Community Media - Interactive World

Onomastic Pronouncements

2013-03-06T11:41:00.001-08:00

Did any of you hear Carole Hough, apparenntly Great Britain's only named "Professor of Onomastics" (University of Glasgow) speaking on BBC R4 this morning? Interesting to hear that her own name has three pronunciations: Huff, Howe and Hock!

So what is Onomastics?

"Onomastics or onomatology is the study of proper names of all kinds and the origins of names. The words are from the Greek: "ὀνομαστικός" (onomastikos), "of or belonging to naming" and "ὀνοματολογία" (onomatologia), from "ὄνομα" (ónoma) "name".Toponymy or toponomastics, the study of place names, is one of the principal branches of onomastics. Anthroponomastics is the study of personal names."

Some of my favourite weird English names are

Beaulieu          pronounced      Bewly

Cecil                 pronounced      Sissill

Cholmondeley pronounced      Chum-ly

Derby               pronounced      Darby

Gifford              pronounced      Jifford

Holborn            pronounced      Hob'n

Buccleuch         pronounced      Buck-loo

Fiennes             pronounced      Fines

StJohn              pronounced      Sin-j'n

Rhondda           pronounced      Ron-tha

Knollys             pronounced      Noles

Drogheda         pronounced      Droider

Leuchars          pronounced      Lucas

If you want to know more about the English Place-Name Society (EPNS), the Scottish Place-Name Society (SPNS), the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland (SNSBI) and the International Congress of Onomastic Sciences (ICOS) why not consult Prof Hough's entertaining and informative website?

Before long you'll be following the revealing etymologies of place names and you could be taking a linguistic tour of Great Britain's rich, multi-layered heritage.

Buccleuch Foods

Educational Writings and Skills Blogs

2013-01-17T05:21:00.000-08:00

Several of my blogs on education, study skills, academic writing, exams, English language/literature and creativity have now migrated to my new blog which you will find here.

52 Examples of Creative Writing Activities.

Creative Writing: 5 Old Problems and 14 New Principles.

Poetry at War with Itself: the Sound of Futility.

My Five a Day: Writing Poetry 1.

The Vocabulary of Fear, e.g. Onomatophobia.

Ugly Urchin Alliteration: a Poetry Appreciation Prime.

Gender, Women's Writing and Feminism.

A Song for St. Cecilia's Day.

52 Favourite Children's Books.

Light and Shadow: the Age of Kindle.

106 Ways to Avoid the word "SAID"

Sound must seem an echo to the Sense!

How do you retain teachers and attract them back into the profession?

2012-12-20T03:50:00.000-08:00

I suspect that none of this will happen, but we dare to dream.

My Utopian Manifesto

To retain teachers and attract them back into the profession:

(1) reduce testing, marking and assessment regimes by 80%. Have we forgotten that education is about learning not testing? Constant externalised evaluation exists to serve the machinery of capitalism insofar as the latter thrives on selection, competition, and elites. Learners, like teachers, are being worn down by intrusive and unnecessary testing.

(2) cut admin and planning duties by 75%. Let us trust spontaneity and allow teachers to respond to a more participatory, learner-led environment. Education has become a factory production line and a bureaucracy.

(3) raise starting salary by 25%. Teachers are very poorly paid compared to the business and financial sector. They should be rewarded for their work, and for making a sustainable contribution to human life on the planet.

(4) trust teachers and schools to design their own curriculum. Let's put an end to the top-down one-size-fits-all approach to education. Radicals take this notion one step further and claim that teachers should be employed to assist the learners to design their own programmes and goals. Notice again the diminished role for teachers to engage in the dreary slavery that dominates the power model of educational control freakery.

(5) promote training and offer freedom to reflect through sabbaticals. Teachers need time reflect on their practices: in and out of the educational system. Sabbaticals are not holidays; they are emotional recharge and intelligent re-freshment.

(6) make school optional when students reach 15 years. I'd like to set an even earlier age for leaving school, but you will shoot me. If you have not read it, I recommend Ivan Illich's book De-Schooling Society.

(7) protect teachers from children and parents who attack them in any form; learning is a dialogue and a conversation; abusive parents and children should be removed from the formal school environment.

(8) offer options/ incentives for short placements outside teaching to broaden and enrich teachers' experience. Teachers need time out and also benefit from periods of work that are not part of the educational system.

But if none of that works, maybe it's time to read Ivan Illich and to commence a radical rethink of the role and effectiveness of our current systems of education.

Congratulating the 10 New Universities

2012-11-27T08:08:00.004-08:00

As a former Professor at a College (Nene) that became a New University following the award of research degree powers, I would like to congratulate the higher education institutions that will now become Universities.

In my view, we need more creative disruption in higher education in Great Britain, and much of that innovation springs from the new blood that has been running through the system since the major expansion that took place in the 1960s.

In fact, Universities do not have to be super-instiutions that operate on an international scale and bloated global reputation. In order to be vibrant academic cultures what is needed is a capacity to serve the needs of students and their teachers; to value research and scholarship; and to connnect with their local communities.

I assume that all of that includes wealth creation in a sense that is larger, wider and richer than the familair slogans about business entrepreneurship

INSTITUTIONS BECOMING UNIVERSITIES

Arts University College at Bournemouth
Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln
Harper Adams University College
Leeds Trinity University College
Newman University College, Birmingham
Norwich University College of the Arts
Royal Agricultural College
University College Birmingham
University College Falmouth
University College Plymouth St. Mark & St. John

The BBC reports:

Previously, to be called a university, an institution needed to have 4,000 full-time students, and meet other criteria, but now that student number has been dropped to 1,000. This has opened the gateway for many specialist institutions to gain the university status they had wanted for some time.

Mr Willetts said: "These well-known and highly-regarded university colleges represent over 1,200 years of history between them. It is right to remove the barriers preventing high-quality higher education providers like these calling themselves universities simply because of their size."

21 Essential Tips for Community Film editing

2012-11-09T05:46:00.005-08:00

Some people like editing, others don’t. Find out early on in the project about people’s skills and preferences, and training requirements – don’t leave it all to the end.
Edit the film as you go along, in a rough and ready fashion. If you filled half a tape accidentally recording irrelevant chair legs there’s really no point wasting that space on your hard drive.
Respect people’s wish for their contribution to be deleted.
Review the day’s shooting with participants, if possible
Make notes on the best clips of the day. This is called logging. Invent the system that works best for you. Always label tapes or disks at the time of filming.
Keep a note of the best clips, and the ‘who, what, where, when’ bits of information.
It should be possible to create a rough edit based on (a) a selection of the best material actually filmed; (b) the valued work of a trained editing person or small team; (c) referring back to the story and storyboard as guides.
In community film it is essential to allow participants to view and comment on the rough edit. Misrepresentation is a crime!
The rough edit screening is an opportunity for creative dialogue between the editor(s) and the other participants.
How can we make our film more relevant?
Despite our noble intentions - are we trying to appeal to too many disparate groups with insoluble differences between them?
How can we strengthen the people/character element of the story?
Is there anything that’s irrelevant, flabby or surplus?
Are we lingering tediously over uninteresting shots?
What’s distracting our attention from the main message?
Your best friend is CUT, not PASTE.
How can we make our film shorter? (We seldom encounter a community film that we would wish to be longer)
If there’s disagreement (excellent); if you can’t resolve it, why not identify an objective focus group for a screening of the rough edit?
Have the editors gone overboard on special effects? (Children in the sweet-shop syndrome)
Remember that you are editing SOUNDS as well as IMAGES...
There’s far more advice on community filming and editing and sound tracks elsewhere on this blog.

Strategies to Cope with Writer’s Block and Depressive Illnesses

2012-09-24T07:38:00.003-07:00

You do not have writer's block as such. It's a myth!

It’s far more likely that you are stuck in an unimaginative rut, and that you are experiencing a shortage of stimuli, or a lack of variety in the brain and body soup that should be feeding and nourishing your creative mind. If things are really bad you may be depressed. The good news is that creative strategies may help to decrease the depth and frequency of your depressive phases.

Other Common Solutions to poor creativity that you might wish to consider are:

Engage in a variety of activities that are uncharacteristic for you. This may involve taking up a new hobby. It almost certainly means moving away from the torture of staring into a flickering screen. (See my other blog on internet and social media addiction, here.)

Start a new project. Sometimes it’s your determination to stick at a dead project that explains why you can’t move forward. But you can always return to older projects in the future, equipped with a fresh mind and new ideas

Learn to meditate. Become human again. Sometimes you are blocked by having too many thoughts. Too much creative flow is exhausting, especially if it remains chaotic, or it lacks the sense of an emerging shape or direction.

Read a random page of a random book and underline three magic words. That wonderful eighteenth-century word ‘Serendipity’ involves the art of finding what you need while you are looking for something else.

Take randomness a step further by using Tarot Cards to build character, or like composer and inventor John Cage, use dice, or the I Ching, in order to explore patterns beyond conventional expectations, and to help you to move away from bland stereotypes.

Read some poetry. Even better, cut it up and rearrange the words. Poetry is the ultimate mind-gymnasium for the creative writer.

Take a long walk. Take a few words for a walk. Let them go wander. Many great writers such as Charles Dickens have employed walking as a way to compose and liberate their creativity.

Did you read

52 Examples of My Creative Writing Activities ? Here.

Why not change the sex of your main character, and/or make him/her drastically older or younger? Absurd tweaks should initially be treated as harmless fun; but they may, nonetheless lead you in an unexpected direction. Great art involves patterns and destiny, but the aleatory, random dimension deserves to be better understood. In this case, risk means experimentation with improbability. One effect of this process is that the initial elements of a composition are re-constituted. Again, the emphasis is on removing a creative blockage in the way that you have been working.

Why not try transplanting the action of your narrative to another country, and /or different timezone or historical period. With a word processor a Search and Replace is a quick solution to this issue. If you don’t like the result, it is very easy to undo.

Make your hero into a villain. Show a wicked streak in your virtuous heroine. Chill out! This strategy of blending good and evil, virtue and vice, also helps to prevent your characters becoming tedious predictable stereotypes.

A popular exercise that many schools are now using in order to explore and develop style, and an awareness of a writer’s chosen linguistic effects, is to re-write a poem as a story, or a story as a poem, or a tragedy as a comedy, or to parody a fictional text using exaggeration of the stylistic effects. These can be seen as warm-ups to promote the parts of your brain that deals with words, thoughts and concepts.

Remember that you can start a story from the beginning, the middle, or the end. Many writers start in the middle (in medias res) in order to provide suspense. Then they explain how the characters came to be there (working backwards); finally they proceed to the end - which may involve another surprise.

e.g. car race; car hanging over a cliff; car falls (dull)

BECOMES

car hanging over a cliff;

feelings as the characters consider their selfish dull lives and learn to love each other for the first time;

they all die happy, unless there is a miraculous intervention, as their guardian angels intervene.

I often find that the opening is the last thing I write as it creates too much pressure to impress. Get your story down on paper and then select a new start by arranging your ideas in a way that is unusual and creative.

Although I strongly recommend that you should distance yourself from negative thoughts, don’t be frightened of constructive criticism, or re-thinking how you theorise your practice.

Literary criticism is your creative friend, not your despised antagonist.

Internet Social Media Addiction: 21 Symptoms?

2012-08-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

What are the warning signs that we have been imprisoned by our screens? Is it possible that the addiction to social media could be harming our physical, mental and spiritual world? I would be the first to admit that there are worse activities such as mindlessly TV channel-surfing.But I have noticed the addiction in others!

You all make so many excuses for spending so much time online. For many people this is not a cause for anxiety at all. We are increasingly cyborgian, and any wish to return to the old ways (3-5 years ago) is nothing but a futile, hopeless and romantic nostalgia.

