do not emerge wholly from one social/physical domain but are traced and sourced from the whole life world of experience. In this framing, young people’s engagement with language, learning and technology might be characterised as a dialogic negotiation of a complex range of texts and practices that flow across and between school, home and other spaces.If you want a copy and can't get it from the website let me know.
Labels: adolescents, computers, family, internet, literacy, media, mobile, research, technology, work
Been reading some classic Neil Postman stuff. This is from a speech given in 1990:
The computer and its information cannot answer any of the fundamental questions we need to address to make our lives more meaningful and humane. The computer cannot provide an organizing moral framework. It cannot tell us what questions are worth asking. It cannot provide a means of understanding why we are here or why we fight each other or why decency eludes us so often, especially when we need it the most. The computer is, in a sense, a magnificent toy that distracts us from facing what we most needed to confront -- spiritual emptiness, knowledge of ourselves, usable conceptions of the past and future. Does one blame the computer for this? Of course not. It is, after all, only a machine. But it is presented to us, with trumpets blaring, as at this conference, as a technological messiah.
Through the computer, the heralds say, we will make education better, religion better, politics better, our minds better -- best of all, ourselves better. This is, of course, nonsense, and only the young or the ignorant or the foolish could believe it .... it is only a machine but a machine designed to manipulate and generate information. That is what computers do, and therefore they have an agenda and an unmistakable message.
There is no escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has always been, and we solve nothing fundamental by cloaking ourselves in technological glory.
Labels: computers, crisis, internet, media, Postman, technology
It seems that teachers are all maoist, pinko, tree-hugging sleepers with a bent for software piracy.
Labels: public education, teachers, technology
Sick, seedy stuff on SL.
Labels: adolescents, children, internet
About 90 per cent of US children under age 2 and as many as 40 per cent of infants under three months are regular watchers of television, DVDs and videos, researchers said on Monday.
They said the number of young kids watching TV was much greater than expected.
"We don't know from the study whether it is good or bad. What we know is that it is big," said Frederick Zimmerman of the University of Washington, whose research appears in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
A second study suggested excessive TV viewing could lead to attention and learning problems down the road.
The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that children in the United States watch about four hours of television every day. They recommend that children under age 2 should not watch any and older children should watch no more than 2 hours a day of quality programming.
But 29 per cent of parents surveyed by Zimmerman and colleagues believed baby-oriented TV and DVD programs offered educational benefits.
"Parents are getting the message loud and clear from marketers of TV and videos that this is good for their kids. That it will help their brain development ... None of this stuff has ever been proven," Zimmerman said in a telephone interview.
Labels: children, crisis, literacy, media, research, television
student's get some much needed payback?
Labels: adolescents, crisis, internet, teachers, technology
um?
Labels: adolescents, crisis, internet, media, mobile, technology
umm ... duh!
Labels: adolescents, internet, literacy, media, research, technology
My sister was married today. A good day.
Labels: family