Notes from 5/31
Kress seems to construct dichotomies. We need to flesh out the planet between his poles.
We're not looking for social commentary.
Look at what ideas these kids come with, how they turn them into texts, and how they turn them into videos. What are their literate activities? ie. shots, cropping, sequencing.
Comprehensability, 6 Traits
Intention precedes production of the message. (Derida)
Psychological, mechanical relationships will be the same as adults.
They are the mediator between intention and production. What they do is what we are studying.
Reading and writing require the same prerequisite skills.
Viewing and producing video do not require the same skills. You can watch a movie with no prerequisites, although your level of background information and sophistication will affect what you are able to get out of the experience. Producing video requires special equipment and expertise. Only very recently have both the means of production and access to distribution become widely available.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Moving Images Count Too - JW
Throughout Chapter 3, Kress seems to disregard the temporality of video. Meaning in image is related exclusively to the spatial and temporal significance belongs only to writing. The temporal is central to meaning-making in the moving image. Kress lumps all kinds of images together.
The discussion of the term "literacy" is interesting. Kress argues against the wide application of the term. "Something that has come to mean everything, is likely not to mean very much at all." (p. 22) I think it's wise to apply specific language to different circumstances, but I doubt that this word can be reclaimed in any meaningful way. "Literacy" is too widely used and means too many different things.
JW
The discussion of the term "literacy" is interesting. Kress argues against the wide application of the term. "Something that has come to mean everything, is likely not to mean very much at all." (p. 22) I think it's wise to apply specific language to different circumstances, but I doubt that this word can be reclaimed in any meaningful way. "Literacy" is too widely used and means too many different things.
JW
Monday, May 21, 2007
Defining the Project
We met today - James King, Debbie, James Welsh - to discuss the scope of the work that we will be doing this summer with the camp.
We will try to get a picture of the resources that the kids have at home. We assume that they are awash in media, but we'd like to have some certainty about that. We will give them a survey of some kind to show that they have access to the internet, TV, gaming, etc.
We will be examining their products and interviewing them to find out about the source material for the products. Debbie will be a participant-observer, mostly observing.
Debbie will be collecting:
Ambient data
Directed interview questions to test hypothesis
Debbie's metacognitive data about what's going on
I don't have complete notes about the rest of this meeting. Please add!
We will try to get a picture of the resources that the kids have at home. We assume that they are awash in media, but we'd like to have some certainty about that. We will give them a survey of some kind to show that they have access to the internet, TV, gaming, etc.
We will be examining their products and interviewing them to find out about the source material for the products. Debbie will be a participant-observer, mostly observing.
Debbie will be collecting:
Ambient data
Directed interview questions to test hypothesis
Debbie's metacognitive data about what's going on
I don't have complete notes about the rest of this meeting. Please add!
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Chapters 1-3 deb
"The world told is a different world to the world shown"--(p.1)
I think it is easier to lure individuals into false beliefs through the written word. People tend to believe words that are written by "experts" as "gospel truth". Images are usually defined as up for wide interpretation. I think that through a program of critical thinking about media texts--that include both images and text--that we can teach our students to be more critical about their interpretation of both the words and the pictures. Critical media literacy strategies can enhance both image and text interpretation.
While humans have always "read" the world through imagery, traditional schooling has rarely focused on the power of the image. Only privileged individuals who chose to study journalism, film, graphic design, or other visual media were exposed to a real literacy of the techniques and strategies. Now with the advent of simple editing techniques for magazine like quality in computer applications, movie editing software, and simple web-page creation (like this blog) individuals can create their own multimodal "texts" that include both image and word.
Here are some Kress thoughts I find particularly significant in chapter one.
Page 1--speech or writing as a narrative genre. Writing-->logic of time-->logic of sequence in its elements of time-->temporally governed arrangements.
Page 1--image as display genre. Image--logic of space--logic of simultaneity of visual elements--spatially organized arrangements (center as central, above as superior)--recast as spatial relations.
Page 3-4--Reading Paths (this concept figures widely through Kress's work and is cited by many in the hypermedia world). Determined by the maker or the reader...or a combination of both. By creating salient elements, the maker guides the reader towarad a path. However, for the reader, reading images "out of order" is easy.
Page 3--Kress noted Reading Paths as one effect of new media. Here are some others...1) use a multiplicity of modes (image still, moving,music, sound effects) 2) interactivity--interpersonal (write back)=social power, hypertextual =semiotic power.
Page 8--in the era of dominence of writing the image was subject to the logic of writing. Now in an era of hte dominance of the screen, writing appears as subject to the logic of images. (think of captions for images--increasingly sophisticated picture books employ images outside of the text to tell stories within/outside of stories).