Having allocated myself a timetable that now stipulates a progressive increase in my time away from the screen I have noticed an improvement in my general health and sense of well-being. Perhaps the experience of having recovered from cancer last year has led me to rethink the primacy of direct interaction with people, rather than digital mediation. I'm certainly not a luddite by any means, but I may well be an online social media recovering addict. Don't take this too seriously. You may even objection to the use of addiction in this regard. I'm interested to hear your thoughts, online or off.

So here is my personal and rather intuitive list of symptoms that might be associated with an unhealthy addiction. Have you experienced any of these symptoms in the last year? Or perhaps you have noticed these characteristics in other people?

Repetitive Strain Injury

Back Pains and other discomfort associated with a screen-based lifestyle

Delusional sense of exhilaration associated with the online flow of interactions

Being online is my first activity of the day

Being online is my last activity of the day

Spending an hour or more online without being aware of the passage of time

Less comfortable with face-to-face encounters

Sense of being awed or overwhelmed by the abundance offered by the internet

Being online while you are speaking to friends or family on the phone

Being online while watching TV, or listening to music

Convinced that multi-tasking is an effective way to work

Decreased length and frequency of direct encounters with people

Increase in weight, BMI, or change in body shape and general fitness

Constantly mobile connected and status updating

Missing deadlines for work, or failing to meet your own objectives

Increased tendency to procrastinate, with less efficient productivity

Increase in irritability, stress, and anxiety; decrease in patience and listening skills

Frequently checking in online, at every opportunity

Sense that life is becoming fragmentary or hollow

Decreased attention span and ability to focus on major project requiring sustained effort

Preference for micro-engagement rather than in depth reflection.

I'd be delighted to hear your views, or meet with you face--to--face.

Perhaps you could keep a note of how much time you spend online and then question its genuine value to your life?

Further Reading

Young, Kimberly S., and Robert C. Rogers. "The relationship between depression and Internet addiction." CyberPsychology & Behavior 1.1 (1998): 25-28.

Park, Namsu, Kerk F. Kee, and Sebastián Valenzuela. "Being immersed in social networking environment: Facebook groups, uses and gratifications, and social outcomes." CyberPsychology & Behavior 12.6 (2009): 729-733.

"Internet Gratifications and Internet Addiction: On the Uses and Abuses of New Media." Indeok Song, Robert Larose, Matthew S. Eastin, and Carolyn A. Lin. CyberPsychology & Behavior. August 2004, 7(4): 384-394.

O'Keeffe, Gwenn Schurgin, and Kathleen Clarke-Pearson. "The impact of social media on children, adolescents, and families." Pediatrics 127.4 (2011): 800-804.

Correa, Teresa, Amber Willard Hinsley, and Homero Gil De Zuniga. "Who interacts on the Web?: The intersection of users’ personality and social media use." Computers in Human Behavior 26.2 (2010): 247-253.

LaRose, Robert, Carolyn A. Lin, and Matthew S. Eastin. "Unregulated Internet usage: Addiction, habit, or deficient self-regulation?." Media Psychology 5.3 (2003): 225-253.

Baudrillard, Jean, and Marie Maclean. "The masses: The implosion of the social in the media." New Literary History 16.3 (1985): 577-589.

Stern, Steven E. "Addiction to technologies: A social psychological perspective of Internet addiction." CyberPsychology & Behavior 2.5 (1999): 419-424.

Yen, Ju-Yu, et al. "The comorbid psychiatric symptoms of Internet addiction: attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, social phobia, and hostility." Journal of adolescent health 41.1 (2007): 93-98.

Watkins, S. Craig. The young and the digital: What the migration to social network sites, games, and anytime, anywhere media means for our future. Beacon Press, 2009.

Ehrenberg, Alexandra, et al. "Personality and self-esteem as predictors of young people's technology use." CyberPsychology & Behavior 11.6 (2008): 739-741.

Park, Woong. "Mobile phone addiction." Mobile Communications (2005): 253-272.

Wang, Wei. "Internet dependency and psychosocial maturity among college students." International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 55.6 (2001): 919-938.

LaRose, Robert, Dana Mastro, and Matthew S. Eastin. "Understanding internet usage A social-cognitive approach to uses and gratifications." Social Science Computer Review 19.4 (2001): 395-413.

Free Commons Policy

But please do contact me if you want to use this article as a guest post on your blog, or in your old-fashioned traditional paper news letter.

With attribution offered I seldom refuse!

Gender and Communications in International Development

2012-08-10T17:35:00.002-07:00

The Communication Initiative is a partnership and networking space where people using media and communication strategies for action on poverty and other major issues share, learn and converse. See www.comminit.com and register. The Communication Initiative Network also has a useful page on Facebook that lists new projects.

Here are some features on gender and equality that appeared in their recent newsletter.

1. Mucho Corazón (A Lot of Heart)
The purpose of this Mexican television drama series is to help spread the word about the MDGs and the importance of sustainable development, gender equity, and respect for Indigenous Peoples. The 35-episode drama tells the story of Maruch, a young woman from a rural community in Chiapas. It is complemented by: a weekly TV talk show, ongoing promotion through the State of Chiapas radio and television networks, and community action campaigns to encourage viewers to adopt behaviours modelled in the drama.

MUCHO CORAZÓN (SUBTITLED) from PCI Media Impact on Vimeo.

2. Communication for Development (C4D) Workshop: Pacific Media Assistance Program (PACMAS)
In March 2012, the Pacific Media Assistance Program (PACMAS) held a C4D workshop in Suva, Fiji, with 20 students from technical and vocational education (TVET) institutions around the Pacific. The students produced radio and TV stories linked to the MDGs, including a television story on a female taxi driver to promote MDG 3: Women's Empowerment and Gender Equality. "We believe this story can empower young females in their career path choices and contribute to achievement of MDG 2 - quality education for all children (including females!)."

3. Event: Making a Noise for the MDGs
This initiative combined debate and drama in a show of support for the MDGs, with a focus on the role of women and girls in empowering women, reducing child mortality, and improving maternal health. BBC listeners, along with a live audience, discussed the role played by women in achieving the MDGs. Following the debate, a reception that drew a range of figures from the arts explored the role of creativity and drama as tools used to provoke lasting social change. [Sept. 2010, BBC Media Action and the Southbank Centre]

4. Progress Relies on Sound Information in the Philippines
by Michelle Hibler
The Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS) is an organised way of collecting, analysing, and verifying information to be used by local governments, national government agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and civil society for planning, budgeting, and implementing local development programmes. The Philippines CBMS team is testing its use in gender-responsive budgeting. "A pilot project in Escalante City confirmed the usefulness of CBMS, which had been modified to capture additional gender-relevant information, such as education and livelihood skills, in targeting and resource allocation." Data are available to governments and researchers through a computerised national repository system. [International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Jun. 2009]

5. Gender Mainstreaming in Practice: A Toolkit
This toolkit provides a detailed algorithm for implementing a gender perspective in all phases of a development programme/project cycle. Special attention is paid to: (i) baseline gender indicators that help monitor: (i) whether a project improves access to development resources for women and men equally, (ii) principles of civic participation in project implementation, and (iii) active promotion of gender equality in information support of the project and communication with national counterparts. Though global in scope, it is extended as part of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Kyrgyzstan's work to advance gender equality and empowerment of women as part of the MDGs. [Nov. 2011]

What’s involved in creativity? Solo, or Group?

2012-08-06T05:05:00.003-07:00

Factors involved in Creativity

Making an Effort: mental, physical, emotional and spiritual.

Courage: to take risks.

Stamina: not to give up, to revise and redraft many times.

Perfect Imperfection: knowing when to stop.

Mentors: to follow, and to rebel against.

Style: it’s not just what you say but how you say it.

Surprise: walking the unexpected, deviation from norms, serendipity

Flow: an intense state of mind when you deliver peak performance

Skills and Tools: to build and develop projects

Confidence: to aspire and to avoid destructive thoughts and negative outlook

Team work: ability and willingness to collaborate effectively and to respect others

Solo or Group?

It is often forgotten that creativity is not just individual, it can exist within a group or a community. Typically a small group will develop more ideas than a person working alone. That's why everyone is getting into co-creation now, from wiki, to games, free source and life hacking. But is there also a danger of group-think compromises and weak statements?

On or Off

Do you have the ability to just turn on the creativity switch?
Yes. It is a kind of skill that can be learned by anyone, in my view. But there is always room for improvement, and some days (and times) are better than others.

Resistance also takes many forms and need to be deconstructed and analysed.

Do you need a Moment of Inspiration?

No. That's the myth of romantic genius that appeared in the late eighteenth century. I don’t want to deny that there is a spark of inspiration. Rather, you need plenty of fuel to sustain and to develop your fire in a sustainable and memorable way.

Do you have to focus and create the mood for creativity to happen ?

Focus is good, but if you try too hard for too long you come up with what has been done before.

When you say mood I'd suggest that it helps if you are contented rather than disabled by the worst kinds of depression.

Or is it out of your control?

This sounds dangerous. Part of creativity involves a faith in yourself, the ability to take risks, a sense of playfulness, and the cultivation of spontaneity. Spontaneity can be developed by doing things that are unusual or out o character. Again that comes down to confidence in yourself.

Source(s):

Film, collaboration and creativity link
The 32 dangers of collaboration link

General Discussion of the Topic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity

Books

Mihaly Cskszentmihalyi. Flow.

Mihaly Cskszentmihalyi. Creativity and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

Notes

In the Wallas stage model, creative insights and illuminations may be explained by a process consisting of 5 stages:

(i) preparation (preparatory work on a problem that focuses the individual's mind on the problem and explores the problem's dimensions),
(ii) incubation (where the problem is internalized into the unconscious mind and nothing appears externally to be happening),
(iii) intimation (the creative person gets a "feeling" that a solution is on its way),
(iv) illumination or insight (where the creative idea bursts forth from its preconscious processing into conscious awareness); and
(v) verification (where the idea is consciously verified, elaborated, and then applied).

The 15-point Exam Self Examination

2012-08-05T03:41:00.004-07:00

I hope that your exams have not been as traumatic as mine were at school. In this blog, I have taken a long hard look at exam success and failure.

Obviously my research is based on real experiences, rather than irrelevant and dodgy theories.

In my experience of 30 years of teaching in English, and in the Arts, in Schools, and in the University sector, these are the most common reasons for poor results:

1.    Anxiety based on lack of confidence, poor planning and fear of the unknown

2.    Lack of familiarity with past exam questions

3.    Poor memory skills

4.    Failure to produce model answers in exam conditions

5.    Revision that does not edit and select key points

6.    Revision that does not tailor knowledge to the exam

7.    Answers which are too short, or too long.

8.    Poor awareness of what the examiners are looking for

9.    Not answering the question

10.    Not explaining your thinking processes

11.    Poor range of evidence

12.    Weak communication skills

13.    Not understanding how to plan and structure your answer effectively

14.    Too much time wasted on opening and closing paragraphs.

15.    Running out of sufficient time to complete the required number of well-rounded answers.

The good news is that each of these issues can be addressed.

By reflecting on them and taking action you will significantly improve your exam performance.

You might even learn to enjoy the experience, and become an advocate for examinations.

If you would like to receive further examination tips and advice please drop me a line.

Dr Ian McCormick

Examining the Examination; or, Why Students Fail

2012-08-05T03:32:00.000-07:00

Over a million young people in the UK will receive their examination results this month.

Exams are increasingly popular because they are easy to assess and are free from the issues of plagiarism and other forms of cheating that have proliferated in coursework. Indeed, my research shows that with the right money ($100) it is now very straightforward to purchase online a plagiarism-proof, first class, or A* Essay.

In that context I believe that we will be seeing greater reliance on exams in the future, and more of them will be marked by machines in a move toward improved technological efficiency of the educational production line. Their place in the system is secured.

