Uncategorized – Page 8

seen but not heard

Sue Watling / September 13, 2009 / Uncategorized, visual impairment

In reply to THES Librarians desperate for e-books

Generic comments like “They [e-books] don’t get stolen, they don’t get their pages ripped out and they are always available when people want them.” demonstrate the ME-Model – a computer user with Mouse and Eyes who often fails to think about those with neither. Availability is not the same as access and even if Digital Britain’s aim for equal broadband access is realised then this access will always be more equal for some than for others.

The technology used to digitise is only half the story. E-books require an appropriate means of reading them. All too often access is obstructed by the very same technologies used in their creation. Chickens and eggs come to mind. We operate in a sighted world where designers assume the user is seeing rather than listening. With effective screen reading software, digital data has the potential to widen participation and crack open some of the barriers to knowledge acquisition. In reality the technology that enables also disables. There can be nothing more frustrating than knowing the text may well be “available anywhere and anytime” but it can only be seen and not heard.

beware of google…

Sue Watling / September 4, 2009September 4, 2009 / Uncategorized

Recently I blogged about how Google had got something right. Now I’m reverting to my original view that Google may be a force to be aware of – be very aware.

While there was a Google hiccup this week, in google words a ‘miscalculation’ or a ‘big deal’ that resulted in Gmail being down for two hours threatening their dominance over the cloud computing empire, the digital giant is working hard to strike a deal with the US book association for the monopoly on digitisation. Other giants such as Microsoft and Amazon are hastily forming an Open Book Alliance and with good reason because if Google get their way they will have the sole rights to digitise every book without fear of prosecution for copyright infringement.

Google would then be the owner of all US digital text making a mockery of current copyright legislation which makes unlicensed scanning and reproduction illegal. But looking ahead, should this happen, how long before Google start selling information or more scarily, how long before a corporate western giant gains control of public access to it?

On the digital continuum, this is the extreme opposite end to the open access and open content debate and hopefully may do more to further the cause of open-ness than anything else so far.

rethinking sex and gender

Sue Watling / August 21, 2009August 21, 2009 / Uncategorized

The Caster Semenya female/male debate is currently raising awareness of sex but so far it seems the media have yet to address gender. A decade ago I challenged the accepted belief of a genetic sex and a social gender. Informed by the literature of the time (Butler, Fausto-Sterling, Hausman etc) and supported by Press for Change the leading political group led by campaigners such as Dr Stephen Whittle, I collected first hand narratives from individuals with transgendered lives who described growing childhood realisations of their internal sense of gender conflicting with the sexual identity bestowed on them at birth. I was privileged with insight into the cruelty of ‘normalisation’ practices as individuality was medically categorised into one of two available ‘sexes’. I saw at first hand how limited conceptions of a sexual binary were inadequate to reflect the true variety of human existence. Rethinking Sex and Gender highlighted the need for more flexible attitudes and understanding, called for wider recognition of AIS, Intersex and transgender identity and suggested the mismatch between externally identified sex and internal experienced gender should be further investigated. All discrimination is based on divergence and a fear of difference. Legislation recognises human rights but does nothing to contest human prejudice. Transgendered and Intersex identities continue to challenge one of the most fundamental tenets of society; a fixed sex gender duality supporting the power structures of dominant ideology.

banned!

Sue Watling / August 7, 2009August 8, 2009 / Uncategorized

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/ExYRBmt4jaQ" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Sarah’s Story is a 90 second video designed for television and banned by Clearcast, the television watchdog, as containing images that were ‘too distressing’. The aim of the advert was to raise awareness of Motor Neuron Disease. Thankfully, by banning it, Clearcast have increased publicity of both MND and the MND Association. Its wrong when the reality of disease, deformity and disablement is considered ‘too distressing’ and something we should be protected from. It should be the other way around. Every application of the label disability involves a person and these attitudes both devalue and diminish status. For more information about the ban see the Telegraph 25/07/09 and the Transcript from You and Yours, Radio 4 30/07/09

LibraryThing

Sue Watling / July 19, 2009July 19, 2009 / Uncategorized

I’m intrigued by LibraryThing – are there also facilities for virtual collections of cds and dvds or even vinyls? I use Delicious for creating lists of websites I want to go back to – but spending time creating digital collections of my non-digital life – should I be excited or just plain scared? Or is it just an extension of putting my photographs online – which I already do.

The site promotes the idea of community – for example

LibraryThing connects you to people who read what you do
Find people with eerily similar tastes.
Many social connections thrive at the site

How much does this emphasis on finding other people who share your interests tap into real-world isolation and loneliness? Participation in the construction of online identity does involve a fairly intensive relationship between you and your laptop. This I know – the laptop bit not the loneliness I hasten to add. This made me think of Second Life. I can’t remember when I last logged on and both the media and the education sector seem to have gone quiet on the subject and I wonder if Internet addicts are migrating back to the construction of text and image based avatars rather than 3D virtual worlds?

