i-Anya

I was really affected by this video - as I was meant to be. I am going to use it in one of my upcoming lectures to talk about the interpersonal resources of language and how we are constructed as readers by both words and images to take certain positions. I think if I have the script printed off for each student it will make it easy for them to highlight words and expressions which convey attitude, especially judgement and affect. Next year we’re convering the semiotics of images, but I’ll point out a few things now to foreshadow where we’ll be headed in the course. I’m so grateful for youtube.com and google video!!

My second year undergrads are working very hard to understand how to teach primary school children writing, genre and grammar. This week we had an entire lecture on adverbials and their role in various genres. Here’s a little sample of the lecture slides:

I really had to contain my laughter in one of the tutorials I had today though because I overheard one student saying “this is making my head hurt!”. Fortunately there are other students who come up and tell me (voluntarily!) that they enjoy my lectures so I guess it all balances out in the end *grin* Oh and I have a fail-safe reward system: chocolate frogs for correct answers!

OUCH!! I just poked myself in the eye with my mascara brush!!!!!! Ouch!!!

Why? Because the television news was on in the background while I was getting ready for work, and I heard this report:

Canada has now banned Australia’s latest tourism ad, but not because of the word “bloody”, but because they object to the word “hell”!!

(Full report here)

What especially made me poke myself was this:

It also would not be allowed in family Easter specials.

Maybe I have a warped sense of humour but I haven’t been able to stop laughing - my apologies to my wonderful Canadian research participants!!

I’m so excited to be able to use this whole campaign in my teaching about the interpersonal metafunction of language. My students laughed at me yesterday for getting excited about all the modal verbs that are used in the Star Wars Phantom Menace trailer. And for getting excited about the looting vs. finding controversy (which showed how verbs ideologically position a text). But I’d rather have them laughing that getting upset because they don’t understand grammar / genre.

Now I have to go put cold compresses on my eye.

The ASFLA conference I’m speaking at in September (Multimodal Texts & Multiliteracies: Semiotic Theory and Practical Pedagogy) now has a more detailed site ready for viewing. And the deadline for proposed papers is in two weeks, so get them in fast if you want to go

Every Friday afternoon the SFL people in Sydney run a systemics workshop series and this semester looks fabulous:

10 March WORKSHOP: Sue Hood Appraisal: Graduation.

17 March Sook Hee Lee: The Use of Interpersonal Resources in Argumentative/Persuasive Essays by East-Asian ESL and Australian Tertiary Students

24 March Jim Martin, Clare Painter, Len Unsworth Ambience/appraisal in images

31 March Jan Renkema Discourse Analysis

7 March WORKSHOP: Jan Renkema Discourse Analysis

28 April Anderson de Souza; The construal of interpersonal meanings in the discourse of national anthems: An appraisal analysis

5 May Chris Chesher Search, query, invocation: databases and transductive language acts

12 May Emilia Djonov: Exploring the interaction between website design and use: logico-semantic relations in a children’s website and its navigation

19 May WORKSHOP: Sumin Zhao Theory of Color: From Science to Semiotics

26 May Betty Pun: Intersemiosis in Film: A Metafunctional and Multimodal Exploration of Colour and Sound in the Films of Wong Kar-wai

2 June WORKSHOP/PRESENTATION: Dorothy Economou and Sally Humprhey: Appraisal: Engagement analysis

Anybody wanna come? They’re held in the Mills building, room 148, from 4-5.30pm.

If you haven’t read Profgrrrl’s post from Thursday yet you must - go here! Although she is repeating a conversation she overheard by maths ed students, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard similar things about grammar. I have students who actually get really angry with me because they have to learn how language functions in different contexts to be a teacher of English.

In the first lecture I have with them (in a unit called Writing as Social Practice) they leave shellshocked because I tell them that *shock horror* there are different types of verbs, different types of nouns, and that different types of texts are characterised by varying patterns of verb types, noun types and so on… and not only that, but THEY need to learn what they are so that they can be effective teachers of English. I’ve had hostility, arguments, tears, sour looks, sullen behaviour, snide not-so-under-their-breath comments about it being irrelevant and even by the end of the course I still get rude remarks about it in student evaluations.