In my view, examination procedures involve a special kind of discipline and they operate as a regime, such as that which we might encounter in a prison. Foucault was not wrong when he linked knowledge and power at an institutional level.

And exams are also a theatre of persecution, where the performance is loaded with expectations, rituals, and associations, most of them negative. For many candidates, the personal experience of the examination is tantamount to sadistic dehumanisation.

As in all power scenarios, the entire event is staged according to simple rules and queer conventions. With a little effort we can step back from that and see examination for what it is: the play of institutionalisation and a game of power.

But with the right tactics in place you could become a master of the game, and not its pathetic victim. Yet inevitably those who succeed will become the new advocates for more probing examinations as the only way forward.

If you learn to play by the rules the whole process can be exhilarating and very rewarding.

It will also be your most unforgettable performance and may affect much of your future life prospects.

In the next blog I will list 15 specific reasons why students fail to meet their exam expectations. If you address these issues methodically, you will significantly improve your exam performance !

What has been your experience of exams? Are you a student, parent, teacher, or an examiner?

If you have any exam tips, advice, or recommendations, please feel free to comment below.

For many people, the examination is worse than a trip to the dentists for a tooth extraction, or an episode of surgical examination that results in your guts being ripped out. It's the worst form of dehumanisation.

How did you get over the trauma of examination?

We are all in this together!

If you would like to receive my weekly exam success tips, please drop me a line.

Dr Ian McCormick

More information will be posted in the next blog

The Nonprofit Twitter Guide - 25 Top Tips

2012-08-02T07:56:00.000-07:00

Classic Non-sense Poet - Edward Lear

Even some of the more successful charities, NGOs and nonprofit groups have failed to adapt effectively to the new opportunities afforded by social media. Twitter has often been neglected as irrelevant and vain.

As a useful social media tool, Twitter has often lagged behind Facebook. I suspect that's because the first impression of Twitter is that it is chiefly populated by celebrity gossips and ephemeral personal details that have no relevance to the goals of social transformation and ethical awareness.

Having researched this topic I would like to offer 25 tips for nonprofits to make effective use of Twitter.

1. Tweets (comments posted on Twitter) need to be written with professional care and attention, just like any other form of writing. That means that Twitter will have an impact on your resources. But don't let it take over...

2. Avoid flippancy, rudeness, and excessive personalisation. By the same token, a dull corporate tone starts to sound quite tedious if it lacks any emotional intelligence.

3. Check Tweets for accuracy and errors. It's important to build a reputation for reliability.

4. It makes sense to follow sister and like-minded charities and nonprofits. That means being part of a community and collaborating by co-creating value.

5. Ration your tweets. Excessive tweeting may be compared to an irritating chatterbox at a party who refuses to let you speak or comment on what they've just said. At the outset I lost many followers by tweeting too enthusiastically.

6. Use words and phrases such as 'Please', 'Check out', 'Help me/us to' if you want people to re-tweet your comments. Polite requests are highly valued and respected.

7. In the most common re-tweets (RTs) Questions (?) were more popular than Exclamations (!)

8. Strong positive words are generally preferred to weak words and negative sentiments

9. Avoid emoticons. They are the sign of infantile desperation of the worst kind.

10. Popular RTs include some form of relevant news content

12. Research suggests that people are more likely to RT earlier in the working week (Monday-Wednesday) and during working hours (9-5 EST - USA)

13. A significant proportion of RTs contain a link to further information

14. Tweets are more likely to be re-tweeted as they pass through more hands (in a chain of trusted replication)

15. Tweets that are trusted and valued will have more viral impact for nonprofits, than ones that lack objectivity or are transparently propagandist.

16. Witty and humourous tweets can be effective but they may also backfire or alienate some followers.

17. Your tweet stream and your favourites should constitute a valued and trustworthy experience.

18. Do not endorse what you have not tried and tested yourself.

19. Engage your readers by offering free resources

20. Provide news items, alerts, and thematic or critical insights into current topics in the news

21. Support your readers with helpful resources and advice for common problems

22. Information that warns people about risks or dangers is valued and tends to be re-tweeted

23. Never spread rumours.

24. Build participatory engagement with requests to vote on topics or to take part in competitions

25. Ask readers to comment on blogs or topics and to request further information on topics that they identify as significant for their work.

Please send in any other suggestions and I will add them to the list. Please feel free to copy this blog for use in your own community or nonprofit newsletter. But please attribute the author and the website.

Dr Ian McCormick

How do academics read so many books?

2012-07-25T01:45:00.002-07:00

Scientia imperii decus et tutamen est

First, let's interrogate the truth implied in the title question: it is believed that academics DO read lots of books.

Since most undergraduates consider that having read more than a dozen books puts you in the same league as Wittgenstein or Dr Johnson it will not be difficult to impress your friends.

But let's grant that academics do 'read' quite a lot, perhaps more than average. For teachers in the arts and in the social sciences, their books are their primary tools and resources. Text is a living laboratory.

In part, it is true that academics delve into books, gingerly excavating their contents, rather than ploughing through them word by word (pencil in hand). In most cases, skimming is superior to delving.

Since every career depends on publication, it follows that the quantity published has been increasing rapidly since the 1960s when one article on kinship ties in Beowulf was enough to secure a life journey through academia. Every year several hundred 'new' articles are written on gothic monsters. It is a Frankenstein industry, with books cobbled together from the dead remnants of their recent predecessors

For serious academics, the detailed dissection of books is an honour afforded only to the books that are absolutely crucial to your work, or that you have been asked to REVIEW.

In fact, it would be more true to say that academics BUY lots of books, rather than reading them, in the strict sense of a cover-to-cover engagement.

They also BORROW lots of books (as you will recognise if you have any academic friends visiting...)

The piles of academic books then WAIT

on their desks,
on their chairs,
on their kitchen floor,
beside the bed,
in the lavatory,
in the garden shed,
left on the bus,
bulging in a recycled bag, &c

... just waiting for that UTOPIAN moment when

all students vanish from view,
when term is over,
when that article is finished for the Journal of Unread Studies,
when the last meeting is over,
when the Head of Department stops talking
when the head of exam administration stops calling,
when they've watched the last episode of The Wire
and the last essay is marked,
and the children are fed ...

SO, rather than reading a book from cover to cover, which is frankly a little OLD-FASHIONED,

memorise the title - some are self-explanatory, witty and memorable. Knowing what books to recommend with accurate reference is the sign of absolute professionalism.

digest the the summary (publisher's blurb on the back of the book). At this stage you are able to discuss the book in some detail and you will be able to position it in relation to the main intellectual currents of our time.

skim through the acknowledgements (how much money did they 'secure' from the Leverhulme Trust in 2001); how many research libraries did they visit; who read the final drafts and offered help...

leaf through the index and check the most cited authorities (Habermas, Deleuze, Zizek, Lacan, Spivak, Foucault, hooks ...). Now you are really getting into the detail and to progress to expert status you need to notice who has been oddly missed out. What? a book on diversity in education and no bell hooks? scandal! check out any reviews to gain a diversity of insights and critical opinions

explore the footnotes (actually these are now typically the annoying endnotes that will have you dizzy with see-sawing from back to front) are where you really dig deep into the reading. This is a great opportunity to investigate the scholarly use of primary and secondary sources. In fact, I have met academics who spend most of their time working through the footnotes, spotting gaps, missing links, inaccuracies and occasional triumphs of erudition. A whole reputation can fall in a footnote.

By now you will be really hooked, so be cautious.

It's time to risk a critical examination of the Preface, or even the Introduction, where you will often discover a convenient summary of the treasures still locked up in the main body of the book.

Locate the most significant chapter by reading the chapter titles. Getting stuck in the wrong chapter could be a disaster and hinder your progress through the Gothic 'PILES of the UN-READ.'

Put a date in the DIARY.

Schedule some quality reading time, free from distractions.

As I wait for the day to arrive I sometimes risk a random page from a random book. This is SERENDIPITY and it is recommended when you have lots of miscellaneous books and writer's block has kicked in.

READING DAY has arrived.

Returning to the TARGET book, at this point I make an assessment of the elegance of the prose, the inventiveness of the ideas, the ingenuity of the argument, the weight of the evidence, and the authority of the scholarship.

Is this an author who is WELL-READ ?

I am now ready for the SUBLIME experience of reading a book from beginning to end.

Until the PHONE rings ...

End of Year Reading Recommendations - Adult Fiction

2012-07-23T04:40:00.000-07:00

Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding

With delicacy of perception and memory, humour and pathos, Carson McCullers spreads before us the three phases of a weekend crisis in the life of a motherless twelve-year-old girl. Within the span of a few hours, the irresistible, hoydenish Frankie passionately plays out her fantasies at her elder brother's wedding. Through a perilous skylight we look into the mind of a child torn between her yearning to belong and the urge to run away.

Indra Sinha, Animal's People

'I used to be human once. So I'm told. I don't remember it myself, but people who knew me when I was small say I walked on two feet just like a human being'.....But now Jaanvar - Animal - walks on all fours, the catastrophic result of what happened on That Night when, thanks to an American chemical company, the Apocalypse visited his slums. He lives a hand-to-mouth existence, with a crazy old nun called Ma Franci; Nisha, the daughter of a local musician; and his dog Jara. Each of them had their lives irreversibly changed on That Night.

Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk about Kevin

"'Once in a while, a stunningly powerful novel comes along, knocks you sideways and takes your breath away: this is it... a horrifying, original, witty, brave and deliberately provocative investigation into all the casual assumptions we make about family life, and motherhood in particular' Daily Mail 'This startling shocker strips bare motherhood... the most remarkable Orange prize victor so far' Polly Toynbee, Guardian 'One of the most striking works of fiction to be published this year. It is Desperate Housewives as written by Euripides... A powerful, gripping and original meditation on evil' New Statesman"

Dai Sijie, Balzac and the Chinese Seamstress

In 1971 Mao's campaign against the intellectuals is at its height. Our narrator and his best friend, Luo, distinctly unintellectual but guilty of being the sons of doctors, have been sent to a remote mountain village to be 'reeducated'. The kind of education that takes place among the peasants of Phoenix Mountain involves carting buckets of excrement up and down precipitous, foggy paths, but the two seventeen-year-olds have a violin and their sense of humour to keep them going. Further distraction is provided by the attractive daughter of the local tailor, possessor of a particularly fine pair of feet. Their true re-education starts, however, when they discover a comrade's hidden stash of classics of great nineteenth-century Western literature - Balzac, Dickens, Dumas, Tolstoy and others, in Chinese translation. They need all their ingenuity to get their hands on the forbidden books, but when they do their lives are turned upside down. And not only their lives: after listening to their dangerously seductive retellings of Balzac, the Little Seamstress will never be the same again. Without betraying the truth of what happened, Dai Sijie transforms the bleak events of China's Cultural Revolution into an enchanting and unexpected story about the resilience of the human spirit and the magical power of great storytelling.

Don DeLillo, The Names

Reading the fiction of Don DeLillo is an utterly original experience: powerful, prescient, perceptive. Writing in a prose that is both majestic and muscular, his unerringly accurate vision penetrates deep into the soul of America and consistently leaves readers with a fresh perspective on the world. Since the publication of his first novel, in 1971, he has been acknowledged across the globe as one of the greatest writers of his generation. DeLillo’s seventh is an exotic thriller. Set mostly in Greece, it concerns a mysterious ‘language cult’ seemingly behind a number of unexplained murders. Obsessed by news of this ritualistic violence, an American risk analyst is drawn to search for an explanation. We follow his progress on an obsessive journey that begins to take over his life and the lives of those closest to him. In addition to offering a series of precise character studies, The Names explores the intersection of language and culture, the perception of America from both inside and outside of its borders, and the impact that narration has on the facts of a story. Meditative and probing, DeLillo wonders: how does one cope with the fact that the act of articulation is simultaneously capable of defining and circumscriptively restricting access to the self?