CHAPTER 3
Font, embolden, italicise, bullet points (bullets, quick, fired at us)
I think it is easier to lure individuals into false beliefs through the written word. People tend to believe words that are written by "experts" as "gospel truth". Images are usually defined as up for wide interpretation. I think that through a program of critical thinking about media texts--that include both images and text--that we can teach our students to be more critical about their interpretation of both the words and the pictures. Critical media literacy strategies can enhance both image and text interpretation.
While humans have always "read" the world through imagery, traditional schooling has rarely focused on the power of the image. Only privileged individuals who chose to study journalism, film, graphic design, or other visual media were exposed to a real literacy of the techniques and strategies. Now with the advent of simple editing techniques for magazine like quality in computer applications, movie editing software, and simple web-page creation (like this blog) individuals can create their own multimodal "texts" that include both image and word.
Here are some Kress thoughts I find particularly significant in chapter one.
Page 1--speech or writing as a narrative genre. Writing-->logic of time-->logic of sequence in its elements of time-->temporally governed arrangements.
Page 1--image as display genre. Image--logic of space--logic of simultaneity of visual elements--spatially organized arrangements (center as central, above as superior)--recast as spatial relations.
Page 3-4--Reading Paths (this concept figures widely through Kress's work and is cited by many in the hypermedia world). Determined by the maker or the reader...or a combination of both. By creating salient elements, the maker guides the reader towarad a path. However, for the reader, reading images "out of order" is easy.
Page 3--Kress noted Reading Paths as one effect of new media. Here are some others...1) use a multiplicity of modes (image still, moving,music, sound effects) 2) interactivity--interpersonal (write back)=social power, hypertextual =semiotic power.
Page 8--in the era of dominence of writing the image was subject to the logic of writing. Now in an era of hte dominance of the screen, writing appears as subject to the logic of images. (think of captions for images--increasingly sophisticated picture books employ images outside of the text to tell stories within/outside of stories).
CHAPTER 3
Font, embolden, italicise, bullet points (bullets, quick, fired at us)
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Ch. 2 Notes
The book, which I just realized hasn't been identified yet in this blog, is Gunther Kress' Literacy in the New Media Age.
Kress places us at the intersection of four broad changes: social, economic, political, and technological. I hope that later in the text he elaborates on how he sees these four changes. It seems that we're always at that intersection.
Something that Kress says here about writing becoming increasingly display-oriented got me thinking about the children's drawings. Before kids formally learn to write, they draw and color. Their pictoral representations grow into "alphabetic" writing. In the past, those kids move from making pictures to making words. In the new media age that Kress is describing, do those kids stay with pictures? Or do they move from pictures to words, then back to pictures? What does increasingly image-laden text mean to kids who are first learning to write? It's possible for a child to learn how to make a movie on a computer before learning to write, or at least simulatenously. Does that happen anywhere? It must. So what does that look like and how does it affect alphabetic writing?
I would also argue that writing has long been display-oriented. The printed word includes many design elements, including the geography of the page, font design, binding, color, and the use of organizational guides.
Here's a quote that I like,
"We need to be aware however, that on the screen writing may appear with the modes of music, of colour, of (moving) image, of speech, of soundtrack. All these bear meaning, and are part of one message. The mode of writing is one part of that message, and so is partial in relation to the message overall."
Very true.
Also true is Kress' admonition that change is ever-present and that we "can neither pretend that there is stability nor demand it." There is no going back. There is no "back" to go back to.
The questions he poses on the second paragraph on page 12 seem to relate strongly to one of those wonderful conversations we had this Spring in the round room - going fast vs. going deep. Fast literacies let you jump easily from topic to topic, to cover a lot of ground and find subtle connections between seemingly disparate ideas but they don't seem to encourage exploring a single topic in depth. With ICT, there may be vast resources easily available to allow you to "go deep", but the structure doesn't seem to encourage it.
Kress also notes what we have experienced all too frequently: working with images costs time and storage space. So... very... true. There's also a little warning there about over-borrowing from other fields: "Extending one theory too far, into a domain for which it was never meant, does no one a service."
James
Kress places us at the intersection of four broad changes: social, economic, political, and technological. I hope that later in the text he elaborates on how he sees these four changes. It seems that we're always at that intersection.
