With less than 24 hours till polling, this post is a little late, but I’d like to highlight a couple of excellent resources the have emerging from digital accessibility communities via Twitter.
Secondly, consider the election resources available from the British Sign Language Broadcasting Trust . This has included a schedule of signed programmes and two key Election broadcasts available online:
Yesterday was the first day of the Web 4 All interdisciplinary conference on Accessibility. David Sloan presented a joint paper written by myself and Brian Kelly. Although watching from afar, resources and connections are beginning to spin out of the event – even for those of us in different time-zones. David has posted his presentation slides on Slideshare, you can view them below, or alternatively, visit David’s slideshare page and view the slides with text equivalent.
I’ve just received notice via the Association for Learning Technology that the first two chapters of Dr Jane Seale’s Teaching and Learning Research Programme -Technology Enhanced Learning (TLRP-TEL) commentary on Digital Inclusion are now available to view online.
Interested individuals are invited to add their comments and opinions on the online version of the commentary. These comments will then inform the writing of the final published document. For more information and to get involved go to:
At the end of the month I move into ‘thesis pending’, the PhD writing up phase. As things continue here apace I’m streamlining my bookshelves. If any of the titles listed below are of interest get in touch via ttxsem at nottingham.ac.uk Links are included directing to extra information, reviews and publishers.
SOLD The Knowing Organization: How organizations use information to contruct meaning, create knowledge and make decisions.
By Chun Wei Choo (paperback, 1998) £8.00 (RRP. £27.50)
SOLDHeidegger and French Philosophy By Tom Rockmore (paperback, 1995) £17.00 (RRP. £21.00)
Human-Computer Interaction: Research Directions in Cognitive Science: European Perspectives Vol. 3 Eds: Jens Rasmussen, Henning B. Andersen and Niels Ole Bernsen (Hardback, 1991) £15.00 (RRP: £34.95)
Philosophy and Computing: An introduction
By Luciano Floridi (paperback, 1999) £12.00 (RRP £21.99)
SOLDThe Semiotic Engineering of Human-Computer Interaction (Acting with Technology). By CS De Souza (Hardback, 2005) £15.00 (RRP £28.45)
Control and Freedom: Power and paranoia in the age of fiber optics.
By Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (Hardback, 2006) £8.00 (RRP, hardback £27.50, paperback £12.95)
SOLD Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. By Zygmunt Bauman (Paperback, 2007) £6.00 (RRP £9.99)
SOLDTechnology as Magic: the triumph of the irrational By Richard Stivers (Hardback, 2001) £5.00 (RRP: hardback £45.00, paperback £14.99)
SOLDTelecommunications and the City: Electronic spaces, urban places. By Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin (Hardback 1995) £6.00 (RRP: hardback £90.00! paperback £30.00)
Social Citizenship in the Shadow of Competition: The Bureaucratic Politics of Regulatory Justification. By Bronen Morgan (hardback, 2003) £15.00 (RRP: £70.00)
SOLDWired Shut: Copyright and the shape of digital culture. By Tarlton Gillespie (hardback, 2007) £9.00 (RRP: £21.80)
SOLD Cognitive Poetics: An introduction
by Peter Stockwell (paperback, 2002) £10.00 (RRP £21.00)
This week I’m travelling down to Southampton University for the interdisciplinary symposium Interface 2009, set to run over Thursday 9th and Friday 10th. This promises to be a busy event with a heavy schedule – but I’m hoping to fit some live reporting/blogging in there somewhere. I’ll be presenting my ‘Lightening Paper’ on Aversive Disablism and the Internet, so I’m also hoping resulting discussion will ferment some thoughts on this. No doubt keynotes and other presenters will also bring interesting food for thought. I’ll try and capture this as best I can.
An interactive map of the Americas, Europe and North Africa captured on 01.05.09. It shows different coloured flags representing people within the different groups of the ‘paralysis community’. Hundreds of flags are shown, the majority are orange, depicting people who have, or have had paralysis. Another very substantial group of flags are green, showing friends and family members. Flags of yellow, blue and red also punctuate the map, representing supporters, researchers and carers. The flags swarm across the eastern portion of the United States, with substantial numbers also running up the west coast and scattered in-between. Flags also speckle the rest of the world, indicating that this may be a North American campaign spreading slowly outwards. Over time the map will change as and when more people add themselves to the chart. Above the map are the Reeve Foundation logos and a banner reading 'Be Counted: Living with Paralysis? Care about the cause? Add you voice. Show the world the strength of our community!'.'
