Ben is a student at UTS talking about the different areas of his life including his Post graduate studies, web design, community worker, activist. Specifically looking at the use of blogs within a refugee context while trying to address the different digital divide issues.
StoryBox is about literacy, IT, English and public space, as part of the work he wants to move beyond training to a more social engagement. They are trying to generate new critical knowledge.
Ben has previously done work in a process called “Digital Story Telling” voice overs on a multimedia slide show. Most of these end in a high climax where the presenter has overcome the issues being discussed and everything is positive. He is looking at it blogs could provide a different, yet complimentary, approach and develop a deeper connection with the story telling. Essentially the whole concept of a conversation.
He looked at blogs as a method to be anonymous but being able to express oneself in a real sense. Many of the kids blogged about trivial life events, but also used trivial type language to describe terrible events. Some of them created new ways of writing to express how they feel, the vocabularies cross over each other. A concept discussed was “Neveryday Like” activities that are hardly an ordinary life but by the same token it is now heroic.
Overall a very interesting perspective on how the conversation is being extended within teenage culture.
Both of the this presentations and the one from Yuh Huann Tan & Eng Hui Teo (the Singaporing teachers) are at a certain level researching further what makes students write more in blogs rather than using traditional pen and paper. Which from an education perspective is very interesting.
Michael Specht 