Curatorship is a new literacy practice

Media educators propose that children learn about Creative, Cultural and Critical dimensions of text and text production; I would like to propose a fourth C and that is Curatorship.  It was a useful metaphor for processes I uncovered in my PhD study around children’s video production.  One set of characteristics of new media is the way in which artefacts, social arrangements and the practices which grow up around them are altered (see Anna Lievrouw and Sonia Livingstone in their Handbook of New Media). Certainly in regard to organisation and exhibition, children are growing up in a world in which the media that they collect and make can be organized, displayed and re-presented time and again in ways which were not possible before. Some of this will reflect their changing and multiple identities and affiliations as they grow but it is a qualitatively different experience to anything previously possible.  It’s a new form of cultural production which is pitched partway between making and sharing, creating temporary collections for specific purposes and then dismantling them again.

I am not simply talking about archiving, though this is a subset of the skills which go into the new curatorship. Neither is this simply about arranging and presenting the texts in a pleasing way. Fundamentally, it is about knowing how the reflexive project of the self with its anchored and transient identities gets made and unmade over time in the various spaces online and how we live with this and function in new media (See Guy Merchant’s work on identity in new media and Giddens on reflexivity).

Samuel Johnson wrote that the “two offices of memory are collection and distribution”.  Tweeting, Facebook and Blogging may be the current but ephemeral matches for these “offices” of centuries ago and that is how this blog got its name. But certainly we can now expand the first term to include “shared” and add  “exhibition” to complete an encapsulation of a genuinely new experience.   Let’s also imagine the use of the term “offices” has a vague match with “purpose or function” all of which might be caught by “aspects”, throw in media education and try this: “The three aspects of shared memory in new media are collection, distribution and exhibition.” And these are perhaps best in a new literacy practice of “curatorship”. We need a media education that recognises this is a new social and cultural practice.

Filed under: curating, learning, media literacy, social media

At “Digital Futures: Making Connections” @ Ravensbourne

Sitting in the first session at “Digital Futures” an event down at Ravensbourne in their brand new building by the O2 in North Greenwich, SE London, and listening to Euan Semple.  Whilst blogging. I’m also trying to tweet with the right tag after spectacularly failing to do so at MLC2010.  The tag for following the event here is #DF2010…

In the first session Euan Semple talked about the changes (or not) suggested by the words “Social” and “Digital” in connection to the formal and informal settings of learning and the wider business/organisational new media sites. He talked about Tom Barrett, a primary school teacher who tweets (@tombarrett) to make connections for projects at school but, importantly, to demonstrate connections which are possible for his younger learners (and teachers who follow him). The talk went on to look at organisational challenges and the links between talk, real talk between people, and social media – also between affinity for spaces (note – not Gee’s affinity spaces) and talk. He showed a range of organisational blogs including Asda which is out on the wider web.  A lot of this is about what Semple calls the “intensity of the mundane”, not about the flashiest tools…Also “Blogging takes courage…keep moving, stay in touch, and head for thigh ground” (www.euansemple.com on twitter at @euan)

Paul Coulton on gaming was up next on the topic “Gamification” – talking about the harnessing of energy, emotion and commtiment from games for wider learning aims.  See also James Paul Gee on this…Coulton talked about rewards like “Badgification”where repetitive visiting gets points, also pointstification, points not badges…He also talked about “Epic win” the iPhone app which allows you to set your life up as a game, (well, your to do list) and several other examples which mistake extrinsic motivation (points, rewards, badges) for intrinsic motivation.

There were then talks by Dorota Watson – head of Fashion…on the importance of the global context, understanding parity and difference and the importance of actually being in a situation -not to work in a void…James Morris spoke about  developing a BA (Hons) programme in web media production and management …Foetini Valeonti talked about serious gaming and about it taking place as a developer within a community of mutual support. She is working on an augmented reality game for Shakespeare’s Globe, speaking of that kind of reality…

…Later, after the talks I hunted virtual monsters with Pete Fraser from the MEA and Laura from the Open University in an augmented reality game-environment developed for mobile phones by Paul Coulton.  Caught one right by the O2 in the space between the dome and the entrance to the college and captured it in an onscreen cage.  Paul told us there were ways of releasing monsters in to the environment with characteristics such as only appearing when it was cold or when it was a Tuesday.  With my primary school teacher head on I could see very many applications of this in all sorts of spaces.

Returned from the cold and watched and listened to Howard Rheingold from San Francisco via Skype.  Lots of input on teaching and collaboration , including creating an enabling environment, relating physical space to online space. In essence taking co-responsibility for learning and taking reponsibility for sharing; Lots of connections with Kevin Leander’s work in classrooms in the context of new media. Whilst not much was really new in whatwas being said, HR is a great speaker, warm and engaging and entitled in many ways to claim he descrbed much of this new media landscape before many others.

A tour of the beautiful new building followed…

Filed under: digital literacy, learning, media literacy, social media, digital, learning, media literacy, social media