J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

The ultimate novel for disaffected youth, but it's relevant to all ages. The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the 'phony' aspects of society, and the 'phonies' themselves: the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection. Lazy in style, full of slang and swear words, it's a novel whose interest and appeal comes from its observations rather than its plot intrigues (in conventional terms, there is hardly any plot at all). Salinger's style creates an effect of conversation, it is as though Holden is speaking to you personally, as though you too have seen through the pretences of the American Dream and are growing up unable to see the point of living in, or contributing to, the society around you. Written with the clarity of a boy leaving childhood, it deals with society, love, loss, and expectations without ever falling into the clutch of a cliche.

Louis de Bernieres, The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman

When the economy of his small South American country collapses, President Veracruz joins his improbable populace of ex-soldiers, former guerillas, unfrocked priests and reformed - though by no means inactive - whores, in a bizarre search for sexual fulfilment. But for Cardinal Guzman, a man tormented by his own private demons, their stupendous, hedonistic fiestas represent the epicentre of all heresies. Heresies that must be challenged with a horrifying new inquisition destined to climax in a spectacular confrontation

Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

‘Flann O’Brien learned from Joyce the art of tuning language to a lyrical pitch, which he could then turn to his purpose, whether it was to be plain foolery, unconcealed indignation or high comedy. The best of his contemporaries and many subsequent Irish writers have much to thank him for.’ Sunday Times
‘Flann O’Brien is inventive, his storytelling is swift and sure, making the eccentric seem natural and the commonplace hilarious.’ The Times ‘Even with “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake” behind him, James Joyce might have been envious.’ The Observer ‘Wonderful. “The Third Policeman” is a great masterpiece of black humour.’ George Mackay Brown

Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

Christopher Banks, the protagonist of Kazuo Ishiguro's fifth novel, When We Were Orphans, has dedicated his life to detective work but behind his successes lies one unsolved mystery: the disappearance of his parents when he was a small boy living in the International Settlement in Shanghai. Moving between England and China in the inter-war period, the book, encompassing the turbulence and political anxieties of the time and the crumbling certainties of a Britain deeply involved in the opium trade in the East, centres on Banks's idealistic need to make sense of the world through the small victories of detection and his need to understand finally what happened to his mother and father.
This new novel, however, is the deliberate antithesis of the classic English detective story--the hermetic country-house worlds of Agatha Christie, the classic "locked room" puzzles in which order and sanity is restored at the story's end. Ishiguro mimics the functional style and clipped speech patterns of the genre, ironising its reliance on melodrama and stereotype, while developing a narrative of subtlety, great emotional depth, and political and cultural acuity: what we get is a negative image of classic detective fiction, in which the solved crimes are mentioned in passing and the real mystery is played out in the psychology of the detective himself. The act of detection, Ishiguro suggests, is one we all perform on our own past, struggling to marshal clues and evidence whilst trying to construct the story of ourselves; the one mystery Banks seems unable to solve is his own.

Marina Lewycka, Two Caravans

And sitting in it two caravans – one for the men and one for the women. The residents are from all over: miner’s son Andriy is from the old Ukraine, while sexy young Irina is from the new: they eye each other warily. There are the Poles Tomasz and Yola, two Chinese girls and Emanuel from Malawi. They’re all here to pick strawberries in England’s green and pleasant land. But these days England’s not so pleasant for immigrants. Not with Russian gangster-wannabes like Vulk, who’s taken a shine to Irina and thinks kidnapping is a wooing strategy. And so Andriy – who really doesn’t fancy Irina, honest – must set off in search of that girl he’s not in love with.

Bernhard Schlink,The Reader

For 15-year-old Michael Berg, a chance meeting with an older woman leads to far more than he ever imagined. The woman in question is Hanna, and before long they embark on a passionate, clandestine love affair which leaves Michael both euphoric and confused. For Hanna is not all she seems. Years later, as a law student observing a trial in Germany, Michael is shocked to realize that the person in the dock is Hanna. The woman he had loved is a criminal. Much about her behaviour during the trial does not make sense. But then suddenly, and terribly, it does - Hanna is not only obliged to answer for a horrible crime, she is also desperately concealing an even deeper secret. 'A tender, horrifying novel that shows blazingly well how the Holocaust should be dealt with in fiction. A thriller, a love story and a deeply moving examination of a German conscience' INDEPENDENT SATURDAY MAGAZINE

Patrick Suskind, Perfume

Survivor, genius, perfumer, killer: this is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He is abandoned on the filthy streets as a child, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human’s. Soon, he is creating the most sublime fragrances in Paris. Yet there is one odour he cannot capture. It is exquisite, magical: the scent of a young virgin. And to get it he must kill. And kill. And kill …

Rose Tremain, Music And Silence

In the year 1629, a young English lutenist named Peter Claire arrives at the Danish Court to join King Christian IV's Royal Orchestra. From the moment when he realises that the musicians perform in a freezing cellar underneath the royal apartments, Peter Claire understands that he's come to a place where the opposing states of light and dark, good and evil, are waging war to the death.

Designated the King's 'Angel' because of his good looks, he finds himself falling in love with the young woman who is the companion of the King's adulterous and estranged wife, Kirsten. With his loyalties fatally divided between duty and passion, how can Peter Claire find the path that will realise his hopes and save his soul?

John Banville, The Sea

Max Morden has reached a crossroads in his life, and is trying hard to deal with several disturbing things. A recent loss is still taking its toll on him, and a trauma in his past is similarly proving hard to deal with. He decides that he will return to a town on the coast at which he spent a memorable holiday when a boy. His memory of that time devolves on the charismatic Grace family, particularly the seductive twins Myles and Chloe. In a very short time, Max found himself drawn into a strange relationship with them, and pursuant events left their mark on him for the rest of his life. But will he be able to exorcise those memories of the past?
The fashion in which John Banville draws the reader into this hypnotic and disturbing world is non pareil, and the very complex relationships between his brilliantly delineated cast of characters are orchestrated with a master’s skill. As in such books as Shroud and The Book of Evidence, the author eschews the obvious at all times, and the narrative is delivered with subtlety and understatement. The genuine moments of drama, when they do occur, are commensurately more powerful. --Barry Forshaw Incandescent prose. Beautifully textured characterisation. Transparent narratives. The adjectives to describe the writing of John Banville are all affirmative, and The Sea is a ringing affirmation of all his best qualities. His publishers are claiming that this novel by the Booker-shortlisted author is his finest yet, and while that claim may have an element of hyperbole, there is no denying that this perfectly balanced book is among the writer’s most accomplished work.

Diminishing Returns and the Broken Promise of Participation

2012-07-19T04:23:00.000-07:00

In this blog I offer thirty-one critical responses to the current fashion for participatory projects and methodologies. While my main focus is grounded in playing devil’s advocate to the evangelical exponents of participatory video, I am very open to being shot down - or at least engaged - in counter-dialogues. (Either through the comments section below, or privately by email). Please attribute all quotations from this unpaid work. It is my life.

Please also excuse the rhetorical tendency to exaggerate; I’m not using this blog to craft a highly nuanced critical essay.In other work I have addressed problems with, and potential solutions to collaborative models of work.

Also, I’m still working through a projection of what comes after the promise of participation...

The participatory field is admittedly quite fuzzy, since arts projects in the community may be quite vague about their intended modes or levels of participation; engagement evidence is notoriously difficult to measure in terms of impacts and evaluation, and/or the empowerment achieved.

There is a tendency to exclude those models or practices that are partially, or not primarily participatory. This may have the effect of potentially distorting the positive impact ratio of those projects that qualify as whole-heartedly in the fold.

In reflective reports on participation, there is often the foggy sense of a contribution to social capital and community capital, without any sense of the methodological challenges to, or controversy around, these highly fashionable policy approaches and agendas. [See the note at the end of this blog]

Another weakness is that an assumption of inequality is often built into the participatory model, or into the terms of project reference. Typically, this takes the form of ‘giving a voice to the voiceless’, ‘reaching to the hard to reach’, or ‘including the excluded.’ Patronising and bourgeois. I've seldom met an angry youth who lacked voice.

Following from the previous point, is there not a residual romantic ideology of inspiration and failure at work in participatory discourses? Conversely, is there a lack of personalised, romantic intensity at work?

Claims to the effectiveness of projects are frequently or symptomatically inflated because negative outcomes adversely affect future funding;

To interrogate claims on the level of value also risks offending the romantic foundations of creative worthiness of individuals in need of encouragement and support and their utopian community life that is just waiting to emerge after the intervention.

How far are active and effective forms of participation specific to a time and place (Western, enlightened, or romantic) ?

The coherence, fixity, or stability of the methodology is at odds with the variety, mobility and complexity of social practices.

Claims to success are often anecdotal and ephemeral. This feature of the evaluation is then defended as a quality-led approach, or falls back on romantic notions designed to resist critical analysis.

It is just as difficult to measure a variety of micro-impacts several years in the future, as it is to value the impact on one individual where the work had a major transformative dimension to his or her life’s work and direction. Participatory outcomes, like the medium term impact of the work of an inspiring teacher, are fundamentally difficult to qualify or quantify.

Effectiveness is often expressed in terms of soft targets achieved such as ‘finding a voice’ rather than material improvement in people’s lived experience.

There is a danger that participants become ambassadors for the local government’s unelected officers.

The promise of participation is vaguely geared to future possibility or potentiality sleekly framed so as to remain forever unaccountable. Often there is a narrative turn that measures story rather than material impact.

The clarity of the message delivered by participants is confused by the need to report positive or constructive changes taking place (alienated facilitator or funder agendas creeping in.)

Sometimes it is clear that participants feel they have not expressed what the funder wanted, or that they have fallen short of a perceived goal. Such are 'compromised' projects. Is there not a conspiracy of silence about the frequency of these?

Participants sense that they have not met the facilitators’ ideals which may be more ideologically coherent than the collective experience expressed by the participants. Has political correctness silenced certained voices?

Funders are perceived to be the enemy, they are on the other side, whereas the reality is that they are tasked with (1) being responsible and accountable purseholders (2) having to respond to the priorities of their bosses, who are in turn, people elected by the people.

Participatory discourses are stuck in a 1970s crafty-utopianism and fail to adequately take account of major cultural shifts expressed in postmodernity (Lyotard, Baudrillard), high modernity (Giddens), liquid modernity (Baumann), performativity (Butler), Enlightenment and communicative action (Habermas), Mass communications and culture (Adorno), convergence theory (Jenkins), ideology and psychoanalysis (Zizek), rhizomatic and intensive differences (Deleuze), singularities and complexities (teratology and chaos theory ...) ...

In fact, the promise of the participatory is insulated from most of the major currents in contemporary cultural theory and tends to confine itself to narrower sociological, psychology or community work based analytical frames.

Disciplinary boundaries are also strictly enforced as a consequence of the need for specialization and professionalization (Ivan Illich), or in line with academic career paths and associated research citations and outputs.

In more general terms, where in one sense the participatory dimension lacks specificity and evidence, in another, it fails to engage with broader movements at work in society and in intellectual thought.

Despite its proclaimed emphasis on communicative actions and contexts, participatory video practice becomes too rooted in its technology and IT-related skills rather than ontological awareness.

Often the issue just mentioned is emphatic because funding has been awarded based on IT skills-development and employablity issues, narrowly defined. Instrumentality rules in a materialist-capitalist society (Marx). Taking this one step further leads into a Heideggerian perspective on a failure to think being.

The participation is confined to an already ghettoized social sub-section, rather than promoting critical dialogues and creative disseminations between sections of society.