Something that Kress says here about writing becoming increasingly display-oriented got me thinking about the children's drawings. Before kids formally learn to write, they draw and color. Their pictoral representations grow into "alphabetic" writing. In the past, those kids move from making pictures to making words. In the new media age that Kress is describing, do those kids stay with pictures? Or do they move from pictures to words, then back to pictures? What does increasingly image-laden text mean to kids who are first learning to write? It's possible for a child to learn how to make a movie on a computer before learning to write, or at least simulatenously. Does that happen anywhere? It must. So what does that look like and how does it affect alphabetic writing?
I would also argue that writing has long been display-oriented. The printed word includes many design elements, including the geography of the page, font design, binding, color, and the use of organizational guides.
Here's a quote that I like,
"We need to be aware however, that on the screen writing may appear with the modes of music, of colour, of (moving) image, of speech, of soundtrack. All these bear meaning, and are part of one message. The mode of writing is one part of that message, and so is partial in relation to the message overall."
Very true.
Also true is Kress' admonition that change is ever-present and that we "can neither pretend that there is stability nor demand it." There is no going back. There is no "back" to go back to.
The questions he poses on the second paragraph on page 12 seem to relate strongly to one of those wonderful conversations we had this Spring in the round room - going fast vs. going deep. Fast literacies let you jump easily from topic to topic, to cover a lot of ground and find subtle connections between seemingly disparate ideas but they don't seem to encourage exploring a single topic in depth. With ICT, there may be vast resources easily available to allow you to "go deep", but the structure doesn't seem to encourage it.
Kress also notes what we have experienced all too frequently: working with images costs time and storage space. So... very... true. There's also a little warning there about over-borrowing from other fields: "Extending one theory too far, into a domain for which it was never meant, does no one a service."
James
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Reflections on Chapter 1 - JW
Reflections on Chapter 1
In the second paragraph, Kress makes these predictions: “Language-as-speech will remain the major mode of communication; language-as-writing will increasingly be displaced by image in many domains of public communication, though writing will remain the preferred mode of the political and cultural elites.” This means that access to higher spheres of influence will still be governed by mastery of these elite Discourses. Screen and image may be the Discourses of control, but writing and books will remain the Discourses of Power. Sure, you can make your own video and distribute it to the world, but the people who are really in control will still be the ones who have access to law and government and business. Citizens who are fluent in new media literacies but can’t read and write in the mode of dominant Discourses are ready to be controlled and victimized.
“ ‘The world narrated’ is a different world to ‘the world depicted and displayed’.” This is very true, but I disagree with some of the attributes that he identifies. Kress states that while text is most strongly temporal (one thing follows another), image is spatial. That’s true, but image is also temporal. If we are discussing ‘image’ here to include video, and I think we should, then one can’t discount the temporal aspect of image. The order in which elements of meaning are presented in a video have a large impact on meaning. You could argue that video is more strictly governed by the temporal than writing. Partially due to technological limits, it’s more difficult to skip around in video than in text. Written text allows you to set your pace, to reread as necessary, to scan and skim, and to skip to the sections of text that are most pertinent to you. With video, the viewer has less control of temporal elements. With images, I think it’s easier to embed messages that are consumed uncritically because it looks like unshaped reality.
By page 4, Kress is discussing further differences between writing and image. He says that the written word is “vacuous” and without meaning and the creative act is to associate those words with meaning. By contrast, he says that images are “filled with meaning” and the creative act is in arranging those meaning elements. I can’t agree with this completely. Images are not the things they depict. An image is just another representation of a thing. An image is closer to reality than a word (and subtext is easier to disguise in an image), but the image is still a container for meaning assigned from the outside. An image does contain literal level significance for the thing represented, but the really interesting (and powerful) part is not at the literal level.
There’s some great stuff on page 6, where Kress is describing how authorship changes in an environment where everyone can be an author. Call it the Wikipedia effect. Authorship used to imply authority. Very few could get published and the publishing process weeded out all but (supposedly) the most authoritative. Now, anyone can get published, so authorship, in and of itself, doesn’t mean squat. This is why we teach kids to be critical readers and why online critical literacy is so important. Anyone can get published. Citizens need to know how to weed through the ideas for themselves now.
Kress continues to discuss the changing role of authors and talks about the dissolution of the myth of original authorship. I know I should accept this. I know it’s probably true. But I’m not ready to let go of that idea of the author (in whatever medium) as the creative originator. I feel that writing is more than just rearranging and regurgitating the ideas of others. I’ve got to think more about that one.
