Birgitte Holm Sørensen

Introduction: Gender and new media

In the 1990s and early 2000s the Nordic countries have, like many other countries, experienced a minor revolution in media technology that has profoundly affected work relations, everyday routines, communication, interpersonal relationships and education, among other things. The most recent survey of computer dissemination within the Nordic area thus shows that 95%–97% of the younger generations in the Nordic countries have access to a home computer and that between 73% and 85% have internet access at home (SAFT 2003). These figures illustrate how new media is no longer a distant technology but works as an integrated factor in our everyday lives, in short, during the last decade or so we have been domesticating technology to the extent that it has become our own (Lie and Sørensen 1996). Needless to say, the new spaces created by the domestication of new media are also gendered spaces or even gendered divides, in the sense that the issue of technology is often closely intertwined with traditional conceptions of gender. Most obviously, technology and computer science have generally been constructed as masculine domains that work to exclude or marginalize women. In technological contexts it seems that women have once more lost the struggle for representation in patriarchal domains, in spite of the fact that virtual environments are often conceptualized as gender-neutral spaces, free of the “complications” of materiality and embodiment. The question that is often asked in gender and new media research therefore is how the interrelatedness of traditional gender conceptions and new media affects the way that women can engage with and act through information technology. Are women and girls in fact disinterested or non-savvy users or do we need to redefine technological tools and environments in order to counteract technological determinism? How do we challenge the gender biases embedded in technologies that at times seem to reinforce traditional gender binaries? Whereas questions of representation and access must be central to studies on gender and new media in democratic societies, the discourse on patriarchal hegemony and female marginalization may, however, be challenged in a number of ways. First of all, as can be read in Charlotte Kroløkke’s article in the present issue of NORA, “Grrl explorers of the World Wild Web”, women are encountering patriarchal forms of control in virtual spaces with discursive resistance. As Kroløkke illustrates, grrls are 125 In tr od uc ti on N O R A no . 3 20 03 , V ol um e 11

Formalized Informal Learning: ICT and Learning for the 21st Century

Longitudinal research projects into social practices are both subject to and capture changes in society, meaning that research is conducted in a fluid context and that new research questions appear during the project’s life cycle. In the present study emerging new performances and uses of ICT are examined and the relation between network society competences, learners’ informal learning strategies and ICT in formalized school settings over time is studied. The authors find that aspects of ICT like multimodality, intuitive interaction design and instant feedback invites an informal bricoleur approach. When integrated into certain designs for teaching and learning, this allows for Formalized Informal Learning and support is found for network society competences building.

Serious Games and English as a Foreign Language in Primary School: A Policy Perspective

In this chapter, we use the example of a recent study of a game-based platform for English teaching and learning (http://www.mingoville.com) to discuss the role of game-based learning in primary school viewed from the perspective of policy. We understand English teaching and learning as an increasingly significant aspect of the ways in which nation states participate and compete in global education contexts and how they forge educated citizens. In addition to this, we argue that digital media often are conceptualised by government policies as agents of change and reform that connect strongly with the aim of educating competent English speakers for the global community. In this chapter, we shall focus mainly on data which have been produced in connection with a research project called Serious Games on a Global Market Place (2007–2011). Data have been collected at various levels of national and local government through interviews with actors involved in policymaking. We approach the issue of policy through three case studies of educational policy in Denmark, Portugal and Vietnam. These case studies are interpreted through a variety of primarily anthropological theories that understand policy as complex articulations of cultural and social ideas of the educated person [Levinson & Holland. (1996). The cultural production of the educated person: An introduction. Albany: State University of New York Press; Shore & Wright. (1997). Introduction. Policy: A new field of anthropology. In Shore & Wright (Eds.), Anthropology of policy. New York: Routledge].

Dansk børnefjernsyn? - JA TAK

Det var med spaending, at born og foraeldre i 1988 imodesa TV2. Ville der med denne nye kanal komme spaendende borne- og ungdoms- programmer, produceret af de mange unge producenter, som - med tillid til entreprisemodellen - stod klar i kulissen? En sammenligning mellem borne-TV pa DR og TV2 viser, at TV2 ikke har levet op til forventningerne. Tvaertimod. TV2 tager ikke reelt bor- nene alvorligt og medtaenker kun i ringe omfang borns udviklingstrin og erfaringer. Det gor derimod DR. Savel kvantitativt som kvalitativt er der forskel mellem programfladen for born og unge pa de to kana- ler, men - set i lyset af udviklingen af bornefjernsyn pa de internatio- nale kanaler, produceret over laveste kommercielle faellesnaevners laest - ma man saette sin lid til dansk borne- og ungdomstv, som det ser ud i dag pa DR, og som det KUNNE se ud pa TV2.