As fashions and policies shift, specific groups are excessively favoured compared to others (e.g. youth)

And may groups or localities may suffer new initiative fatigue, or become disenchanted by yet another innovatory intervention in which the participants are the ever-ready-made-laboratory-for-life.

Because aims and objectives are narrowly project-specific, bounded by a specific time and locality, products of participation are quickly dated and disposed of. This represents poor value compared to other forms of intervention that may grow from within, rather than being professionally facilitated from above / without.

Participation is seldom framed in terms of a wider architecture of a global politics of the silenced and the disenfranchised. What starts local stays local. Developmental means safely apolitical.

Because participatory projects depend on trained facilitators there will in turn be a dependence on training programmes for facilitators and a reliance on specialist professionals who need to be paid for their work. As the public funding of social projects at all levels diminishes the viablity of this model has to be questioned.

The participatory project seldom matches (or respects) the existing forms of organic participation in, and critical distance from, the already ‘present’ forms of popular culture or lived experiences. Looked at another way, there is a vaguely embarrassing effort on the part of facilitators to co-opt current themes such as gangs, guns, mobiles and hip-hop, in order to ‘come closer’ to the ‘life’ of the people. Again this may simply valorize the ephemeral in a process of collective top-down indulgence, rather than addressing the critical challenge of the ‘other.’

Notes

Please see: http://www.socialcapitalresearch.com/problems.html

Problems with Conceptualisation of Social Capital

As identified above, the conceptualization of social capital is the biggest challenge facing proponents of the theory. At present there is a lack of rigorous conceptualization of social capital (Krishna and Uphoff 2002). Lin, Cook et al (2001, p. 58) identified that there is a 'danger that we may reach a point where the term might be used in whatever way it suits the purpose at hand, and thus be rendered meaningless as a scientific concept that must meet the rigorous demands of theoretical and research validity and reliability'. Fine (1999) pointed out that social capital is taking over explanations of economic development, growth, and prosperity, he also suggest that social capital had other possibilities before being turned against the other social sciences by economics (Fevre 2000). Hean, Cowley et al (2003) made the observation that the accumulation of literature on social capital has begun to obscure the understanding of the concept. The inappropriate measurement techniques that have been implemented have caused problems for understanding social capital at the conceptual level and led to debate over whether the concept is relevant or appropriate (Stone 2001). Or as McHugh and Prasetyo (2002, p. 1) put it, 'the proliferation of competing definitions, analytical methods and applications associated with the term is perhaps only dwarfed in volume by the literature critical of its theoretical ambiguity, ambitious conceptual scope, and practical over-versatility'.

Further Reading

Arnstein, S. R. (1969) "A Ladder of Citizen Participation" JAIP 35 (4) 216-24

Bandura, A. (1995) “Exercise of personal and collective efficacy in changing societies” in Self-efficacy in changing societies. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 1-

Barnado’s Report (2001). “Do community-based arts projects result in social gains? A review of literature.” By Authors: Tony Newman, Katherine Curtis and Jo Stephens. Available here http://www.barnardos.org.uk/commarts.pdf

Bauman Z. (2006) Liquid Times: living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge; Polity Press.

Bery, R. (2003) “Participatory Video that empowers” Participatory Video: images that Transform and Empower, S. A. White (eds.) New Delhi, Sage publications: 102-

21.

Blond, P. (2010) Red Tory: How Left and Right have broken Britain and how we can fix it. London, Faber and Faber.

Boog, B. W. M. (2003) "The emancipatory character of action research, its history and the present state of the art" Journal of Community and Applied Social

Psychology 13(6) pp. 426-438.

Braden, S. (2004) Participation: A promise unfulfilled? Building alliances between

government and people. Research Report. Dept For International Development, UK.

Braden, S. and M. Mayo (1999) "Culture, community development and representation" Community Development Journal 34(3)

Buckingham, D., M. Pini and R. Willett (2007) “‘Take back the tube!’: The discursive

construction of amateur film and video making” Journal of Media Practice

8(2) pp. 183-201

Carpentier, N., R. Lie and J. Servaes (2003) “Community Media: muting the democratic media discourse?” Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 17(1)

Castells, M. (2009) Communication Power. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Chvasta, M. (2006) “Anger, Irony and Protest: confronting the issue of efficacy, Again” Text and Performance Quarterly 26(1) pp. 5-16

Cohen, M.B. and Mullender, A. (2006) “The Personal in the Political: Exploring the

Group Work Continuum from Individual to Social Change Goals” Social Work

With Groups 28 (3/4) 187-204

Cooke, B. (2001) “The Social Psychological limits of participation?” B. Cooke and U.

Kothari (eds.) Participation: the New Tyranny? London, Zed Books: 102-21.

Craig, G. and Mayo, M. (eds.) (1995) Community empowerment: a reader in

participation and development. London, Zed Books.

Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and

Schizophrenia. (trans.) B. Massumi London, New York, Continuum International.

Dinham, A. (2005) “Empowered or over-powered? The real experiences of local

participation in the UK's New Deal for Communities” Community Development

Journal, Oxford University Press

Ellsworth, E. (1989) "Why doesn't this feel empowering?" Harvard Educational Review, (59): 297-324.

Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London, Penguin

Freire, P. (1972) Cultural action for freedom.

Freire, P. (1974) Education for Critical Consciousness. London, Continuum

Freire, P. and D. P. Macedo (1987) Literacy: reading the word and the world. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul

Freire, P. (1994) Pedagogy of Hope: re-living Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York,

Continuum

Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern

Age Cambridge, Polity Press / Basil Blackwell.

Giddens, A. (1991) The consequences of modernity. California, Stanford University

Press.

Giddens, A (2000) The third way: The Renewal of Social Democracy. Cambridge, Polity Press / Basil Blackwell.

Goffman, E. (1990) The presentation of self in everyday life. Harmondsworth, Penguin

Habermas, J. (1984) The theory of communicative action: life world and system, a

critique of functionalist reason. London, Heinemann Education.

Habermas, J. (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, Polity Press.

Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture: Where old and new media collide. London,

New York, New York University Press.

Jovchelovitch, S. (2007) Knowledge in context: Representations, Community and

Culture. London and New York, Routledge.

Loxley, J. (2007) Performativity: The New Critical Idiom. Routledge.

Lyotard, J. (1984) The post modern condition: a report on knowledge. Manchester,

Manchester University Press.

Matarasso, F. (2007) “Common ground: cultural action as a route to community

development” Community Development Journal 42 (4) 449-458

Reason, P. and H. Bradbury (2001) Handbook of Action Research: participative Inquiry and Practice. London, Sage publications.

Shaw, J. and C. Robertson (1997) Participatory video: a practical approach to using

video creatively in group development work. London, Routledge.

Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

White, S. A. (2003) Participatory Video: images that Transform and Empower. New Delhi and London, Sage Publications.

Toxic Individualism and Corporate Community

2012-07-18T02:35:00.000-07:00

As a participant in the The 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art I was struck by how many delegates were hostile to the notion of community. Is it that, in the humanities, perhaps, academia is fatally geared to recognition of solo-achievement at the expense of collaborative methodologies? Perhaps that’s because the ‘art’ element is still understood in terms of romantic-period notions of self, ego, genius, and originality? In these terms community is the wicked Father called Family, or Tradition. Individualism, in contrast, is Rebel Energy; it is innovation and creativity. The available writing on the self has arguably been more inspiring than that on the community, which tends to fall into windy utopianism or dreary sociological treatises.

But we certainly have a degree of nostalgia for our self-willed creativity, despite the thinly veiled reality that the majority of human beings are merely tiny cogs in the global machine. In part, the delusional component arises because the global conglomerates constantly promote the notion that we are actively making democratic choices; the money-driven system relies on the glorification of the free consumer while masking the grim realities of massive global inequality. It is a sad realisation that every sleek gadget is a displaced testament to an undocumented exploitation of a poor exploited sweat-shop factory worker.

Or consider how the global entertainment industry creates myths of the superhero while demonstrating its necrotising groupthink uncreativity by relying on a corporate production line of sequels and prequels dreamed up in the boardrooms of film studios. For Hollywood these fan-cash-machines now represent 80% of its business activity and are at the core of this dominant marketing regime. This species of film, backed by so much global advertising that it seldom dares to fail, is not the product of the heroic creative individual, an undiscovered J. K. Rowling, toiling away in a cafeteria to keep warm. So let’s not despair: it appears that the local genius still breaks through by means of her sublime efforts to embrace the larger issues of culture and humanity, woven superbly into a well told story. And if you break through then you too will have your global film franchise. We know how to reward success.

But such film-industry-style commercialisation is not altogether new. The notion that writers cater for the market can been witnessed in the work of Shakespeare, who wrote several popular history cycles. Let’s congratulate the BBC (backed by American finance in this cases) which is currently screening Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, and Henry V, delightfully titled The Hollow Crown.) But Shakespeare showed us both the allure and the responsibility of absolute power; he showed power, cynically, as a necessary performance, a scripted regime; and he showed us the life of the people - warts and all.

Richard II

But community does sometimes hold people back when it is not open to growth, vulnerability and metamorphosis. Vibrant inter-cultural communities where genuine dialogue is enjoyed and conversations fostered can be highly successful. Throughout the world we witness the inexorable rise of super cities and mass migration from rural to urban areas. Indeed, the closed local community can be the most absurdly oppressive place to live (as satirized in Little Britain’s solo-homo Welsh Village ‘I am the Only Gay in this Village.)

Village Rights

But we also tend to romanticize the individuals who struggle against all odds and who gleefully challenge traditional expectations of them. Such is the tap-dancing working class romance Billy Elliot. It is a wonderful and very necessary mythology.

It seems that we are doomed to run our lives between the twin pillars of toxic individualism and oppressive community expectations. Between who we want to be and what society expects of us. The Scylla and Carybdis of individualism and communitarianism. Arguably, then, each term needs to be qualified, such that they can function in dialogue, rather than as reductive and destructive binary oppositions. Either that, or we change the system. Over to you!

Let's Dance our Way into the Future

Get More Children Reading: A 15-point Action Plan:

2012-07-16T06:39:00.002-07:00

In recent years I have been working with parents and children to improve reading skills. There is strong evidence that boys' reading skills are increasingly falling behind those of girls, and that boys come back to school after the summer holidays with poor reading skills.

These are the questions that I asked in this blog:

How can we guide and support the enjoyment in reading and help to improve skills?

How can we link reading with creativity, community, and interactivity?

The results. Here are 15 motivational tips (with an emphasis on reading for boys):

1. Any reading is good reading.

Boys often re-read books that they have enjoyed. But don't just stick to fiction; there are great factual illustrated books, top tips for boys, motor car books, jokebooks, sports annuals, magazines and graphic novels. Don't just stick to the classic fiction that adults say they enjoyed reading in their childhood.

2. Lead by example

Children copy those around them. If a boy sees his brother, dad, or uncle reading, then he will be more likely to identify reading with positive male role models. Demonstrate that reading is a normal human activity. Try newspapers, car manuals, TV guides, celebrity books, survival guides ...

3. Install bookshelves.

Having a place to keep your books safe shows that they are a valued resource and part of the living furniture of the house.

4. Start to use the local library.

We hear a lot about cuts to library services but the truth is that many children's libraries are an excellent resource. Take time to explore and select books.

5. Listen to recommendations.

Asks teachers, librarians and bookshop staff for recommendations. Explain what kind of books you like. Sometimes it is better to build on existing tastes rather than developing new ones.

6. Boys like gadgets!

So I'm not excluding online reading, e-readers and kindle. Let children research their reading styles and preferences.

7. Friendly, polite conversation, and open questions build confidence.

Children like to talk about what they read and why they liked something. Often they will be delighted to tell you the full story in their own words. Ask them about their favourite moment in a book! This process is the beginning of critical reading and creative insight. Talking about reading builds the activity into the fabric of school and community life.

