Volume 4 - issue 3 - 2008

E-publishing and multimodalities

img2220In the literature of e-publishing there has been a consistent call from the advent of e-publishing on, until now, to explore new ways of expressing ideas through the new media. It has been claimed that the Internet opens an alley of possibilities and opportunites for publishing that will change the ways of publishing once and for all. In the area of publication of e-journals, however, the call for changes has received very modest responds.

The thing is, it appears, that the conventional paper journal has a solid grip on the accepted formats of publishing. In a published research paper Mayernik (2007) explaines some of the reasons for that. Although pioneers of e-publishing suggested various areas where academic publishing could be expanded on, the opportunities given are scarsely used. Mayernik outlines "Non-linearity", "Multimedia", "Multiple use", "Interactivity" and "Rapid Publication" as areas of expansion for the academic e-journal. (2007). The paper deserves a thorough reading in itself, and I will briefly quote from his conclusion: "It is likely that the traditional linear article will continue to be the prevalent format for scholarly journals, both print and electronic, for the foreseeable future, and while electronic features will garner more and more use as technology improves, they will continue to be used to supplement, and not supplant, the traditional article."

This is a challenging situation. If we accept the present dominant style of presenting scientific literature, we would use our energy best in seeking a way of improving the efficiency of that communication style. The use of multimedia, non-linearity etc. would perfect the present state, but still keep the scientific article as the main template. It is very unlikely that scientific publication will substitute the scholarly article with unproven alternatives. What we face is a rather conservative style of remediation that blurs the impact of the new media, - or "transparency" if we apply Bolter and Grusins typology to the case in question. A radical use of those elements that Meyernik outline would imply that the other form of remediation was employed: hypermediation.

Hypermediation is the opposite strategy: [...] "A style of visual representation whose goal is to remind the viewer of the medium" (Bolter and Grusin 2001, 272).Both hypermedia as well as transparent media have the desire to transcend the limits of representation by trying to produce reality - in a profound sense. But the reality they seek to produce, is - using transparent immediacy - trying to disguise the remediating medium. A vast majority of e-journals show very little signs of being different from the paper journal. Hypermediation, however, tries to make the media more visible (Fritze 2004). To hypermediate the conventional scientific medium - the scholarly article - one is not only challenging the establishment, but also the imagination of how a contestant might look like. Mayernik uses the five elements of "non-linearity" etc. as analytic categories for the present situation. But in the present context of Web 2.0, they are mashed together and expanded by social networking. E-publishing must learn from for instance Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn in the ways they are able to facilitate communities, and Second Life in its ability to produce the experience of presence. And still there is the need to carry on the process of keeping the quality of the acquired and presented knowledge at the presumed high standard it has today. These are important challenges to all e-publications, but only a few journals show interest in meeting the challenge. We, in Seminar.net, think we are willing to face the challenge and produce a different type of publication.

In this issue we present four significant papers. Marianne Aars  presents a paper titled: "Developing professional competence by internet-based reflection ", in which she aims at giving an example of how practical, clinical knowledge can be explored by the use of a tailor-made Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-tool. In constructing content to this particular internet- based resource a clinician expert physiotherapist contributed with a detailed analysis of her own practice and its underpinning rationale, displayed by film and text simultaneously. The paper investigates the ways that led to how her "looking into her own practice" with "critical friends", mediated in a transparent mode showed a valuable learning potential for herself and others. Trine Ungermann Fredskild also presents a paper related to the health professions, namely nursing. In her paper "Distance learning students in "communities of practice" she investigates differences in attitudes among nursing students toward particular ways of performing their studies. She compares nursing education offered in three different learning programmes: full time, distance education students and credit transfer students and how they cope with issues of independent study, discipline of studying and cooperative activities. She demonstrates significant differences on a variety of factors and relates this also to how they use their respective Learning Management Systems.

Tobias Werler presents a different style of educational reflection. In his paper "On the hidden curriculum of the mouse click: An anthropologically drama " he explores the philosophical and anthropological grounds of why media and ICT changes the ways we experience and learn in the digital age. It pinpoints the "click of the mouse" as one of the basic control options of how man and machine interact. Last we present a quantitative study of how Norwegian boys and girls use the Internet and mobile phones. In the paper titled: "Gender profiles of Internet and mobile phone use among Norwegian adolescents" the  group of authors, Reidulf G. Watten, Jo Kleiven, Knut Inge Fostervold, Halvor Fauskeand Frode Volden, look into gender profiles in the use of ICT among Norwegian teenagers. The results showed that Norwegian girls used the internet far more often for social activities such as chatting and e-mail while boys preferred to use it for entertainment and computational activities, such as gaming, e-commerce, viewing multimedia,, and for programming. Girls used their mobile phones far more often for texting than boys, who used their mobile phones more for technical functions. 