Funnily enough, I get an incredible amount of apologies by those very same students from anywhere between 1 and 5 years later when they see me and tell me how important and relevant my course was for their teaching. One day I was on a bus and two ladies came and sat in the seats opposite and in front of the entire busload of passengers they told me that they’d been my ex students some years back and they now teach English overseas and the stuff they learnt with me is the stuff that they’re not only using with their students, but that they’re helping other local teachers learn about too. One passenger on the bus came up to me before he alighted and had tears in his eyes and said: “that’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard”.

Meanwhile I keep chipping away with those fresh faced students trying so hard to help them understand and suffering their wrath each and every year and hearing conversations just like the one profgrrrl heard and worse. *sigh*

I’ve mentioned a couple of times that in September this year I am presenting a paper at the ASFLA conference in Armidale (which, incidentally, is where I spent a couple of months or so in 2005 and where I am also heading tomorrow). Some of you might even recall I went taking-photos-of-roses-crazy because it is so pretty up there in Springtime:

Anyway, the general call for papers has just been circulated - anybody wanna come?

CALL FOR PAPERS

The 2006 National Conference of the Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Association in collaboration with the Northern Regional Council of the Australian Literacy Educators Association.

MULTIMODAL TEXTS AND MULTILITERACIES: SEMIOTIC THEORY AND PRACTICAL PEDAGOGY

27-29 September, 2006.

University of New England in Armidale, NSW, AUSTRALIA

The registration form and call for papers are attached. Please visit
our conference website -
http://www.une.edu.au/campus/confco/asfla2006/. You can register and
submit abstracts online. Please submit abstracts by April 1.

Confirmed Plenary and Keynote presenters include:

o Professor Theo van Leeuwen, University of Technology, Sydney
o Professor Jim Martin, University of Sydney
o Professor John Stephens, Macquarie University
o Professor Peter Freebody, University of Queensland
o Dr Mary Macken-Horarik, University of Canberra
o Associate Professor Jane Torr, Macquarie University
o Dr Louise Ravelli, University of NSW
o Dr Clare Painter, University of NSW
o Dr Angela Thomas, University of Sydney
o Dr Annah Healy, Queensland University of Technology
o Professor Claire Wyatt-Smith, Griffith University

The New England region is very picturesque in September. Consider combining the conference with a visit to the wine growing area of the Hunter Valley and return via Coffs Harbour and the beautiful mid north coastal regions of NSW.

Len and I had lunch at Thai Times 9 (yummmmmm) today and he sends a message to Brian (via my blog!) - Merry Christmas Brian!! I told Len that one of my most popular links is the one to his blog so watch that space for more adverts about books, conferences and research opportunities!

I also promised to link to his research project about Image/Text Relations in Narrative and Information Texts for Children in Print and Electronic Media. Here’s a project overview:

This project focuses on image/text relations in print and electronic materials designed for children in primary school and early secondary school. Both narrative and information texts will be considered. The research is informed by systemic functional linguistic theory and its social semiotic applications to other modalities of communication. To date, the main focus of the project has been on relations between images in narrative picture books. Work on the affective dimension of these relations is currently underway. As this theme nears completion our research is shifting to consideration of the mutually informing relation between words and images in narrative and information texts, including CD-ROM and web based materials. Information texts recontextualising science, history and culture for children are being considered, concentrating on themes from the Australia, Asia and the Pacific.

One of the interesting things they are doing is looking at the human body and the expression of affective meanings, so I told him to look at the avatars on Second Life because they are capable of infinite expressions, and it would be a fun way to illustrate their point in presentations! (Nothing worse than presentations without images, ESPECIALLY when discussing multimodality)

OK, messages over *laugh*

I wish I could have had a wireless laptop to live blog the conference because now that its over it feels rather odd doing a retrospective post. But as promised, here goes! Oh and a disclaimer: I was soo exhausted that I didn’t make as many sessions as I listed, and also, there was an unfortunate clash or two in the program which meant that I couldn’t listen to everybody I wanted to.