8. Build creatively on what you read.

Make your own picture books and story continuations (prequels and sequels) based on favourite books. Or try alternative endings. Make a short film or radio broadcast about your favourite reading.

9. Set an agreed reading time.

This approach involves trial and error. Reading by discipline misses the point that reading ideally is self-motivated. However, reading may be a good wind-down evening or night-time activity - half an hour at the end of the day is often enough. It does not have to be every day.

10. A sense of progress.

Some children work well with a target and a bar chart of their daily reading progress. Try setting a token reward for boys who get past page 100. (Research shows that many children give up before then.)

11. Collaborative reading.

Children love reading and being read to. It helps if you both try out funny voices or read the characters with facial expressions. Children's reading groups and clubs are also an excellent way to share reading experiences. Why not set one up in your local area? Also look out for reading activities at your local school or library.

12. Multiple languages.

Some books are available in parallel translations which helps if English is not your first language.

13. Encourage your child to read with other children.

There is not reason why an eleven year old cannot teach his seven year old brother how to read. When the child slips into teacher mode he or she will have a massive confidence boost.

14. The ideal present.

When you have find out what your child likes, remember that a book is a great gift. Or give book tokens and allow the children to make their own choices. But books should not be the only present.

15. Reading should not be like a term in prison!

Although I've read thousands of books there are still some days when I prefer a walk, or just listening to music. Motivated reading is more about freedom, and less about control. Parents who are too ambitious can do quite a lot of damage. Use your common sense and find a negotiated balance.

Finally.

Shared time may, in fact, be the most rewarding human interactive element in reading.

Over to you! Do you have any tips, recommendations, or questions?

Online publishing opportunity

2012-07-14T04:11:00.000-07:00

Online publishing opportunity CFP for academic and non-academic writers

Submitted by Sam Oneill on May 20, 2012 -

Visible Margin is a new section of #Alt-Academy which will feature high-quality critical writing in the form of peer-reviewed essays and blog posts, as well as creative writing and work in other media.

In keeping with the theme of #Alt-Academy, we are especially interested in contributions from authors and scholars pursuing alternative, non-tenure track, and non-academic careers—individuals whose voices are heard less often within the academy.

Complementing #Alt-Academy’s existing clusters, Visible Margin will focus on cultural and intellectual production, with the aim of increasing the visibility of this growing majority of knowledge workers and of democratizing knowledge within and outside the university.

We also welcome contributions from non-academic writers who share our goals.

http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/alt-ac/pieces/visible-margin-cfp

Call for Submissions:

We are interested in a variety of submissions, including essays, topical articles, blogs, reviews, fiction, poetry, visual art and multimedia work. The essays and articles will typically be within the author’s area of expertise and should be written in accessible, polished prose.
General topics for essays and articles may include but are not limited to:

Arts and Culture: Anything from book and film reviews to critical or reflective essays on any topic within the arts and humanities.

Politics and activism: current or historical issues or a combination of both.

Science and Technology: digital publishing, digital humanities, discussion of recent innovations or any topic within this category.

Academic Research: excerpts from recently undertaken research presented to an audience outside your discipline; reflections on research or the process of doing research while pursuing an alternative career.

Writing and publishing: discussions of different forms of writing and publication; transition from academic to other kinds of writing; the publishing field; advantages and limitation of writing for academic and non-academic publications and audiences. Alternative academic careers: essays and edited groups of essays directly addressing this topic may be submitted to the existing clusters on #Alt-Academy’s main page. Review the cluster descriptions and follow the "How It Works" submission instructions.

Reviews: Reviews of recent books, films, or any other material of about 800 words in length are welcome. Reviews could also be part of a blog (see below).

Creative Work: High-quality fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, visual art and multimedia projects. While there are no specific guidelines for these genres, the work should be compatible with on-line publication and in line with the site’s focus on intellectual exchange.

Blogs: The publishing platform for #Alt-Academy, MediaCommons, supports blogging. If you would like to start a blog within the MediaCommons network and have it aggregated and listed as a part of Visible Margin, please submit a brief description of its scope and topics and a sample entry to the email address below. Blogs could be individual or collaborative and should be updated at least twice a month.

Collaborative Writing Projects

2012-07-14T04:03:00.001-07:00

This website is strongly recommended for

collaborative writing projects:

Writing Spaces Open Textbook Chapters

Each of these titles is available under a Creative Commons license (consult the individual text for the license specifics). Click on the title to view the chapter abstract and a downloadable PDF of the chapter. Click on any of the keywords to see a listing of chapters tagged with that keyword.
On the main information pages for each volume, you can also download full versions of
Volume 1 or Volume 2.

Title	Author	Series Edition	Keywords
A Student’s Guide to Collaborative Writing Technologies	Barton, Matt and Karl Klint	Vol. 2	collaboration, collaboration technology, Doodle, drafting, editing, Etherpad, Facebook, Google Docs, Google Scholar, instant messaging, Mindomo, news reader, prewriting, research paper, RSS, social media, Twitter, Zotero
Annoying Ways People Use Sources	Stedman, Kyle D.	Vol. 2	attribution, citation, paraphrasing, patchwriting, quoting, research writing, source integration, summarizing, works cited
Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps Toward Rhetorical Analysis	Carroll, Laura Bolin	Vol. 1	advertisement analysis, argumentation, audience, Bitzer, constraint, contextual, emotion, ethos, exigence, first day, genre, guidelines, implication, logos, media, pathos, persuasive, questioning, rhetorical analysis, situational, social, tone, triangle
Beyond Black on White: Document Design and Formatting in the Writing Classroom	Klein, Michael J. and Kristi L. Shackelford	Vol. 2	alignment, APA, contrast, design elements, document design, documentation style, font, formatting, graphics, headings, illustrations, images, margins, MLA, proximity, repetition, resume, typography, visual design, white space
Collaborating Online: Digital Strategies for Group Work	Atkins, Anthony	Vol. 1	collaboration, digital, dysfunctional, Google Docs, group, member role, oral presentation, productivity, task evaluation, teamwork, technology, wiki, Wikipedia
Composing the Anthology: An Exercise in Patchwriting	Leary, Christopher	Vol. 1	anthology writing, arrangement, assignment, cut-up, editing, found poetry, memoir writing, patchwriting, peer evaluation, plagiarism, poetry writing, student opinion, student publishing, table of contents, teacher story
Composition as a Write of Passage	Singh-Corcoran, Nathalie	Vol. 2	academic, argument, assessment, composition studies, FYW, knowledge transfer, professional writing, research, rhetoric, rhetorical analysis, WAC, workplace
Critical Thinking in College Writing: From the Personal to the Academic	Dasbender, Gitanjali	Vol. 2	academic, analysis, critical reading, critical thinking, engagement, evaluation, FYW, main idea, primary sources, problem solving, reflection, summarizing
Everything Changes, or Why MLA Isn’t (Always) Right	Walker, Janice	Vol. 2	academic, AP, APA, attribution, citation, credibility, documentation style, information literacy, intellectual property, MLA, new media, plagiarism, quoting, rhetoric, source critique, WID
Finding the Good Argument OR Why Bother With Logic?	Jones, Rebecca	Vol. 1	argumentation, Aristotle, burden of proof, classical rhetoric, closure, complexity, deductive, duality, ethical, ethos, freedom of speech, implicit, inductive, jargon, logical, logos, nonadversarial, pathos, Plato, pragma dialectical, premise, Quintilian, reasoning, relevance, standpoint, Stephen Toulmin, topoi, validity
Finding Your Way In: Invention as Inquiry Based Learning in First Year Writing	Lessner, Steven and Collin Craig	Vol. 1	Anzaldua, audience, bullets, composing, creativity, critical freewriting, exercise, focused freewriting, freewriting, FYW, graphic organizer, inquiry based, invention, outlining, peer evaluation, reader strategy, rhetorical, sample
From Topic to Presentation: Making Choices to Develop Your Writing	Hewett, Beth L.	Vol. 1	author story, brainstorming, composing, drafting, essay writing, peer evaluation, projector, revising, teacher as writer, topic, writer choice
Googlepedia: Turning Information Behaviors into Research Skills	McClure, Randall	Vol. 2	annotated bibliography, focus, Google, Google Scholar, information literacy, Internet research, library databases, preliminary research, research, research paper, source critique, thesis, Wikipedia
How to Read Like a Writer	Bunn, Mike	Vol. 2	active reading, audience, context, critical reading, genre convention, purpose, read like a writer, reading, reading questions, reading to write, writing process
I Need You to Say “I”: Why First Person is Important in College Writing	McKinney Maddalena, Kate	Vol. 1	academic, discourse analysis, exigence, expertise, first person, guidelines, insider, integrity, objectivity, ownership, scholarly, science writing, situational, sophistication, style, viewpoint
Introduction to Primary Research: Observations, Surveys, and Interviews	Driscoll, Dana Lynn	Vol. 2	data collection, ethics, hypothesis, interview, observation, primary research, primary sources, research ethics, research question, researcher bias, sampling, survey
Introduction: Open Source Composition Texts Arrive for College Writers	Cummings, Robert E.	Vol. 1	introduction to the volume, open source, open textbook
Looking for Trouble: Finding Your Way Into a Writing Assignment	Savini, Catherine	Vol. 2	academic, argument, critical thinking, deadline, discourse community, genre, problem solving, questioning, research, success, WAC, writing assignment analysis, writing process
Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)	Boyd, Janet	Vol. 2	audience awareness, colloquial, connotation, context, denotation, ethos, eulogy, euphemism, genre, jargon, logic, logos, pathos, rhetoric, rhetorical appeals, rhetorical situation, tone
Navigating Genres	Dirk, Kerry	Vol. 1	arrangement, form content, genre, genre knowledge, popular music, purpose, rules, situational, thesis statement
On the Other Hand: The Role of Antithetical Writing in First Year Composition Courses	Krause, Steve	Vol. 2	antithesis, argument, audience, debate, opposing arguments, position paper, research, research writing, thesis
Putting Ethnographic Writing in Context	Kahn, Seth	Vol. 2	analysis, authority, context, description, ethics, ethnography, evidence, fieldnotes, fieldwork, inductive reasoning, interview, participant-observation, primary research
Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources	Rosenberg, Karen	Vol. 2	academic, active reading, audience, critical reading, discourse, prior knowledge, reading, reading as joining a conversation, reading to write, rhetorical reading
Reflective Writing and the Revision Process: What Were You Thinking?	Giles, Sandra	Vol. 1	author story, case study, composing, letter to the reader, process, reflection, revising, sample, self-reflection, student-teacher memo, writer intention
Reinventing Invention: Discovery and Investment in Writing	Trim, Michelle D. and Megan Lynn Isaac	Vol. 1	activity, audience, brainstorming, creativity, discovery, genre, group, guidelines, implied reader, individual, interest, invention, needs analysis, problem solving, process, purpose, sample, topic
So You've Got a Writing Assignment. Now What?	Hinton, Corrine E.	Vol. 1	apprehension, argument, assignment, audience, directive verb, emotion, evidence, format, guidelines, interpretation, panic, procrastination, purpose, questioning, resources, sample, stylistic
Storytelling, Narration, and The Who I Am Story	Ramsdell, Catherine	Vol. 2	advertising, character, communication, creative nonfiction, grant writing, literacy narrative, memoir, narrative, narrative discourse, narrative structure, narrative theory, organization, professional writing, story, storytelling, who I am story, word choice
Taking Flight: Connecting Inner and Outer Realities during Invention	Antlitz, Susan E.	Vol. 1	apprehension, composing, compound topics, connection, content, creativity, digital, email, emotion, exercise, graphic organizer, growth, heuristic, ideas, invention, journal writing, meditation, messaging, personal, play, PowerPoint, prayer, private public, procrastination, random words, sample, social, writing ritual
Ten Ways To Think About Writing: Metaphoric Musings for College Writing Students	Reid, E. Shelley	Vol. 2	argument, audience, description, detail, invention, metaphor, purpose, show vs. tell, story, style, writer's block
The Complexity of Simplicity: Invention Potentials for Writing Students	Charlton, Colin	Vol. 2	audience, creativity, critical thinking, draft, feedback, focus, FYW, invention, invention activities, invention questions, inventiveness, rhetoric, writing assignment analysis
The Inspired Writer vs. the Real Writer	Allen, Sarah	Vol. 1	academic, alienation, author story, authoring, Bizzell, composing, inspiration, jargon, motivation, myth, quality, real life, teacher as writer, writer strategy
The Sixth Paragraph: A Re-vision of the Essay	Lynch, Paul	Vol. 2	argument, clarity, concise, essay, interpretation, introduction, Montaigne, personal essay, reflection, thesis, use of I, writing as exploration, writing to learn
Walk, Talk, Cook, Eat: A Guide to Using Sources	Haller, Cynthia R.	Vol. 2	assignment analysis, Burkean parlor, Google, Internet research, library databases, research, research paper, research strategies, source critique, sources, Wikipedia, writing process
What is Academic Writing?	Irvin, L. Lennie	Vol. 1	academic, analysis, argumentation, assignment, audience, closed assignment, communication, complexity, controlled, critical, definition, first person, genius, genre, grammar, interpretation, myth, open assignment, purpose, researching, semi-open assignment, situational
Why Blog? Searching for Writing on the Web	Reid, Alex	Vol. 2	argument, audience, description, essay exam, freewriting, metaphor, paragraph, primary audience, purpose, read like a writer, reader perception, repetition, rhetoric, secondary audience, show vs. tell, weblog, writer's block
Why Visit Your Campus Writing Center?	Rafoth, Ben	Vol. 1	audience, collaboration, conferencing, confidence, motivation, needs analysis, student opinion, tutoring, writing center
Wikipedia Is Good for You!?	Purdy, James P.	Vol. 1	accuracy, changeability, collaboration, dialogic, guidelines, interactive, internet, invention, resources, review writing, revision, term paper, Wikipedia
Writing “Eyeball To Eyeball”: Building A Successful Collaboration	Ingalls, Rebecca	Vol. 2	affinity diagram, collaboration, communication, conflict resolution, creativity, ethics, group theory, innovation, invention, professional writing, project management, reflection, teamwork, WAC, writing process