Kress closes with an objection, and this is where I found myself strongly diverging from his opinions. He says that books today are not what books used to be, that textbooks are not what textbooks used to be. I’m reading the tone in this section as bitter nostalgia. He seems to say, “in my day, books were books - not like this junk you kids have today.” Is it true that textbooks, as a whole, were better thirty-five years ago? Actually, he doesn’t say that they were better. He says textbooks were “expositions of coherent ‘bodies of knowledge’ presented in the mode of writing” and that now a textbook is “a collection of ‘worksheets’, organised around the issues of the curriculum, and put between more or less solid covers.” He laments the loss of “that sense of a reader engaging with and absorbing a coherent exposition of a body of knowledge, authoritatively presented” and says that it has been replaced with activities that place students in action around a topic to learn by doing.
Two questions: Have textbooks changed in these ways in the last four decades? Is it a bad thing if they have?
I think I’d rather have kids learning-by-doing than “absorbing” knowledge from experts.
I liked Kress’ point about the age of the writers of websites. Yes, the internet is mostly text now, but most of the current internet is maintained by people who grew up with text as writing and the predominance of books. This may change as we die off.
As he closes the first chapter, Kress presents the ideas with which I most strongly disagree. He says that image has coexisted with writing in the past, but that image was subordinate to writing. “In simple terms, it fitted in how, where and when the logic of the written text and of the page suggested. In the era of the dominance of the screen, writing appears on the screen subject to the logic of the image.” This seems to me to be the wrong approach.
Both text and image serve meaning. An effective author uses the best tools available for a specific purpose. Sometimes text predominates and sometimes image does, but an effective author applies the strengths of the tools at hand to communicate a specific message to a specific audience.
Writing is an act of making meaning. Text and images should be employed to serve the purpose and message of the author. The “logic of text” shouldn’t preempt the message; nor should the “logic of screen”. When creating a web page, an author should start with message, then use whatever elements - text, image, sound, video - best suit the logic of the message. It’s true that there is a difference between “logic of text” and “logic of screen” and that the difference defines the possibilities of expression in each medium.
I don’t know. Now I’m starting to contradict myself. We need to seek answers to the questions that Kress puts forth in his closing paragraph, but I don’t have an inkling what those answers might be. I am put off by what sounds to me like an alarmist tone when discussing how literacy is changing. Change isn’t good or bad, it’s just inevitable. Living things change. This includes dynamic systems that act like living things, in this case language and culture. Does that mean we’re going to hell in a handbasket? It depends largely on what you mean by “we”. I think that a lot of people get up tight about changes in culture because they want the future to look like their past. It won’t. People will change the way institutions work, they’ll change the language to suit them, they’ll change laws and governments and anything else that they want to. We can’t impose ourselves on the future. We should discuss, we should debate, we should look for answers. But the answers are not a return to things past.
James
In the second paragraph, Kress makes these predictions: “Language-as-speech will remain the major mode of communication; language-as-writing will increasingly be displaced by image in many domains of public communication, though writing will remain the preferred mode of the political and cultural elites.” This means that access to higher spheres of influence will still be governed by mastery of these elite Discourses. Screen and image may be the Discourses of control, but writing and books will remain the Discourses of Power. Sure, you can make your own video and distribute it to the world, but the people who are really in control will still be the ones who have access to law and government and business. Citizens who are fluent in new media literacies but can’t read and write in the mode of dominant Discourses are ready to be controlled and victimized.
“ ‘The world narrated’ is a different world to ‘the world depicted and displayed’.” This is very true, but I disagree with some of the attributes that he identifies. Kress states that while text is most strongly temporal (one thing follows another), image is spatial. That’s true, but image is also temporal. If we are discussing ‘image’ here to include video, and I think we should, then one can’t discount the temporal aspect of image. The order in which elements of meaning are presented in a video have a large impact on meaning. You could argue that video is more strictly governed by the temporal than writing. Partially due to technological limits, it’s more difficult to skip around in video than in text. Written text allows you to set your pace, to reread as necessary, to scan and skim, and to skip to the sections of text that are most pertinent to you. With video, the viewer has less control of temporal elements. With images, I think it’s easier to embed messages that are consumed uncritically because it looks like unshaped reality.
By page 4, Kress is discussing further differences between writing and image. He says that the written word is “vacuous” and without meaning and the creative act is to associate those words with meaning. By contrast, he says that images are “filled with meaning” and the creative act is in arranging those meaning elements. I can’t agree with this completely. Images are not the things they depict. An image is just another representation of a thing. An image is closer to reality than a word (and subtext is easier to disguise in an image), but the image is still a container for meaning assigned from the outside. An image does contain literal level significance for the thing represented, but the really interesting (and powerful) part is not at the literal level.
