Writing in 2006 and capitalizing on weblogging participation, Lankshear and Knobel distinguished between “participation that is directed to particular or specified others, participation that is directed toward a larger community, and participation that is directed at both.”(p.5) And to illustrate the first type of participation, they cited the post and ensued comments talking about a UK Education Fair and taking place between Encaustic and Sun_Skittle. From these artifacts, the use of acronyms and abbreviations came rushing to my attention, such as URE for you are, SUMTHIN for something, wld for would, rite for right, OMG for Oh My God, prob for probably, unis for universities, depts for departments. This feature reminds me of Instant Messaging communication (on which my multimodal project centered its attention). It is understandable that the real-timeness of IM communication might call for users to shorten their messages to keep the communication smoothly and the exchange quicker. Yet, since there exists a time lag in weblogging, that is, an asynchrony between posting and viewing, there is not need for immediate response. In this case, I’m curious about bloggers’ reasons for abbreviating and acronyming when there is no need to type quickly.
Lankshear and Knobel (2006) also noted that as the audience of a blog grows, the blogger might not be able to respond to all of the comments, ending up “becoming a broadcast outlet, distributing material without participating in conversations about it.” (p. 4) This led me to reflect on my own purpose of keeping a weblog. And I came to realize that my blog serves solely as a venue where I upload and share photos with friends, with virtually no conversation taking place in my blogoshpere. Therefore, as opposed to going from a participation facilitator to an information distributor, my blog is born a broadcast outlet. I guess this springs largely from the fact that keeping a weblog as a place for conversations entails an amount of time and efforts for me. As I recall, posting and responding always took me a while to get done, which when novelty of blogging faded out became nothing short of a burden. True, weblogs, when directed to particular people, indeed function as a site for friends to “hang out” and exchange thoughts and ideas. Yet, as far as I am concerned, I still prefer IM to blogging when it comes to having conversations with my friends.
In our last class on April 30, we talked about the features of blogging, 2 of which pertain to the permanency and the huge scale of visibility of postings. Here's video clip I found on Youtube elaborating on the Danger of Social Networking.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Monday, April 23, 2007
Participatory Culture
As noted by Jenkins (2006), a participatory culture is defined as “a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices.” (p.3) This concept aptly underlies the assessment tool we talked about in class the week before, namely, electronic portfolios, or interchangeably blogs. First, an alternative to standardized tests, e-portfolios serve as a venue onto which learners upload assorted artifacts they see as reflections of their learning process, be it journals, essays, pictures, and the like. And thanks to the wide availability of commercially-oriented websites that give away free spaces along with an almost plethoric number of blog templates, building a weblog is only a few clicks away. On top of that, as opposed to the print materials characterizing the more traditional vanilla-foldered portfolios, the multimodality featuring e-portfolio makes possible the incorporation of sound files, animation, and even video clips to further enrich and personalize the blog, a function that embodies the concept of relatively low barriers to artistic expression. Furthermore, e-portfolio possesses the function that enables viewers of a blog to comment on it in terms of the aspect that arouses emotion of any sort in them. With this function, e-portfolio nurtures this learning community among bloggers that promotes and values a feedback-giving culture. This somehow lends support to the “beta-reading” (or editorial feedback) brought about by Jenkins (2006) that is believed to contribute to the growth of bloggers as writers by virtue of the giving and receiving of feedback. Last but not least, unlike the traditional portfolios whose target audience is usually if not always the teacher, e-portfolios are open to anyone with internet access. Knowing that friends as well as strangers will be reading their artifacts/work, bloggers would definitely care and take caution when it comes to what goes on their blogs, since to certain extent the blog would come to represent them in the virtual world. This, again, reifies the concept of a participatory culture stating that bloggers “feel some degree of social connection with one another and care what other people think about what they have created.” (Jenkins, 2006:7) (The video clip below demonstrates another reason why bloggers should take caution in dispatching postings. Check it out!) All in all, e-portfolios, a.k.a. blogs, could serve as a pertinent example of the participatory culture put forth in Jenkin’s article.
*This video clip comes from YouTube.
Ever since the class we had on Monday, this thought have been lingering in my mind till this moment: does the multimodality of the internet stifle the imagination of learners? True, the old “mono-modal” written texts indeed allow more room for imagination. You get to paint the pictures of the good-looking prince/princess in your mind when dealing with a story that portrays everything simply by words. So, when the multimodal internet kicks in and saves those thousand words that describe a picture by simply giving the picture away, readers/viewers are left with very little imagining to do. I find it hard to disagree with this argument because it is so true. Yet, to look at this multimodality issue from a different perspective, I guess we might say it provides viewers another motivation to keep on viewing because it presents the information in a more vivid and lively manner. Plus, we might think of it as offering those not-so-into-reading people the access to the information that would otherwise be absent from their world.
