5.22 What are we doing?

I finally finished grading and am reading to begin our project for real.  As you may have noticed from the random emails - I have been looking around in terms of how to write this up as an eBook, and have some ideas we can talk about at our first meeting.  Meanwhile, read through the chapter from Lankshear + Knobel - and Selfe & Hawisher's Transnational Literate Lives (linked at the right).  We will talk about L&K in terms of approaches to new media research, and we can use TLL as a pattern for mapping out how we might want to use the same (or different) mediated elements they have included in their text. 

These are some of the things I have been doing (thinking about) in terms of how to be a good mentor for you in your work on these projects.  I am hoping you will let me know in some detail what you need - how I can work with you.  What I've written below is my first guess at what background I might be able to provide.

1. Support for collecting data (what should we be looking for?)
Provide "how to" texts on doing ethnography - with some attention to doing ethnographic work on online communities.
Discussion of methods: "teach" methods in these texts, I can recommend texts and you can read them yourselves, or we can do a kind of interactive thing where we do a little bit of both.  E.g. we can talk about specific sections of texts which I might recommend in response to your questions about how to "do" certain kinds of things.
Engage in collaborative review of methods texts
Provide/discuss selected examples of ethnographic work

2. Support for analyzing data (what do we do with the notes/video-audio recordings/transcripts/artifacts)
The list for this will look similar to the above list only with a different focus - and with some practice sessions for using the different methods on data.  I am hoping we can practice some of the methods on Heather + Robyn's data

3. Support for writing (how do we write this up)?
I guess the most important thing here is to remember that you will begin writing it up in the act of collecting your data. 

We can work drafting the "texty" parts using a writing group/workshop approach, and we will schedule sessions for that. 

 

What I am most concerned under this point is working together to create a (more or less) agreed-upon template for chapter formatting, and styles for integrating new media elements.  To make some progress toward deciding on a form, I have done/will do the following.

- attend the workshop on writing new media publications at Computers + Writing
- contacted Professional development at Kean re support for developing our template
- initial contact re possibility of working with computer science students

So - after putting all of that out there - this is what I hope to do on Friday.

Friday, 5.24:

• discuss/present where we all are in terms of our individual projects (what we have done, what we plan to do - maybe this could be the first blog post?)
• talk through the L&K in terms of  what you will be studying (and how it fits in to new literacies studies)
• talk through Transnational Literate Lives, primarily in terms of its use of new media and how we want to use interactive/mediated elements in our text
• develop a list of mediated elements we want to use
• choose methods + sample readings + set agenda for next meeting