Yesterday I received an email about a new project that the Reeve Foundation have undertaken.
In short, the Foundation are creating a Google Map that (literally) maps what the Foundation calls the Paralysis Community. This project invites people who have, or have had this condition, friends and family, professional carers, supporters and researchers to map themselves into a global community. This looks to be getting a positive response, and, like today’s Blogging Against Disablism Day, it is a strong example of the ways in which Web 2.0 technologies can be harnessed to influence our understandings of disability.
In creating visibility and connections between people, this map raises the profile of a distributed community; as well as allowing people to literally put themselves on the map and create a reflection of their shared experience as a node within a collaborative network. Due to the visual nature of Google Maps, it is difficult to create an effective alternative format for this kind of project, a reminder of the contrary nature of some media. Furthermore, I think it would be difficult for an organisation that was not a trusted charity to engineer a mass disclosure of data of this kind. But, that said, this appears to be a bold project – embracing the affordances of mapping tools and pushing them to create new and positive self-determinations.
If you’d like to take part in the Reeve Foundation’s efforts to highlight this community, visit their website here: http://campaigntocureparalysis.org/
In 2008 BECTA‘s Disadvantaged Learners Report observed that the lack of a single voice in UK policy championing disadvantaged learners has led to unhelpful fragmentation – particularly in addressing digital disadvantage across education. Hopefully this Forum will help to draw together disparate resources and streams of research and practice to give more cohesion to those seeking to mitigate exclusion within technology enhanced learning.
The Digital Inclusion Forum has two key purposes:
To identify key inclusion-related questions and issues for research into digital inclusion issues in education
To discuss and evaluate the contribution that the TEL research programme can make to the digital inclusion research agenda.
According to Jane Seale, the group convener, there will be two main phases of activity:
The first phase (May-November 2009) will be the development of an online space for sharing digital inclusion related resources, discussing inclusion-related issues and scoping priorities for digital inclusion research. It is hoped the online space will be a platform for the collaborative writing of a web-based document that starts to draw together what the key issues are in relation to digital inclusion research.
The second phase (December 2009-September 2010) will involve the setting up of a commentary group who, drawing on the web-based document will co-author a TEL branded publication which offers a commentary on digital inclusion research and highlights the contributions of the TEL projects to the field.
The forum welcomes input, with invitations being issues specifically around contributions to an emergent Digital Inclusion Reference Library and posts to the new discussion forum.
The forum also notably draws on blogs and other resources tagged with ‘digitalinclusion’. This marriage of expertise and materials will hopefully accrue into a valuable resource for everyone working to achieve access and equity in technology enhanced learning.
Today 32 Days Remaining found a new home at WordPress. This is the first of what I hope will be many happy posts here. Returning readers will note that there are a few differences, mostly for the best – however I ask that you excuse any glitches, broken links or missing content that you find in the archives in the short term. I’ll be ironing these out behind the scenes over the next few days and weeks. Feeds and Podcasts will be back in place soon. Any comments or advice on your response to the changes are very welcome. See the current ‘About’ page for more details.
Last week saw the 3rd annual Nottingham Research Network conference focusing on SEN, Social and Educational Inclusion, Health and Disabilities. I was only able to attend the latter part of the day, but as ever, this proved an interesting and useful event, focused on the practicalities of teaching and learning in the City of Nottingham. As ever, the strength of the conference came in its collaborative nature, with valuable contributions from teachers, parents, Children's Services, and academics from both Nottingham and Nottingham Trent Universities.
January 14th-17th sees the behemothic BETT show roll into the Olympia in London. This is the world's largest Educational Technology event, and I'm looking forward to glimpsing the future of assistive technologies and technology enhanced learning environments, particularly for Higher Education. I'll be attending on the Friday. See you there?