*This video clip comes from YouTube.
Ever since the class we had on Monday, this thought have been lingering in my mind till this moment: does the multimodality of the internet stifle the imagination of learners? True, the old “mono-modal” written texts indeed allow more room for imagination. You get to paint the pictures of the good-looking prince/princess in your mind when dealing with a story that portrays everything simply by words. So, when the multimodal internet kicks in and saves those thousand words that describe a picture by simply giving the picture away, readers/viewers are left with very little imagining to do. I find it hard to disagree with this argument because it is so true. Yet, to look at this multimodality issue from a different perspective, I guess we might say it provides viewers another motivation to keep on viewing because it presents the information in a more vivid and lively manner. Plus, we might think of it as offering those not-so-into-reading people the access to the information that would otherwise be absent from their world.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Multimodalities
In Siegel’s (2006) article, semiotics is defined as “a broad field of studies that looks at meanings and messages in all their forms and all their contexts.” (p.68) That is, it gives the same weights to all sign systems, be it languages, codes, symbols, pictures, gestures, and so forth. This discipline somehow pinpoints the importance of taking into account multimodality when it comes to literacy development. More often than not, literacy learning at school is characterized by monomodality; that is, to be literate is to display the language required for successful participation in schooling. However, language is all but one sign system/modality capable of enabling learners to construct meanings. Other modalities such as drawings, dramatic play, and 3-D constructions also abound to allow students to get across intended meanings and thus those proficient in these modalities should also be considered literate. As I recall, my 4-year-old niece once showed me a drawing that according to her portrayed her family members, though to me there were nothing more than 4 identical sets of symbols on the paper, each consisting of a circle on top, a triangle in the middle, and 2 ovals in the bottom. Yet, to come to think of it, this drawing indeed demonstrated that my niece had established the concept in regard to family members as well as an artistic skill as a way to convey this concept (a modality), though the skill still left a lot to be desired. However, in light of the multimodality theory noted here, she should be thought of as being literate, now that she was equipped with a sign system to help her “paint” her mind. I think this drawing example also serves as a piece of evidence lending support to Siegel’s (2006) proposition that children come into the classroom filled with prior knowledge in terms of multimodalities which, when tapped, would contribute to position the children as successful meaning makers.
I also find the idea transmediation really interesting. As Suhor (1984) put it, transmediation refers to the “translation of content from one sign system into another.” (p. 250) And this movement across sign systems emerges as a generative process giving rise to new meanings, due to the fact that there exists no shared code to help represent both sign systems and thus the connection between them needs to be invented. As I rolled my eyes through this idea of transmediation, I realized that it actually underlied some of the activities that I administered in my EFL classrooms and rendered them both fruitful and enjoyable. To take an example, I used to engage students in the story telling activity in which they looked at a comic strip with the bubbles emptied, collectively creating the lines they saw fit for each bubble, and then narrated a story taking place in the comic strip while at the same time presenting to the class their comic strip with all the bubbles filled. That is too say, this activity required students to move across 2 sign systems (modalities), that is, from pictures to oral discourse. And almost always the oral language students managed to produce in response to the comic strips was a lot richer than what they generated for the regular story telling task without any visual aids. On top of that, most students expressed fondness for this comic-turned-story activity because they found it a lot of fun to create dramatic dialogues for the comic characters (instead of themselves). As such, I believe transmediation indeed possesses great generative power that, when practiced appropriately, would lead to new meanings and come with a lot of joy. Picture 1 and 2 below serve as fine pieces of material for the activity in question.
Picture 1* The comic strip with empty bubbles
Picture 2* The original comic strip
*This comic strip comes from http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20070318.html
As Halliday (1978) contended, “language as a social semiotic means interpreting language within a sociocultural context in which the culture itself is interpreted in semiotic terms.” (p.2) This statement reminds me of how sounds animals make seem to differ from culture to culture (onomatopoeia). Of course, it is common sense that all dogs on the face of the earth bark in the same way. Yet, people with different cultural memberships had come to mimic the barking in different ways. Here’s a list of animal sounds represented in English and Chinese. As can be seen, roosters cocka-a-doodle-doo or gu-gu-gu depending on where they are. As far as I am concerned, this, among other facts, aptly illustrates how meanings of language/concepts/values are situated in the sociocultural context.
Animals -> English -> Chinese
dogs -> woof woof -> wan wan
cats -> meow -> meow
roosters -> cocka-a-doodle-doo -> gu-gu-gu
pigs -> oink oink -> go-go
ducks -> quack -> gua gua
cows -> moo -> mo
A guy made some crazy and funny animal sounds in the video clip that follows. It totally cracked me up! Check it out!