There’s some great stuff on page 6, where Kress is describing how authorship changes in an environment where everyone can be an author. Call it the Wikipedia effect. Authorship used to imply authority. Very few could get published and the publishing process weeded out all but (supposedly) the most authoritative. Now, anyone can get published, so authorship, in and of itself, doesn’t mean squat. This is why we teach kids to be critical readers and why online critical literacy is so important. Anyone can get published. Citizens need to know how to weed through the ideas for themselves now.
Kress continues to discuss the changing role of authors and talks about the dissolution of the myth of original authorship. I know I should accept this. I know it’s probably true. But I’m not ready to let go of that idea of the author (in whatever medium) as the creative originator. I feel that writing is more than just rearranging and regurgitating the ideas of others. I’ve got to think more about that one.
Kress closes with an objection, and this is where I found myself strongly diverging from his opinions. He says that books today are not what books used to be, that textbooks are not what textbooks used to be. I’m reading the tone in this section as bitter nostalgia. He seems to say, “in my day, books were books - not like this junk you kids have today.” Is it true that textbooks, as a whole, were better thirty-five years ago? Actually, he doesn’t say that they were better. He says textbooks were “expositions of coherent ‘bodies of knowledge’ presented in the mode of writing” and that now a textbook is “a collection of ‘worksheets’, organised around the issues of the curriculum, and put between more or less solid covers.” He laments the loss of “that sense of a reader engaging with and absorbing a coherent exposition of a body of knowledge, authoritatively presented” and says that it has been replaced with activities that place students in action around a topic to learn by doing.
Two questions: Have textbooks changed in these ways in the last four decades? Is it a bad thing if they have?
I think I’d rather have kids learning-by-doing than “absorbing” knowledge from experts.
I liked Kress’ point about the age of the writers of websites. Yes, the internet is mostly text now, but most of the current internet is maintained by people who grew up with text as writing and the predominance of books. This may change as we die off.
As he closes the first chapter, Kress presents the ideas with which I most strongly disagree. He says that image has coexisted with writing in the past, but that image was subordinate to writing. “In simple terms, it fitted in how, where and when the logic of the written text and of the page suggested. In the era of the dominance of the screen, writing appears on the screen subject to the logic of the image.” This seems to me to be the wrong approach.
Both text and image serve meaning. An effective author uses the best tools available for a specific purpose. Sometimes text predominates and sometimes image does, but an effective author applies the strengths of the tools at hand to communicate a specific message to a specific audience.
Writing is an act of making meaning. Text and images should be employed to serve the purpose and message of the author. The “logic of text” shouldn’t preempt the message; nor should the “logic of screen”. When creating a web page, an author should start with message, then use whatever elements - text, image, sound, video - best suit the logic of the message. It’s true that there is a difference between “logic of text” and “logic of screen” and that the difference defines the possibilities of expression in each medium.
I don’t know. Now I’m starting to contradict myself. We need to seek answers to the questions that Kress puts forth in his closing paragraph, but I don’t have an inkling what those answers might be. I am put off by what sounds to me like an alarmist tone when discussing how literacy is changing. Change isn’t good or bad, it’s just inevitable. Living things change. This includes dynamic systems that act like living things, in this case language and culture. Does that mean we’re going to hell in a handbasket? It depends largely on what you mean by “we”. I think that a lot of people get up tight about changes in culture because they want the future to look like their past. It won’t. People will change the way institutions work, they’ll change the language to suit them, they’ll change laws and governments and anything else that they want to. We can’t impose ourselves on the future. We should discuss, we should debate, we should look for answers. But the answers are not a return to things past.
James
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Our Project
Debbie and I met today and discussed the summer project. We agreed that we should start by reading Gunther Kress' Literacy in the New Media Age.
It would be interesting to see how the kids use traditional literacies in their fast literacy production, but it may not be productive to look at that question in this camp. Much of the traditional literacy use is directed by the camp counselors and does not originate with the kids.
We can look at their products and conduct memetic and structural analyses, possibly visual discourse analysis. We can also observe their process, ask questions, look for evidence of transmediation and use of media strategies (transitions, etc.)
We also decided to create this blog as a means of recording and communicating the experience. To begin, we'll use the blog to comment on the reading.
James
It would be interesting to see how the kids use traditional literacies in their fast literacy production, but it may not be productive to look at that question in this camp. Much of the traditional literacy use is directed by the camp counselors and does not originate with the kids.
We can look at their products and conduct memetic and structural analyses, possibly visual discourse analysis. We can also observe their process, ask questions, look for evidence of transmediation and use of media strategies (transitions, etc.)
We also decided to create this blog as a means of recording and communicating the experience. To begin, we'll use the blog to comment on the reading.
James
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