Beyond the Blank Page: How to write opening paragraphs

2012-07-14T01:54:00.001-07:00

A Curious Opening Reverses Expectations

Are you familiar with the terror of the blank page in the exam room? Or just unsure about your technique in starting an essay? In fact, there are many tried and tested openings that will get your writing off to a confident and winning start.

Although there are infinite possible ways of leading into an essay, blog, or news article, there are some common opening gambits that writers rely on (like a game of chess). Before outlining the Seven Openings, here are some points to think about:

Is your aim to engage the reader by being relevant, creative, and original?

Are you trying to arouse curiosity or to meet expectations?

Are you explaining what’s on offer (like a menu), or offering a taster session?

In a promotional sense you want to encourage the reader to come through the door: to enter your mental world. Some readers are reluctant, suspicious people who need to be coaxed into your space. Remember that your aim is a happy relationship between writer and reader; not a divorce.

Sometime it is helpful to signal or summarize what your topic is, and how you will be approaching it (methodology). In academic essays there is often a well-crafted thesis statement that encapsulates the main argument in one sentence.

1. The Quoted Opening

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis (1916). My transformation happened over three lazy weeks, but it was not any less wonderful... Begin with an impressive quotation from someone who will be recognised by your reader. A well chosen quotation can also have the advantage that it provides an unusual angle on your content. Also, it may hint at the tone and approach you are taking to your topic. In academic essays marks may also be gained for evidence of research. Disadvantages: quotations can be over used (clichés); you are relying on someone else’s work at the outset.

2. The Story Opening

"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948). A story has a universal appeal and everyone wants to know what happens next if there is an element of intrigue. This opening plays on the art of the unexplained: look where I am; how did I arrive at this point. This approach also involves the art of delayed resolution (ending) that we find in jokes or anecdotes. A story that is relevant to the reader also plays on empathy.

3. The Headline Opening

The Times Of India: “We saw the sea coming, we all ran. But God saves little” [28th December 2004]

Read more about 15 of the Most Iconic Newspaper Headlines Ever Printed Cartridge Save Blog by CreativeCloud from the UK's leading supplier of printer cartridges

“We saw the sea coming, we all ran. But God saves little” (The Times Of India, 28 December 2004). This approach keeps coming back to the essay title or the newspaper heading, but offers more detail or clarity. Again the emphasis is on focus and relevance. This approach works wells where the eye-catching headline is not a ready made statement or solution to an issue.

4. The Shocking Opening

Shock tactics may fit well with an eye-catching sensational opening. Often the trick is to reverse normal expectations, turning the world upside down. The element of surprise can be very effective, but it may be difficult to sustain after the initial impact. Build your special effects using rhetorical drama (pattern, pace, rhythm, alliteration) and memorable literary devices (such as simile or metaphor).

5. The Interrogatory Opening

This opening relies on asking questions that engage the reader. This may involve empathy (Don’t you just hate daytime marketing calls? Why do we want to laugh in a moment of crisis?); or it may interrogate the title/heading in a curious or surprising way (Why do most disasters happen on Thursday mornings?). But too many questions leave the reader frustrated or perhaps impatient to hear the answers. Avoid this problem by asking unusual, thought-provoking questions.

6. The Summary Opening

This opening offers a preview of the remainder of the essay. It’s rather like a menu that explains what to expect and offers an insight into your approach (how the steak will be cooked; is the food spicy). The risk is that you give away all the surprises at the outset. So try to avoid going into too much detail at this stage. Better to give a sense of the general scope of your project, rather than trying to tick every box.

7. The Strange, but True, Opening

This is also known as the newsworthy or factual opening. ‘In Great Britain in 2012 it is reported that 3,678 babies swallowed an iPhone. All but one survived. This is his story...’ Common features of this approach deploy data, or statistics, but also develop a human angle on the arithmetic. Again, eye-catching news reverses expectations: the "Man Bites Dog" Rule.

8. The Connoisseur Opening

This opening does not fit any of the above categories, or it is a hybrid strategy that deploys several styles of opening. Sometimes it is a low-key opening that marks the innovator. In 1913, Marcel Proust began his epic novel sequence, "For a long time, I went to bed early." Swann's Way. (tr. Lydia Davis).

Tips to Develop Your Style:

Use a notebook, or simply cut and paste opening sentences and paragraphs which in your view are engaging and appealing. Also note down why you think they are effective. It’s also useful to make a list of your own categories of opening. For instance, what are there differences between factual items and literary fiction? What else is required in an essay for school or college? Why are some openings longer than others?

It is worthwhile examining existing models of great writing, but with practice you will craft engaging openings that bear your personal stamp of creative genius.

But please do contact me if you want to use this article as a guest post on your blog.

With attribution offered I seldom refuse!

The Citizen in the 21st Century - Conference

2012-06-25T03:40:00.001-07:00

http://internetsavvy.wikispaces.com/

1st Global Conference: The Citizen in the 21st Century

From : Dr. Rob Fisher/ Inter-Disciplinary.Net

Monday 4th February – Wednesday 6th February 2013

Sydney, Australia

Call for Presentations:

In its most basic conceptualisation, citizenship is thought of as the rights and responsibilities that an individual has, and is owed to, a national government. The political concept of ‘citizenship’, however, is one that has been contested from its very beginning: from above, it has been a mechanism of control and surveillance; while from below, it is has been used as a tool for resistance and claims for rights and representation.
In the 21st century, citizenship continues to be a site of contestation as contemporary governments attempt to find a balance between the rights and responsibilities of the populations they are representing. This has been complicated by the changing nature of citizenship: it can no longer be thought of as a linear and vertical relationship between an individual and a civic agency, but one of horizontal relationship that is a function of not only the way one relates to civic institutions, but the relationships of those around them.

This, in part, is a result of a changing governance system as corporations, private service providers, non government organizations, religious bodies, informal networks (such as the environmental movement) and supra national bodies increasingly compete with national governments for influence over the lives of individuals. This is further combined and complicated with changing migration patterns – both within and across borders, as well as dual citizenship, new technologies that impact all aspects of our lives, changing markers of adulthood, success and loyalty, as well as the rise of temporary and precarious workforces. We also need to consider a changing media landscape, the rise of a neoliberal capitalism that holds no national loyalty and the failure of a number of contemporary states to serve the interests of their citizens.

As a consequence we have seen the emergence of what has been described as ‘the heterogeneous citizen’ (Arvanitakis 2009): that is, any possibility of describing a citizenry in a homogenous fashion, if it ever was possible, has now been wiped away. Further, citizenship now must not only be understood from a political perspective, but there are also cultural, social, environmental and economic dimensions.

The aim of this conference is to understand the emergence of the complex, diverse and heterogenous citizen within the contemporary world. This is a citizen who is increasingly asked to carry the risks as an individual as solidarity institutions and the welfare state have receded from the public sphere and frequently lost credibility. A generation of theorists have attempted to understand this flues environment, from TH Marshall’s discussion of citizenship and class, to Ulrich Beck’s risk society, and Engin Isin’s neurotic citizen, each is wrestling with the many changes which have only briefly been touched on here. As such, our starting point is that citizenship studies must take an interdisciplinary perspective, both crossing and combining the political, sociological, cultural, economic and community development academic disciplines to better gauge the developments of the contemporary citizen.

Presentations, papers, performances and artworks are called for, but not limited to, the following topics:

What constitutes the 21st Century Citizen?
What negotiations does it undergo in relation to corporations, private service providers, non government organisations, religious bodies, informal networks (such as the environmental movement) and supra national bodies?
What is its relationship to new media and technologies with their changing markers of adulthood, success and loyalty?
How the citizen of the 21st Century maintain any sense of control over their life or a sense of agency to influence the world around them.
How does the citizen of the 21st century understand the various systems and bureaucracies that influence their lives?
How have democratic deficits and surpluses been transferred to the surpluses and deficits of citizenship?
How does the citizen of the 21st century maintain a sense of agency, if any?
In this way, we need to look beyond the legal and political dimensions and also understand the social and cultural practices of citizenship:
~How do we feel about our political and legal rights; are we engaged in formal politics?
~Do we think we have the power (or have the ‘agency’) to change the things we do not like? ~Can we make our voices heard?

All these dimensions of citizenship are continuously changing: not only because of a changing legal environment, but also cultures changes, from young people experiencing changing transitions to adulthood, to the emergence of new technologies and structural economic adjustments, all influence the way we relate to citizenship.

It is our hope that a number of these interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary dialogues will be ongoing and that ultimately a series of related cross context research projects will be developed. It is also anticipated that these will support and encourage the establishment of useful collaborative networks, and the development, presentation, and publication of research materials.

What to Send:

300 word abstracts or presentation proposals should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract.
E-mails should be entitled: Citizen1 Abstract Submission.
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs
James Arvanitakis: J.Arvanitakis@uws.edu.au
Rob Fisher: citizen1@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the Persons programme of research projects. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting.
For further details of the project, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/persons/the-cit...
For further details of the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/persons/the-cit...