* This video clip comes from YouTube.
I also find the idea transmediation really interesting. As Suhor (1984) put it, transmediation refers to the “translation of content from one sign system into another.” (p. 250) And this movement across sign systems emerges as a generative process giving rise to new meanings, due to the fact that there exists no shared code to help represent both sign systems and thus the connection between them needs to be invented. As I rolled my eyes through this idea of transmediation, I realized that it actually underlied some of the activities that I administered in my EFL classrooms and rendered them both fruitful and enjoyable. To take an example, I used to engage students in the story telling activity in which they looked at a comic strip with the bubbles emptied, collectively creating the lines they saw fit for each bubble, and then narrated a story taking place in the comic strip while at the same time presenting to the class their comic strip with all the bubbles filled. That is too say, this activity required students to move across 2 sign systems (modalities), that is, from pictures to oral discourse. And almost always the oral language students managed to produce in response to the comic strips was a lot richer than what they generated for the regular story telling task without any visual aids. On top of that, most students expressed fondness for this comic-turned-story activity because they found it a lot of fun to create dramatic dialogues for the comic characters (instead of themselves). As such, I believe transmediation indeed possesses great generative power that, when practiced appropriately, would lead to new meanings and come with a lot of joy. Picture 1 and 2 below serve as fine pieces of material for the activity in question.
Picture 1* The comic strip with empty bubbles
Picture 2* The original comic strip
*This comic strip comes from http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20070318.html
As Halliday (1978) contended, “language as a social semiotic means interpreting language within a sociocultural context in which the culture itself is interpreted in semiotic terms.” (p.2) This statement reminds me of how sounds animals make seem to differ from culture to culture (onomatopoeia). Of course, it is common sense that all dogs on the face of the earth bark in the same way. Yet, people with different cultural memberships had come to mimic the barking in different ways. Here’s a list of animal sounds represented in English and Chinese. As can be seen, roosters cocka-a-doodle-doo or gu-gu-gu depending on where they are. As far as I am concerned, this, among other facts, aptly illustrates how meanings of language/concepts/values are situated in the sociocultural context.
Animals -> English -> Chinese
dogs -> woof woof -> wan wan
cats -> meow -> meow
roosters -> cocka-a-doodle-doo -> gu-gu-gu
pigs -> oink oink -> go-go
ducks -> quack -> gua gua
cows -> moo -> mo
A guy made some crazy and funny animal sounds in the video clip that follows. It totally cracked me up! Check it out!
* This video clip comes from YouTube.
Monday, April 2, 2007
PowerPoint and Its Power to Point
As Adams (2006) put it, PowerPoint users might come to develop certain ways of doing things and patterns of behaviors and thinking, namely, becoming habituated with this software (p.394). This proposition somehow spells out my expectations for conference presentations; that is, they must be PowerPoint-enhanced. Ever since PowerPoint came into the picture, a number of the speakers in conferences waved goodbye to the old OHP transparencies in favor of this new technology, which I guess might be the result of several reasons. For one thing, it provides visual/audio reinforcement of oral information to the audience, helping them make better sense of the information. For another, it frees presenters from the manual changing of the transparencies and as such puts them in a better position to focus their attention mainly on conveying their ideas. Thus, due to this vast popularity of PowerPoint in conferences, my expectation that PowerPoint is a must for conference presentations kicked in and gradually became habituated. In fact, in the conference just held by my program (FLE) during this past weekend, I participated in several presentations, all of which were mediated by the use of PowerPoint as a presenting tool. And to come to think of it, I totally took this PowerPoint enhancement thing for granted. In fact, I guess I would definitely have felt less comfortable and even somewhat upset if the PowerPoint enhancement had been absent. This idea really stroke me as surprising for I’ve never known I’ve been habituated by the technology this much. Speaking of conference presentations facilitated by the employment of PowerPoint, I have ever experienced several ones that made use of PowerPoint in such a way that everyone present wished the speaker would just give them the ppt file and get it over with. One of the speakers read from the slides word by word without supplying any additional information. Another speaker skipped so many bullet points in each of the slides that a holistic understanding of the study became next to impossible. Still, not unlike the incongruous PowerPoint lecture discussed in Adams (2006), another speaker presented information somewhat different from the one projected onto the screen, making it rather difficult and confusing for the audience to establish any connection. However, honestly speaking, I feel glad that I’ve experienced these leaving-a-lot-to-be-desired presentations since they brought to my attention some problems that I should go out of my way to avoid while preparing my own PowerPoint presentations.