Bolter, J.D. and Grusin, R. (1999) . Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.

Fritze, Y. (2004) Mediet gør en forskel : en komparativ undersøgelse af kommunikation i nærundervisning og fjernundervisning. Avhandling (Ph.D.) - Dansk Institut for Gymnasiepædagogik, Syddansk Universitet, 2004
(http://www.sdu.dk/~/media/BBA803F293B04FDD9D573E1E325E03CF.ashx)

 Mayernik, M. (2007) The Prevalence of Additional Electronic Features in Pure E-Journals, Journal of Electronic Publishing, vol. 10, no. 3, Fall 2007

 


 

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Article list vol 8. - issue 2

1. Hugo Nordseth - Adopting digital skills in an international project in teacher education

2. Ragnhild Nilsen - Digital Network as a Learning Tool for Health Sciences Students

3. Yvonne Fritze & Yngve Nordkvelle (Editor) - Online dating and education

4. Siv Oltedal - Developing Contextual Knowledge Arenas in the Global Classroom

Call for papers

Seminar.net welcomes papers and reviews for upcoming issues, and you find guidelines for authors here. Our scope is to publish refereed articles dealing with research into theoretical or practical aspects related to the learning of adolescents, adults and elderly. A vital field of interest for seminar.net is the use of media technology in lifelong learning.

Monitor 2011 - The digital state of the Norwegian school

Lillian Gran

Department of Education and Social Work
Lillehammer University College
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Review of the national digital survey

A yearly digital survey committed in compulsory school in Norway

Keywords: The Digital condition of the Norwegian compulsory school, motivated students, technology, media, digital natives

Monitor 2011(Egeberg, 2012) is a submission on the fifth quantitative survey of the Norwegian digital health situation completed by Egeberg et al. The survey is a qualified comparison foundation with international surveys on digital competence such as, e.g. PISA. Since 2003, the digital surveys have been completed every other year in Norway to identify indications on schools' digital state. The respondents who were chosen are a selection of school leaders, teachers and student in the 8th and 9th grades and level two in upper secondary school. The submissions research and results are also organized according to these three areas of participants.

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Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories: Self-Representations in New Media

Knut Lundby (red.)

Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 2008.

Reviewed by
Jill Walker Rettberg
Associate Professor of Digital Culture
University of Bergen
http://jilltxt.net

We live in an age in which more and more of us are creating our own "digital stories". In 2008, 18% of Norwegian 16-24 year olds were recorded as being active bloggers over the previous three months (Statistics Norway, "ICT in households", 2nd quarter 2008) while more than 2/3 of American teenagers have uploaded self-produced material to the Internet, in the form of YouTube videos, photographs, blogs, stories, remixes etc. (Pew Internet). The numbers of these "user-made" cultural productions are growing year by year and spreading from the younger generation to us adults, who are now the group most increasingly represented on Facebook. In blogs and on Facebook the distinction between amateur and professional is largely meaningless.

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Story Circle: Digital Storytelling Around the World.

John Hartley and Kelly McWilliam (eds.)

Publisher: Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009

Reviewed by
Birte Hatlehol
PhD student in Media Education
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
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The anthology Story Circle is an international study of digital storytelling that discusses the phenomenon in a global context. The book contains 20 articles with contributions from a number of key specialists with wide-ranging experience in the field of DST.

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Moving Media Studies - Remediation Revisited

Edited by Heidi Philipsen and Lars Qvortrup

Publisher: Samfundslitteratur Press: Frederiksberg Press, 2007.

Reviewed by
Stephen Dobson
Professor
Lillehammer University College
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Introduction
Two questions can be asked: firstly, not do we need another book on remediation, but why? And secondly, if this is the case, what kind of book should it be? This review spirals around these questions.
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Global perspectives on E-learning.

Rhetoric and reality by A. A. Carr-Chellman (Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2005

Reviewed by
Dr. J. Ola Lindberg
Department of Education, Mid Sweden University
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Dr. Anders D. Olofsson
Department of Education, Umeå University
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It seems suitable to begin this review by giving a brief description of the context in which the texts of this book are produced. If it fails to be regarded as a description, then we hope at least it can be regarded as one possible understanding of the context. When contextualizing a book, a good idea seems to be to start with a few words about the editor, Alison A. Carr-Chellman.
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