So, the first session I went to at the conference was Julia and Guy’s session about blogging:

Inside Out: academic blogging and new literacies, an autoethnography
Julia Davies and Guy Merchant

This was a fun session and I looooooved the aesthetics of the presentation, with gorgeous images and fun transitions. I was also cited, which was very flattering! I liked the way they moved quickly beyond the descriptive (how come so many conference presentations focussed on the descriptive only at the expense of theorisation and analysis???) and into the analysis of posts and comments, discussing theoretical issues and critiqueing notions of “affinity spaces” and “communities of practice” as far as they relate, and don’t relate, to the blogosphere. We had many casual conversations about blogs and identity and narrative after this presentation and I’ll be blogging more about those later! Anyway this was a great session and stimulated much discussion and thinking.

Next was our session:

Out of Bounds: Some social, psychological and pedagogical implications of new literacies for young people’s learning, lifeworlds and social futures.
Angela Thomas, Kevin Leander and Michele Knobel

I have already blogged about my talk, but the slides are here if you missed it.

Kevin Leander spoke about his study of girls in a girls school that had wireless technology. Essentially he critiqued the institutional use of technology and the low expectations of teachers when the students were able to work at a very sophisticated level.

Michele Knobel spoke about memes and ‘big L’ ‘little l’ L/literacies. It was a really fun talk too, but also stimulating as she spoke about counter-meming as a social critical literacy practice - and I liked the links to the work of Adbusters.com and the strategies for counter-meming outlined at memecentral.com/antidote.htm, and allyourbrand.org/why.htm - I need to look into these more at some time!

Our discussant was Cynthia Lewis:

Cynthia made some lovely remarks and raised questions about “what counts” as literacy as far as schooling is concerned. I thought Cynthis was very insightful!

Then we had Don Leu’s Presidential address:

New Literacies, Reading Research, and the Challenges of Change: a Deictic Perspective of our Research Worlds
Don Leu

I found Don Leu’s talk interesting but targetted to a) an audience who needed to be convinced about new literacies; and b) the American audience. So basically he said “new literacies are here to stay and we need to attend to them” and “Americans aren’t getting into new literacies as much as they should”. I thought he was very sweet and humble in acknowledging all of his colleagues and doctoral students in influencing his understandings about new literacies.

Wednesday evening was Julia’s birthday party as I already mentioned in my very quick post, and here is the birthday girl herself, looking gorgeous and glam:

Isn’t her necklace amazing!? Here’s a close-up:

and here’s some of her DIVINE birthday dessert:

I sat between Julia and Jennifer:

and across from the very animated Guy:

and Barbara:

Also at the table were:

Michele

Brian,

Margaret,

and several other people whose names I have embarrassingly forgotten (profuse apologies if you are one of them)!

Are we only up to Thursday!? On Thursday Julia and I snuck out at lunch time for a little shopping expedition, which she blogged about here.

Question: what is Julia doing here???

(Click here to find out!)

I also noticed Julia taking a photo of somebody taking a photo of somebody else so I thought I should take a photo of that and continue the chain:

Oh! And we also came across a guy that wrote our names on a single grain of rice! Now I didn’t really want one but purely because I’d seen one of the characters doing it from the digital fiction called The Strand, which I blogged about recently, I thought I had to have one! I think there is something to say there about feeling some sort of identification with a narrative or fictional character that you associate with it through its artefacts, but I am not sure what yet!

One of my favourite sessions was the afternoon session that followed our shopping expedition!

Social Constructions in New Literacy Environments
Chair(s) & Discussant(s): Charles K. Kinzer, Teachers College, Columbia University

With the rise of the concept of “new literacies,” literacy is increasingly acknowledged as including participation in broadly defined communities of practice. Concurrently, literacy has become influenced by new technologies, which incorporate their own social practices. The symposium examines the social literacies surrounding one of these electronic environments: video games.

1. Digital Literacies and Massively Multiplayer Online Games
Constance A. Steinkuehler, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2. Agency and Authority: Social Practices in Interactive Storytelling
Jessica Hammer, Teachers College, Columbia University
3. Playing the Digital Divide: Video-game-related literacy practices and SES
Gillian Andrews, Teachers College, Columbia University

Constance talked about her study of World of Warcraft. I enjoyed seeing the range of literacy practices involved and I liked the analysis of gaming practices as scientific habits of mind. I hadn’t actually heard the term “persistent virtual worlds” before to describe MMORPGs either, so that was interesting.