In her article, Adams (2006) contended that as a user seizes hold of PowerPoint as a tool for presenting information, “he or she necessarily begins to think in terms of the form it suggests.” (p. 394) And the form that PowerPoint suggests concerns titling each slide, abbreviating subject materials, and bulleting points. The way I see it, Powerpoint bears much resemblance with an overhead projector in regard to these features. In other words, presenters aided by an overhead projector would also need to entitle each transparency, abbreviate materials, as well as to bullet the points. Yet, a major difference between these 2 types of presentation facility representing the pre-computer and post-computer era consists in PowerPoint’s preference over information able to fit in a single projected 4:3 rectangular, which necessarily disadvantages and in turn renders obsolete the (narrative) texts calling forth more space to display. This is exactly the feature of PowerPoint that put me in a rather difficult situation as I tried to compose the slides for my presentation in the conference last weekend. In that presentation, I needed to show the audience a preview passage that spanned one A4-sized page in an attempt to help them get a better idea about what a previewing treatment gets at. However, I found it impossible to fit that one-page preview onto the 4:3 rectangular allowed by PowerPoint and ended up breaking the preview passage into 2 fragmented slides. I felt really upset in doing so, for the idea of a preview taking ONLY a one-page space so pivotal to my study was somehow lost from making it last for 2 slides. Picture 1 below pertains to the one-page preview whereas Picture 2 and Picture 3 depict the 2-slide preview, the fragmented one.
Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
As for the use of PowerPoint as a presentation tool in the classroom, Adams (2006) argued teachers seem to “settle into the easiest, most accessible, efficient path and seldom thinking to diverge from it.” (p. 395) To put it another way, while using PowerPoint, they would rely on the AutoContent Wizard to construct their teaching presentations and stay tuned ever after. As a teacher myself, I surmise that this might be accounted for by several reasons. First of all, teachers might not feel the need to switch or venture any new format because the messages/content conveyed through the PowerPoint file constructed following AutoContent Wizard had been well-received and understood by students. Plus, when the format serves only as a medium to convey the messages, teachers might be convinced that the choosing of the messages should take precedence. Additionally, the time constraint might also play a part in the process. In sum, while experimenting with the new formats would no doubt be exciting and exhilarating, these practical concerns might have underlied some teachers’ decision as to sticking to the simpler template.
In her article, Adams (2006) contended that as a user seizes hold of PowerPoint as a tool for presenting information, “he or she necessarily begins to think in terms of the form it suggests.” (p. 394) And the form that PowerPoint suggests concerns titling each slide, abbreviating subject materials, and bulleting points. The way I see it, Powerpoint bears much resemblance with an overhead projector in regard to these features. In other words, presenters aided by an overhead projector would also need to entitle each transparency, abbreviate materials, as well as to bullet the points. Yet, a major difference between these 2 types of presentation facility representing the pre-computer and post-computer era consists in PowerPoint’s preference over information able to fit in a single projected 4:3 rectangular, which necessarily disadvantages and in turn renders obsolete the (narrative) texts calling forth more space to display. This is exactly the feature of PowerPoint that put me in a rather difficult situation as I tried to compose the slides for my presentation in the conference last weekend. In that presentation, I needed to show the audience a preview passage that spanned one A4-sized page in an attempt to help them get a better idea about what a previewing treatment gets at. However, I found it impossible to fit that one-page preview onto the 4:3 rectangular allowed by PowerPoint and ended up breaking the preview passage into 2 fragmented slides. I felt really upset in doing so, for the idea of a preview taking ONLY a one-page space so pivotal to my study was somehow lost from making it last for 2 slides. Picture 1 below pertains to the one-page preview whereas Picture 2 and Picture 3 depict the 2-slide preview, the fragmented one.
Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
As for the use of PowerPoint as a presentation tool in the classroom, Adams (2006) argued teachers seem to “settle into the easiest, most accessible, efficient path and seldom thinking to diverge from it.” (p. 395) To put it another way, while using PowerPoint, they would rely on the AutoContent Wizard to construct their teaching presentations and stay tuned ever after. As a teacher myself, I surmise that this might be accounted for by several reasons. First of all, teachers might not feel the need to switch or venture any new format because the messages/content conveyed through the PowerPoint file constructed following AutoContent Wizard had been well-received and understood by students. Plus, when the format serves only as a medium to convey the messages, teachers might be convinced that the choosing of the messages should take precedence. Additionally, the time constraint might also play a part in the process. In sum, while experimenting with the new formats would no doubt be exciting and exhilarating, these practical concerns might have underlied some teachers’ decision as to sticking to the simpler template.
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