blogtrax

sampler
Originally uploaded by on-the-run.

Well, hard copy of the book has finally arrived and I think it really works well. There's a really good exploration of Web 2.0 stuff here, and I'm glad to be a part of it! New literacies/digital literacies is really well communicated in this short video which communicates the changing nature of text as well as what happens behind the scenes in html, and with feeds. Not only informative but.. er um.. appropriately presented.

closed door
Originally uploaded by edsghm.

Well, I'm closing down until I start feeling better. I hope that won't be too long!

for writing
Originally uploaded by edsghm.

Another collection – this time it’s writing tools, sparked by hearing about historian Bettany Hughes talking about the impact of paper on European civilization.

As we know paper was invented by the Chinese - the idea probably traveled down trade routes, collectively referred to as the Silk Road, into the Mediterranean area. Hughes claims that Muslims learnt how to produce paper, and that it was the Moors who introduced paper to Europe from factories in Andalusia.

In a fascinating documentary on Channel4 Hughes traced the Moors and their Islamic society that ruled in Spain for 700 years. She explored the Moorish influence in Mathematics, astronomy and medicine, romantic love, paper, deodorant… Just what we need to counter the current wave of Islam-a-phobia.

All right, so we have new surfaces for writing, new technologies, and, of course blogging. Here’s Alex Halavais writing about blogging. He isolates 4 things that blogs do. According to Alex, blogs:

1.promote communication in dispersed social networks
2.encourage reciprocal communication (feedback through comments, links, and other channels) fulfilling a ‘conversational desire’.
3.accumulate content in small segments, and have a low participation threshold
4.give a relatively open and unfiltered view of thinking-in-progress.

I’ll go with that. Anyone for a 5th?

OK I have moved us here so that we can categorise our posts ....

Guy will have a shock wehn e gets back and will have to be like me and learn how to do it ... but it should be worth it I think.

(Hi, Guy!)

I am still not sure about Communities of Practice and I am not sure Affinity Spaces are the answer. The thing is that many of us have used the Communities of Practice model to understand online communities but there is a real probem with notions of membership and boundaries etc which are really not an accurate descriptin of the dynamics which seem at once intensive and dynamic. Temporary coherences. Affinity spaces, first talked about by Gee I think, (and building on his idea of the semiotic domain) evolved as a term around online gaming, but again I m am not sure it is properly transferrable as a model for non gaming online groups, although I, like Michelle Knobel, have also used this term.
In this book, Massey talks about 'constellatons of temporary coherences' in regard to groups of youth meeting - but is not talking about cyberspace, but I think it could be applied to online groups and want to think more on this.

In Flickr people belong to lots of different groups; the whole site does not really constitute a coherent community it is a series of groups.
Individuals in the groups interact with each other and some belong to numbers of groups where they meet again.
They have in jokes, interests and conversations which are thematically dropped and picked up again.
Individuals carry across specific identities and social histories. These are shown multimodally in words and images and in the associations they trace across the groups.
Individuals seem to develop online identities and coherences.
they teach each other.

Some groups are VERY popular and there are some definite stars on the board;movers and shakers who influence.

There are some individuals who start groups which no one joins.
I have seen one big argument and this I think is an unusual occurence although I have spotted this too.

Finally there is this fab new thing I have been invited to join. The Flat Stanley Project is a very exciting idea in my opinion and there is also a blog to go with it.
So it is an example of online learning collaboration across generations. I think itis antastic the way adults are invited to help in the education of children in this way..

I thought that this was really interesting.
It is Anya thinking about what she likes about blogs and it is a little bit of a different list to the one she has put more recently in her newer blog. Just a little sign about developing interests and how we use the web differently to suit different preoccupations in our lives.
I did a similar post here which Kate's comments added to.

I love the way Anya's new blog allows her to categorise and file things so that you can check out thins thematically as well as datewise.
We need to do that with this blog and I will investigate.

I realise that my posts, since Guy went to sleep for a while, have been focussing more on meatspace stuff than on the web itself. I realised this because the last post I did on DrJoolz was all about the Internet and seemed very different from what I had been doing for a while.
It is strange but I feel like I SHOULD have been more focused on the web for my blog, but maybe I should just write what I want and how I want.

I have done a lot of different types of post over the last few months.
There have been some which have related very specifically to literacy and an exploration of what a text is.
I have reflected on ideas I have read about or heard about, which have been totally academic related. I have reported on conferences and seminars.
I have written lists of books I want to read - thus showing my orientation towards particular topics and making a decision about what kind of identity I want to present for DrJoolz.
Sometimes I have been reflective about my posts.

So I have worked hard to show myself as academic it seems; but in doing so I have been thinking academically, reflecting on my workand trying to get others to talk with me about the content of my posts. (And academics have often responded.)

I have also used my blog to plot political views during the general election; to put across academic and political views about what is on television; I have even taken the risk and made comments about the wedding of Prince Charles and Chinchilla and made less than respectful noises about the pope. I have therefore used my blog as SOCIAL and POLITICAL COMMENTARY.

I have told stories about me in pictures and in words. I have even told the world my feelings in a very uncharacteristic act of openess. This was a very strange thing to do. I have given lists which reflect my interests, my preferences. I have shown things about my family relationships and those with friends and colleagues. This posts were personal narratives. Showing myself in what I do and in in my depiction of relationships.

More on types of posts next time ...

It is a long time since Guy last posted here and even longer since I have doneanything on this blog.
At first I elt guilty about not keeping thisgoing but then realised that a lot of what I was doing over on DrJoolz involved quite a bit of thinking about the proces of blogging.
This is a catch up post but also I will from now on try to post something here every few days so that I know things are fresh in my mind.

I have been thinking about how in some ways I have develped a DrJoolz persona whois a little bit different from my identity as a researcher at work, as a colleague, as someone at home with family relationships. Maybe on the blog I present myself as having some kind of coherence; some sort of joined upness. In writing about myselfi am somehow writing myself.I am subject and object of the work; and interestingly because I am writing about blogging I sometimes do stuff soI can blog it.In this way the blog influences my life; it does not simply record aspects of it.
For example on the walk round Sheffield, I only went on that walk to get photos for my blog. Photos like this one.



In taking this walk, I looked at an area of where I live that I had never been to before - even though it is really near it was not part of my daily map.

I have found that using images has made me look around me for visual jokes, for quirky things; even wondering what might be interesting to someone who does not live in England. This is me thinking about audience as well as taking an interest in looking about me in a new way.

When I called this photo 'Addiction' I thought it was funny but also quite poignant.



So I think that blogging has made me do things I would not have done before and it makes me look about the world in new ways.