Jessica talked about agency in role-playing games. I thought Jessica’s talk was wonderfully theorised and enjoyed being taken in a different direction as far as role-playing and narrative construction is concerned. I think she focussed more on adult role-playing and more sophisticated narrative constructions, as the stuff I am looking at is much less pre-planned, so it’s given me lots of ideas! I liked the points she made about interactivity as giving the illusion of free will. It reminded me of when I was a teacher and used to trick kids into doing what I wanted by offering them choices and making the ideal choice so attractive that they had to select it!! (Ummm… I still do that with my undergrad students, but that is another story!)

Gillian (Gus) spoke about the types of games selected by different types of readers - she made some really useful links to Gee’s work and talked about self-as-avatar, which I would have loved to hear more about! (Who made these sessions limited to 20 minutes? Never enough time to take in everything!!)

I also went to Brian Street’s session:

Literacy Across Cultural Contexts: Implications for Pedagogy and Curriculum
Brian Street

Brian covered a lot of ground in this session (too much to remember!) but something he spoke about that was totally new to me was lowrider art as a literacy practice. He showed how this doodle-like art by young non-English speakers was used as a communicative literacy practice, and I’d like to find out more about this.

Thursday evening I collapsed in my room with exhaustion and tried to write some discussant comments for a session I was involved with the next day. It was very unfortunate for me as I missed out on a fun evening with Julia, Guy, Michele, Sarah, Dana, Rebecca and a heap of others *sniffle*.

So Friday morning was the session by Marion Fey:

Gender Issues in Post-Typographical Texts and Talk: Past, Present and Future
Marion Fey

Chair: Barbara Guzzetti
Discussants: Donna Alvermann, Suzanne Wade and Angela Thomas

Marion traced her extensive research into issues about gender and technology. Suzanne made some wonderful theoretical links between her work and Marions, and mentioned Susan Herring’s work. I also mentioned Susan Herring, Lois Scheidt, and colleagues in my response. I talked about: debates about language and gender, performativity of gender in online spaces and collaboration and social software.

Next was another FABULOUS session by the team from Teacher’s College:

Conceptions of Narrative in Non-Traditional Environments

New environments are redefining literacy and literacy practices. However, while non-traditional environments incorporate visual elements in traditional print materials, they still may be categorised as either narrative or expository. This symposium looks at various non-traditional environments to explore the question of narrative construction and definition.

1. Considering Narrative in New Environments
Charles K Kinzer

2. Examining Narrative as Sequential “Sense” in Comics
Jonathon Bresman

3. Narrative Strategies in Improvisational Storytelling
Jessica Hammer

Charles Kinzer spoke about Second Life - like most of the sessions I saw, I was left wanting more and with more questions than answers.

Jonathon spoke a lot about the role of transitions or break points in the narratives of comics (great stuff!),

and Jessica spoke about issues of narration, improvisation and collaboration in role-playing in general, as well as issues of continuity, consistency and coherence in narrative in particular.

Again, this team of researchers are really doing wonderful and innovative studies - I would loooove to work with them!!!

In fact, on Saturday morning I had a lovely meeting with Charles (Chuck) Kinzer:

and we talked about the possibility of some fun projects we can collaborate on!!

There were other lunches and dinners and coffees and drinks and the “New Literacies Bash” - in fact some of the most interesting and stimulating discussions were those that took place outside of the conference! I had a lovely talk with Guy over dinner on my last evening and we wondered “Are we like our blogs?” - which led to all sorts of fascinating thoughts about literacy, identity, narrative, projection, virtuality/reality and so on!

And, on my final day I had a minor crisis which I won’t go into here but I want to say a huge THANK YOU to Katina Zammit (my fellow Australian traveller) for being such an angel and rescuing me from a difficult situation!!

So, that was my overview of NRC - an interesting conference made fabulous because of the wonderful company - especially Julia, Guy and Michele!

Watch my NRC talk as a slideshow on flickr!

(Why did I put it on flickr? Because my faculty NEVER has their server accessible!!! Thank goodness for blog spaces and flickr, or I’d never have a web presence! The old version of the paper is here, but the new version will be in my forthcoming e-selves book).