Back to LibraryThing and with my gender head on I note that of the 22 profile images on offer only six are female. Ignoring the obvious US–centricism, I found the preference for Jane Austen over the Brontes, George Eliot or Virginia Woolfe says much about the representation of women writers in the western world. Instead there is Emily Dickinson (clever with words but not a poet) and Helena Blavatsky (wasn’t all her text channelled anyway?) Soujourner Truth (activist rather than writer) and Sappho (most of whose poetry is lost). I’m guessing you need to be dead to be on this list which may excuse the omission of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, and not by your own hand, which leaves out Sylvia Plath or Anne Sexton. We are left with Edith Wharton – no lack of respect intended but and how many of her books are you familiar with?

blogging has rules

Sue Watling / July 16, 2009July 17, 2009 / Uncategorized

Last night I posted a blog in which I reflected on my shock at how in less than 24 hours words like voluntary and compulsory redundancy, consultation procedures and union representation had become part of my working vocabulary. I felt that blogging might help make some sense of the craziness of a situation where colleagues are facing the potential prospect of competing with each other – regardless of contractual status (fixed or permanent) or source of funding (core or external) for a lesser number of posts. I asked questions about how the end of the TQEF and the lack of ring fencing of the TESS might impact on the provision of teaching and learning development and I reflected on the reality of a finance driven strategy.

Today I was advised by a colleague that being critical of the university’s senior management in a public forum and using a system supported by the university within the lincoln.ac.uk domain could easily be interpreted as a disciplinary offence. Not wanting to make my current situation any worse, and not having any real intention other than trying to make sense of it all, I took down the blog.

Since then I’ve tried to rewrite it but the moment has passed. It stood as it was or not at all. However, it has taken me back to the recurring theme in these posts – what is blogging all about? What do we risk by posting part of ourselves online? I was using this forum to work through my own thoughts and reactions. Clearly blogging needs to be more measured than this. I was using a ‘work’ area for ‘work’ reflections but obviously stepped beyond the boundaries of what is considered to be appropriate content. Like anything else, blogging clearly has rules and risks of its own and we all need to be aware of them.

How many online identities do I need?

Sue Watling / July 13, 2009July 13, 2009 / Uncategorized

Personally I’m reaching the point where I think one may be enough. In the same way that I use Netvibes to pull together all my rss feeds into one place, I’m starting to want a single point of reference for my digital self. It’s difficult to find the time to keep up with my Netvibes and even harder to maintain multiple instances of myself online.

The Internet is like a black hole; it sucks you in. Before you know it an hour has passed, then two or three and the day is gone. I think I want more of a non-digital life. I can’t break completely free because my work revolves around virtual learning and assistive technology and don’t get me wrong – I believe internet literacy is important; it shows you have competence with ICT and that is very much a feature of 21st century life. In terms of employability and communication it’s essential criteria. But there are other things I would rather be doing instead of being hooked up to my laptop.

The impetus for this is revisiting the idea of e-portfolios as electronic CVs and liking the thought of having just one digital area to maintain. Although if I’m going to look for the most appropriate software with which to create my single online identity then I’ll have to stay hooked up for just a little bit longer…

Blogging? What’s it all about? (again!)

Sue Watling / April 16, 2009 / Uncategorized

Who do we blog for? Is it for ourselves or for other people? I find myself re-reflecting on this after reading an entry on a (recommended) author’s work blog which was of a highly personal nature and seemed out of context. That might say more about me and my own thoughts on the work/life balance; never the twain shall meet etc. but it did set me pondering once again on the nature and purposes of the blogging revolution.

What is blogging all about? Ultimately we must blog for an audience – if we were blogging purely for reflection then we wouldn’t be uploading our musings into a public place and inviting comments – would we? Is the idea that the blog is a mirror for our personal thoughts a false one? Should an effective blog be a crafted one; written with intent? Should blog entries be bite-sized reflections of distilled essence; not stream-of-consciousness ramblings? No-one has the time to search for needles in haystacks – they need to be pricked – so is an effective blog one that is designed to attract attention?

Blogs function on different levels; their value measured by the number of comments, who is on the blogroll, and how many mentions the writer can get in for their latest conference, journal article or book chapter. We all do it (see http://learninglab.lincoln.ac.uk/blogs/sue/2009/03/13/technology-enhance-learned-a-new-digital-divide/ for example!) and this reinforces their ‘public’ nature; we all like to assume that a blog has a wider audience than one consisting of our immediate work colleagues or even no-one at all. Does ‘0 comments’ indicate 0 readers?

So I found myself thinking (sad or what!) about how many types of blogs can be identified (or even ‘How do you do yours’? as in the old ‘How do you eat your Cadbury’s Crème Egg’ adage). So far I’ve got:

Business Card Blogging (find out more about me…)
CV Blogging (this is where I’ve been and what I did there…)
Social Network Blogging (how many names can I drop in… )
Competitive Blogging (I must increase my ratings…)
Boring Blogging (once visited never returned…)

Does anyone have any more suggestions?

The harsh truth is that the majority of bloggers write for an audience of one – themselves – so maybe it doesn’t matter what we post after all – or is there anyone out there who disagrees………….