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.

cfp categories:

african-american

american

classical_studies

cultural_studies_and_historical_approaches

ecocriticism_and_environmental_studies

eighteenth_century

ethnicity_and_national_identity

film_and_television

gender_studies_and_sexuality

general_announcements

humanities_computing_and_the_internet

interdisciplinary

medieval

modernist studies

poetry

popular_culture

postcolonial

professional_topics

religion

renaissance

romantic

science_and_culture

theatre

travel_writing

twentieth_century_and_beyond

victorian

Ten Routes for Community Film Distribution

2012-04-20T16:00:00.000-07:00

Open Air Cinema

1. How Content and Style determine the Target Group

It is alleged that very few community film makers start out with a clear sense of how their finished film will be distributed. This is the vexed question of the target audience. It also brings into play questions about the content of the film – the product – and whether it is fit for purpose in terms of its spectators. That means that the distribution agenda should always already be built into your production and planning process.

There’s clearly no point filming disturbing adult scenes that will be unusable for a target group of children. And will people really sit through a two hour community film on any topic, unless they were major participants throughout? Is your film relevant to a wider community, and how can you get it out there?

Here are some options to think about:

Evaluating Distribution Options

2. Broadcasters: TV, Cable and Satellite (including Free-View Services).

Apart from specialist community channels, public broadcasting and regional or local TV it is quite difficult to get a full-length documentary of 10 mins or more broadcast. That said, a rough cut of your film might be enough to gain funding or a commission for a more ambitious project. In the UK, First Light (Yonger people), The Community Channel and regional screen groups (see Creative England) will be able to advise and support you in your work. Bear in mind also that news programmes will sometimes use short clips of relevant work if it fits in with current issues. Avoid spending vast resources for this option unless you’ve already had firm interest supported by a contract or a commission.

3. On line opportunities.

There are many opportunities to make your film available globally through distribution sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. Also check out web tv channels and the broader training opportunities that they provide locally. ChewTV is a good example of a regional provider. Don’t forget that you can also send a microfilm to a mobile – excellent for bite sized community films that could have a viral impact. Caution: always check that your participants gave full permission for footage to be used for wider global dissemination. Ensure that you have not provided opportunities for people to poke fun at your valued contributors.

4. Private Screenings.

These tend to be for smaller groups of invited people. Private screenings are very good for special screenings where you are trying to reach and have an impact on decision-makers. Ensure that you provide enough time for discussion after your screening. If you have the resources it’s a good idea to provide additional information such as a press or media pack. It is possible that your film was intended from the outset only for a private screening, and the consent of the participants was based on that. Marginalised or stigmatised groups may be happy with this and only this outcome: a limited screening. But be sure to brief your participants on the reaction to the screening, or ask them to come along as advocates or witnesses. Real voices supporting virtual voices is a recipe for authentic engagement and social change.

5. DVD and Tape.

It’s now relatively inexpensive to duplicate your film on a dvd. But remember that there is an environmental and resource cost for design and printing, and for postage and packaging. If you really think that there is a for-sale market then dvds are a good solution. Think about how much people will really want to pay, and be honest about your costs in terms of time and money. A DVD short run always makes sense as an archival record for the participants and as a glossy product for the funders to exhibit to their colleagues to justify their investment in you. But is a trophy what you really want?!

6. Public or Community Screenings.

These are perhaps the primary target for your community film, and an opportunity to invite friends of the participants, their families, the local community, funders and local decision-makers. Ask someone to introduce your film briefly and leave time after the film for formal and/or informal discussion and debate. If you can film the audience’s reactions you will have further evidence that will contribute to your community project. Think carefully about the timing (day/evening) and the location. Will the community film be screening across a target group of homes, or will you use a mobile van? If you are screening in a village hall, will your film be integrated with an existing group, meeting, or event? Will you be joining up with a themed film festival? Why not check out the International Community Film Forum ? Or Media Matters ?

7. Social Media.

Do not miss the opportunity to align your video with your website, blog, and twitter accounts. These will provide a context for the community film and also an opportunity for people to respond to your film. Dialogue and debate will help to build a community around your film. The combination of social media and digital distribution is now very common, powerful and effective. This route may be the beginning of a long journey to start making money, or just getting noticed.

8. Engagement. Participants are your best co-distributors.

The product should make sense to its target audience. It should be on a level with them – not talking down to them. If children are involved in making the film – as they should be in a genuine participatory project – then you will be less likely to fall into the ‘unsuitability’ trap if the film is aimed at children. Similarly, your evidence must make sense; it must be pitched at the right level. By all means interview an academic or a nuclear physicist or and SEO Consultant. But ensure that the answers are presented in an intelligible fashion, avoiding jargon and private languages! Your aim is to include, include, include. Use clarification if necessary: ‘So you’re saying that …’ Your participants are the best form of quality control in this regard, and they will be able to tell you who they think should be a priority for viewing the film. A youth participant will keep you alert to youth relevance. Please add any comments below.

9. Film Societies

In Britain British Federation of Film Societies is the national organisation for the development and support of the film society and community cinema movement in the UK. They offer a wide range of services and resources dedicated to the needs of community cinemas. See also the International Federation of Film Societies.

10. Crowdfunding

"The crowd funding approach has long precedents in the sphere of charity. It is receiving renewed attention from both traditional and social entrepreneurs now that social media, online communities and micropayment technology make it straightforward to engage and secure donations or soon, investments, from a group of potentially interested supporters at very low cost." [Wikipedia]

Can you Imagine a Different World ?

Digital Storytelling and Mind Weaving Women

2012-04-18T11:11:00.001-07:00

Weaving was a complex process and often it was an activity undertaken by women as part of their domestic duties. The most famous weaver in Western classical culture was Odysseus' wife Penelope. To fend off unwanted suitors during her husband's absence, she tells them that she will marry only when she has finished weaving a funeral shroud for he husband's father Laertes.

But each night she undoes part of her completed work in order to delay being forced to accept one of the suitors. Her 'cunning' (metis) is a form of knowledge, a kind of artifice, and demonstrates the relationship between the craft of the storyteller and the weaving of the narrative cloth. She is similar and different to Helen, who also weaves; but in that case the heroic deeds depicted are a representation of her story.

The complex weaving process began to be automated during the nineteenth century and it was from that technology that the first punch card 'program' was developed. Punch cards were used in early computing, and I still recall using them at my high school in Leeds UK in 1982.

So gender, weaving, and computing are actually intertwined. Moreover, the multiple timelines in our digital editing software also allow us to weave together multiple strands.

Today, digital storytelling is being explored as the most meaningful and memorable way of organizing knowledge (curating), as well as a means to motivate and inspire others in business and in education. Storytelling builds on trust and may involve a 'storylistening trance' if it is successful in gaining the reader or listener's full attention. Effective storytelling requires sustained immersion. Listeners sometimes report being in a timeless state when they are wrapt by the story.

Digital storytelling weaves together sequences of digital images, layers of music or sounds, and /or voiced commentaries. It is these multiple elements working together that making digital storytelling such a powerful means of communicating a multi-media message. Easy-to-use software means that complex and intricate or detailed narratives can be composed deploying material gather from a variety of people or sources.

At its most powerful effective storytelling depends on familiarity and novelty, on enchantment and surprise. Elements of good storytelling can be learned as a set of craft skills, but great storytelling is quite rare, and is quite difficult to define or explain.

Both in terms of the variety of source materials and the multiple authorship roles that can be accommodated, digital storytelling presents opportunities for collective and collaborative community activity. There is also the risk, with intricate materials and infinite subtlety passing through too many hands that the core message(s) is lost.

If your aim is advertising or advocacy, or promotional fund-raising then you will want to have one clear message that has a lasting impact. Remember that Penelope devised a simple story that was quite effective in its own right. Her husband also, as we later learn, was the brilliant narrator of own his own fantastic and marvellous adventures. Both genders participate in the weaving of narrative.

But Penelope's weaving is part of a larger weaving on an epic scale. So enjoy complexity, take your time and weave a delightful, multi-stranded, marvellous canvas. Tapestries (see Bayeux) recorded history and served as a collective memory in much the same way as the oral epic poem which served as the memory and memorial of a culture's history, its customs and traditions.

We now know that the great foundational classics of the Western tradition - Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey were in fact the amalgamation of a range of storytelling. In ancient times, 'Literature' was more collective and collaborative than the romantic notion of the solitary genius.

With modern technologies digital storytelling opens up opportunities for collaboration, parody, transmedia transformations, mashing and mixing. Mind weaving is the warp and weft of digital storytelling.

* * * * * * * * * *

But please do contact me if you want to use this article as a guest post on your blog.

With attribution offered I seldom refuse!

How to 'republish' free material from Wikipedia IS a Corporate Scandal

2012-04-17T00:57:00.000-07:00

How profitable, or ethical, is it to republish work that is available for free on wikipedia?

I was surprised and rather angry that our free wikipedia article called "Community Film" has now appeared as a "book" edited by Zheng Cirino. But Duc Publishing is just an imprint of VDM Publishing. (See below)

Has anyone come across this 'writer' and 'editor' of over 4500 books? Would you spend £25 on what you can have for free? Take a look on Amazon.

And the cover bears the curious imprint 'Books for Africa'. OK. So this is about social mission and redistribution, right?

I would be curious to see how they reference and attribute my work based on the Wikipedia Edit / page history.

But I don't think I need to waste £25 reading my own work, which is already available for free!

(Even the Product Description simply copies my words from the opening of the Wikipedia article on COMMUNITY FILM)

Here is what one commentator (erich666) said on Slashdot

"In recent months a flood of so-called books have been appearing in Amazon's catalog. VDM Publishing's imprints Alphascript and Betascript Publishing have listed over 57,000 titles, adding at least 10,000 in the previous month alone. These books are simply collections of linked Wikipedia articles put into paperback form, at a cost of 40 cents a page or more. These books seem to be computer-generated, which explains the peculiar titles noted such as 'Vreni Schneider: Annemarie Moser-Pröll, FIS Alpine Ski World Cup, Winter Olympic Games, Slalom Skiing, Giant Slalom Skiing, Half Man Half Biscuit.' Such titles do have the marketing effect of turning up in many different searches. There is debate on Wikipedia about whether their 'VDM Publishing' page should contain the words 'fraud' or 'scam.' VDM Publishing's practice of reselling Wikipedia articles appears to be legal, but is ethically questionable. Amazon customers have begun to post 1-star reviews and complain. Amazon's response to date has been, 'As a retailer, our goal is to provide customers with the broadest selection possible so they can find, discover, and buy any item they might be seeking.' The words 'and pay us' were left out. Amazon carries, as a Googled guess, 2 million different book titles, so VDM Publishing is currently 1/35th of their catalog, and rapidly growing."

Finally I note this comment from Geoff Brigham

"The creators in the free-knowledge community are in fact copyright holders, just like the creators in the media industry, but unlike most industries, creators in the free-knowledge community volunteer to promote progress and innovation by releasing their content under a free license that provides their creations to the world for no cost."

See

The power of free knowledge

A Blog Tool Kit for Digital Community Media

2012-03-30T23:52:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that's over two years of blogs.

Here are some of the most popular posts from the 80+ published :

18 Advantages of visual auto-ethnography for resea...

Social Media, Revolution and Historical Consciousn...

Reflections on social media and 'anarchy' in Birmi...

Civil Society Groups and Volunteer Film Projects

Our 3-minute film guide

Film Editing for Beginners – Understanding the Pro...

Radical Origins of the 'Big Society' ?

30 Tips to help you make an Award Winning Film on ...

What is Community Film ?

30 Ways to Put the Community Into Film ...

India's answer to Hollywood and No-Budget film pro...

A Recipe for Auteur Film Directors (14-point toolk...

Participatory Video - the role of the Trainer and ...

Beyond CinemaScope and Technicolor: the World of A...

Towards an Imperfect Cinema

Worldwide Community Film Screenings

Postcolonial and Transnational Cinema

11 Laws of Viral Video - Part 1