Blogtrax

Last week I finally caved in and signed up for a Flickr Pro account. Why? Well, January’s a long month, I’d run out of free space for my photostream and the thought of three or four days not posting or doing pictureless posts was bugging me. Interestingly, when I started my blog I wasn’t that bothered about image content, but gradually as I began to visit more blogs (and think more about multimodality) I got into the idea of the visual element. I’m not big on photography, but interestingly having a Flickr photostream has changed my attitude. I like getting pictures of my neighbourhood and doing ’still-life’-type things (fruit, flowers, juggling balls etc). But with the blog, the words are in charge. I feel they’re my prime purpose. Image is decorative, illustrative or even tangential. Mostly I want the words to stand on their own…links to add depth or reference and images - well yes, I want them because they make the page look good. So there’s an aesthetic of design at work, but it runs secondary to the communicative act. If I had more time, my story runs, I’d learn how to tidy up my page, make the codes work for me etc. ..but it’s good enough for now.

I think what’s really interesting about this though, is that dynamic (or should I say organic?) quality of blogging. My blogging horizons have grown from very modest beginnings. I’ll have a go at this blog thing, nobody’ll find it, and even if they do, it will be anonymous or uninteresting. So I began with a few words, a few links - messages to myself really. Well, it’s a whole different ball game now. Working on Blogtrax has influenced my way of writing on the blog. Engaging more with Flickr has changed my attitude to digital images. The whole thing’s morphed and I’m really attracted to that… just recently, I started doing more diary-like descriptions of what I’ve been up to. Snapshots in words. Why? I just wanted to, and that’s the wonderfully free way you can approach blogging.

‘The existential question of self identity is bound up with the fragile nature of the biography which the individual ’supplies’ about herself.A person’s identity is not to be found in behaviour, nor - important though this is - in the reactions of others, but in the capacity to keep a particular narrative going. The individual’s biography, if she is to maintain regular interaction with others in the day-to-day world, cannot be wholly fictive. It must continually integrate events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the ongoing ’story’ about the self.’ (Giddens 1991: 54).

Yes that’s what I do; in my blog this is what I do. I have an ongoing story. But I think we have several ongoing stories. I also think that if we bear in mind a particular audience, we change our story to suit them and ths change our notion of who we are according to our audience.

So as Guy says, I use lots of pictures at the moment. What am I saying? I think I am saying I believe the visual is really imortant. But more than that, I am building up layers of semiotics because I want all these to be taken into consideration alongside the words I write. I think I am trying to bring my ‘hinterland’ to the fore. It is showing off in mnay ways.

*Gauntlett,D. (2002) in Media Gender and Identity Routledge page 99

Sarah had a link to this blog, which is one of a type - a travel blog. Profgirrl also described her japan visit recently and also blogged whileshe was away, giving us news. Anya also kept in touch when she was at a conference, as did Guy.

The bloggers give us a sense of their new experiences in relation to the space they are in, even though in fact they report to us from within the same cyberspace. As far as we are concerned, they could be anywhere - they are not in our space at any rate. yet we still get a sense of their changed location through their blogs. So much blogging is like journalism and this is one of those similarities - people bringing news from all over the world.

Sarah also linked to this blog which gives a really interesting description of how educators could use Flickr.

But check out THIS as well - a piece of software using communities of practice theory to generate learning on the web.Moodle calls itself a ‘learning management system’ and could be a money making thing that I don’t much like. Band and Wagon come to mind..
I likethe Flickr idea alongwith mobile phones and tagging though. Would suit adult learners in particular I think. I also liked this educational project, (using Flat Stanley ) which I saw sometime ago and wrote about on DrJoolz .

I have just discovered that you can do a search, using Google, to find posts on Blogger blogs. I suppose everyone else knew this AGES ago, but I have only just found out. Look here.

By typing ‘Flickr’ in the Google box when on DrJooz, it threw me all the posts where I mention Flickr. Cool.

Finally while we are on the topic of Flickr, thanks to Anya for telling about the ComicLife tags on Flickr and giving us another educational use of Flickr. Another example of people learning together about visuals, multi modalities and this time also, narrative.Fantastic stuff. Am going to HAVE to get the software from Apple. See these other examples.

