present
Originally uploaded by Anyaka.
Dr Joolz talked about the costs for academics to attend conferences and mentioned Bitch PhD’s depressing post about junior academics struggling to manage the costs of conferences and sabbaticals. If you read DrJoolz’s post you’ll see that I commented about the expenses myself - even seemingly “free” conferences are still costly, especially for somebody on a very strict budget like me!!
However, this most recent conference in Brisbane is the very first conference that I’ve spoken at where I was given a significant gift!! Look!!! A Dymock’s book voucher!!! (For $100!) I was so excited to receive it because it will definitely help feed my book addiction! I can’t seem to stop ordering them - all my spare pennies go on books, books, books!!!
It was a beautiful afternoon, perfect for a walk under the amazing award-winning arbour:
Magnificent!
I managed to take a few photographs inside the gallery, though the majority of the rooms had banned it. The main indiginous art area was one of the few places where it was permitted:
And outside:
the fountain was a work of art as well:
Yay! I went to Brisbane:
smiled nervously (on a scale of 1 to 10 depending how close to time zero we were) while waiting verrrrrrrry patiently for the 2 1/2 hours it took for the technical people to set up the gear.
Set up now - internet access. data projector, and a DVD that works… the whiteboard and pens came in a little after this.
Emphasis in this talk - three main shifts for educators:
1. The move from theorising reading based in linguistics, to a new theorisation grounded in semiotics to account for mulimodality and multilieracies
2. The distance between the reader and writer is shrinking: concept of the “Wreader” - signifying this combined role; “Writer response theories” - examining how writers respond to their reader comments (and a whole lot more)
3. The shift from teachers who think about what they can get their class to learn FROM the internet, to teachers who are thinking about what their kids can learn WITH the internet - production and design, not “find x bit of info”.
And…. this is the best audience I’ve had for years!! They were so kind, responsive, laughing and genuinely interested /excited at the possibilties of the digital fiction texts. In fact there were so many questions from people offering thoughts /comments / questions throughout that we didn’t even use every slide.
Tha conference organiser, Jean, treated me like I was a queen and continually checked that I was OK and looked after me, it was such a pleasure. The delegates were all so genuinely interested and I had some great conversations with people. At one stage I stepped back to try and work out what was so special about the conference and then it it hit me: no politicking or power playing games happening!!!! Major difference to previous conference.