1.Originally, I started keeping a blog to see what it would be like to write something that would appear online. Having written about others and their online interactions, I wanted to know if I was right in some of my assumptions. I admired what I was looking at and wanted to do it too.
2. I find writing helps me to think through some of my ideas and I like the discipline of writing regualarly - however busy my day is with other things… I try to force myself to write daily.
3. I like the hybrid nature of the writing - it is part work and part play. As Anya said, something about boundary shifting. I think it is true that the boundaries of work/play merge for most academics and their inability to to distinguish is reflected in the blogs of many academics I think. Thanks to Anya for this insight.
4. I like the public/private tension of the space.
5. Writing helps me develop my ideas and I write them in my blog in a semi formed state; not ready for peer review as such, but open for peer commentary.
5. I like being part of an affinity space. This space is slightly uncertain as it is transitory to a degree and I am not quite sure where its boundaries are.
6. I like taking things from my meatspace experiences and rearranging them in cyberspace to look at as new text, s a narrative of sorts. These reconstructions come in the the form of digital images I take with my camera; words on the web-page that narrate aspects of my life; hyperlinks to show places I have been, things I have read, etc.
7. I like being part of digital culture network; I like the interaction.
8. I like producing texts that have hyperlinks and that have a range of modalities; it seems important as a cultural develoment and I want to be part of it.
9. I think this is a new form of writing and I want to research it.
10. I can communicate with people I know and people I do not know; I like not quite being sure who is reading.

Apologies that this post repeats a lot of what has gone before … but that is the nature of developing ideas and learning… it is circuitous.

Anya contacted me by e mail to talk about the nervousness post I wrote earlier today.
She and I have both mentioned in articles about backstage chat, about advising others in a space away from the public gaze but still online.
It is like meeting down the pub and talking after work; still colleagues but with understandings that are more friendly than that.
I am beginning to feel I know Anya pretty well; certainly better than some of my meatspace colleagues. (And yet I will not feel I really know her till I see her, I don’t think.)
Whilst there is the tension between public/private within the confines of the blog, there is not the feeling of public on an e mail.

The move to this site has been a learning process about technology. Without doing this learning it would not have been woryth the move. Technology is impacting on the way we do our research but we have to learn new things as well. This is a learning about technology through the desire to acquire particular textual affordances.
Learning by doing.
But there is also something here about the relationship between technology and behaviour.

So, the farshah post (3 March) on my blog drew some comment - that was interesting, but consider my surprise when the image went ’straight to number one’ with 29 hits on my Flickr! That’s probably the way I tagged it (Lady Sovereign’s pretty popular, too!). Reflecting on this made me do a double-take. I’ve been trying to keep the focus on the blog and the blogging itself, but when you actually pick it up for inspection, you find it’s interlaced with so many other experiences, interactions and media. An intricate web of technologies. So Ruth sent me the photo-message of her tattoo. I emailed her to check out if it was OK to post it. She got back saying that was ‘cool’. I uploaded the image on to Flickr and then the rest is history (of course, in doing this I superimposed my own reading, but that’s not really the point). I’m thinking of the intricate web of mobile phone; email; Flickr; Blogger and ensuing comment. But even that doesn’t quite capture it - it’s too linear, because as I’m rather slowly and perhaps a little reluctantly discovering Flickr is a dynamic world in itself. Through tagging that image becomes part of the affinity-based folksonomy of the Flickr social world. Is Flickr in the study? I’m not sure any more. Well, I only have a handful of photos there and I’ve rather belatedly added TT and DrJ as contacts - I’m not sure I have the energy to engage with a new social network, but at the same time feel a bit awkward standing there, with only a couple of friends and this picture-sharing party going on all around me! I didn’t initially see my blog as a visual space at all - I was persuaded because it looked drab against others I was visiting, and, on a more theory-driven note, I was aware of the need to explore the affordances. At the moment it seems that the autoethnographic focus remains in tact, but the borderlands are rich and interesting and must not be neglected.

I wonder why I am so locked into thinking about places? And images?
I think it is because a whole new vista has been opened up to literacy academics, because of the increased number of possiblilities for multimodal texts. This means we have had to wander even more into other disciplines.
But we are still looking at literacy. We may use Social geography, we may use visual and cultural studies, but we are still coming at things from a literacy perspective.
That’s all.

OK so I have not written here for a while but I have been thinking thinking thinking.

I am learning stuff that is about the meta business of blogging, but I am also learning lots of things as a blogger. That is, I am learning about the process of blogging at the same time as learning to be a blogger.

Here are some of the things I have learned:

1. I have started to develop technical web-based skills…
Such as using a Flickr account to store and organise pictures. Thus, in having a blog, I have also developed a need to use an additional space on the Internet and this in turn means I have to acquire new skills in order to use it well.
I know how to

• upload photos;
• put them on a blog;
• make them available publicly;
• or privately;
• organise my photos in sets ;
• label photos with catchy tags.

(Tags are listed on Google and so my photos are more likely to be visited by others when they are surfing.It is a skill to pick tags which are likely to attract others - e.g. place names; brand names; things that bloggers seem interested in (e.g. graffitti).)

I have quickly become excited by the idea of people seeing and commenting on photos I post.It is clear, btw, that Flickr understands the mentality of people who blog; they are supporting the obsession of leading people to your work via tags etc.

I have been very careful to label as ‘private’ any photos of people who have not agreed to be on my blog. This stops people being able to see the photos by just surfing - they need a password. So I am learning a bit about the complexity of ethics and also about finding an audience for my work.

2. I have learned little bits of HTML - especially when I wanted to make my site PINK.

3. I am developing a new way of writing. I am learning to structure small pieces of text. I tend to link back to ongoing themes across posts (e.g. text as place in January; Parkour / Pourquoi again n January through to Feb.) or there are even jokes across blogs . I m learning to use a range of multimodal ways of communicating.

4. Commenters are very important to the substantive feel of my blog . I reply often to comments.

5. In addition to comments on my blog I sometimes have e mail correspondance with readers of posts. This is backstage talk which highlights something about the public nature of the blog.

6. Yet there is also an intimate feel to the blog. I have a sense of who is reading now and the way in which my affinity space is developing, means I have a slightly more secure sense of voice. But this still feels precarious and flexible. I want my blog to work and feel anxious about it.

7. There are some blogs (Trois Tetes; Vedana; a lesser extent e-selves) which definitely are weaving themselves together and are working as a unit. The fact that the frst two of these are people who meet in meat space lends the whole thing an extra dimension. Why are they blogging at each other? People are reading each others blogs, responding and keeping in step. This linkage seems very important to the bloggers involved. And it has been very exciting that Anya and I are emailing each other (see 5 below.)

8. I have elaborate jokes which depend on knowledge of previous posts or require newcomers to read previous posts which I will link to in order to help.

9. When writing a post I feel like a journalist, sorting through evidence in cyberspace - sometimes looking for substantiating evidence or proof; sometimes for inspiration. But in terms of reporting on stuff from meatspace, I definitely go about my daily life looking for things to blog. I look at the world with a blogger’s eye - and that is the bit I find hard - bringing meat space in. It feels awkward, odd. It feels more authentic somehow to depend on the web.

10. I sometimes do not feel pleased with my post. I sometimes revise the clarity of my English. I sometimes do not know what to write but feel driven by the discipline of posting daily and this is an interesting thing that I have set this discipline. It is important to get things to sound right, to have a balance. To be economical with language - to make sure it is a proper piece of web text. It HAS to be multimodal to justify itself.

11. I feel I have to defend the activity. Frequently people say to me, (in meat space, and after I have explained to tem what a blog is) ‘How do you have the time to do THAT?’ and even ‘Lucky you, I would not have time to do that.’ This often feels like a value laden judgement of how I spend my time and I feel that people disapprove of this activity. I can justify it on two levels, one that it is part of my research, but secondly that it is about sharpening my mind and developing skills. However it gives me an insight into how young people feel, when they are attacked for spending a lot of time on the Internet. They must know they are learning a lot, but it is thoroughly devalued. Learning IS timeconsuming, but that does not mean one should not do it.

BLOG ON CHAPS!!!