Marion Walton

The Web and Information Literacy: Scaffolding the use of Web Sources in a Project-Based Curriculum.

In this article we describe and discuss a three-year case study of a course in web literacy, part of the academic literacy curriculum for first-year engineering students at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Because they are seen as ‘practical’ knowledge, not theoretical, information skills tend to be devalued at university and rendered invisible to the students. In particular, web-searching skills are problematic, given the challenges that the Web poses to academic values and traditional research practices. Consequently, the technical skills of web searching are often taught separately from academic curricula or left entirely unaddressed. We illustrate an alternative, integrated approach to the development of this aspect of information literacy. We apply a critical action research methodology to document, evaluate and reflect on students’ use of evaluative frameworks. Focusing on the facilitation of critical and evaluative use of the Web for exploratory learning, we interrogate the role of ‘cultural capital’ and evaluate the effectiveness of the scaffolding provided by the course design. We find important connections between developing knowledge of academic discourse and successful academic use of the Web, and note that, for students to transfer their skills to a range of contexts, these skills will require sustained attention throughout the undergraduate curriculum. We present evidence that the most effective strategies integrate everyday practical knowledge of research techniques with teaching about academic discourse and building students’ knowledge in a specific domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultures, literacy, and the web: dimensions of information "scent"

Cecil Rhodes wanted to build a railroad from Cape Town to Cairo in order to subjugate the continent. Now we want to build an information super-highway from Cape to Cairo which will liberate the continent [11].

‘Grand Theft South Africa’: games, literacy and inequality in consumer childhoods

Discussions of ‘game literacy’ focus on the informal learning and literacies associated with games but seldom address the diversity in young peoples gaming practices, and the highly differentiated technologies of digital gaming in use. We use available survey data to show how, in South Africa, income inequalities influence consumption patterns, shaping experiences of digital games. Two case studies of young peoples play practices involving digital games in Cape Town suggest the fragmentation and inequalities of contemporary play practices and the need for a more inclusive understanding of digital gaming. Mobile phones offer more accessibility than other digital gaming platforms and local appropriations include display of micro-commodities, concealment of outdated technology, control strategies and deletion of functionality. Young people move between multiple overlapping communicative spaces and hence complex cultural articulations arise when global game narratives are appropriated to make sense of racial otherness, crime and politics in South Africa. Since educational curricula cater for highly fractured publics, we ask whether it is advisable to speak of ‘game literacy’. We suggest the need to validate less strongly mediatised forms of play, and to address diverse identification practices in consumer culture, including prestige and status as well as othering and shame.

Cheating Literacy: The Limitations of Simulated Classroom Discourse in Educational Software for Children

This paper presents a multimodal discourse analysis of children using ‘drill-and-practice’ literacy software at a primary school in the Western Cape, South Africa. The childrens interactions with the software are analysed. The software has serious limitations which arise from the global political economy of the educational software industry. The package was structured around the UK National Curriculums standardised literacy testing, and then adapted or ‘localised’ for use in South Africa. In the localisation process, details of content and language are customised, but the coded structure of the package (together with its educational assumptions) remains essentially unchanged. The childrens interactions with the localised program are analysed as a simulation of classroom discourse. Despite the obvious limitations of the software, the study shows the children constructing their own contextual meanings from the rules of the package, and learning to interact with them as a rule-governed text. Their troubleshooting and cheating exploits are a source of pleasure to them, as they focus on the softwares game-like economy of scores and marks.

Social distance, mobility and place: global and intimate genres in geo-tagged photographs of Guguletu, South Africa

This paper documents locative photographic practices on photo-sharing sites Flickr and The Grid and analyses how geo-tagged photographs of the Guguletu in South Africa represent interpersonal meanings and social distance. Distinct communicative genres are associated with (i) a tourist view of Guguletu shared via Flickr, and (ii) intimate social exchanges by residents meeting online contacts via mobile social network, The Grid. These differences are a reminder that access to mobility and uses of mobile media vary according to socio-economic status, and that priorities for the design of mobile image-sharing systems may differ in this context, where visual interactional genres and playful interactions appear to supercede locative uses of systems such as The Grid.

CHI 2002 development consortium: a South African perspective

One of the main objectives of the CHI 2002 Development Consortium was to bring South African HCI practitioners and their international counterparts together to explore the challenges of creating human-centered computing products in multicultural societies. While the emphasis was mainly on the unique conditions and needs in South African society and economy, discussions also explored multicultural experiences common among developing nations like South Africa, Brazil and India.

The Scripted Sandbox: Children’s Gameplay and Ludic Gendering

Game theorist Roger Caillois introduces his classic discussion of the pleasures of “mimicry” or playful performance with a short vignette showing how children imitate adult behavior through play: For children, the aim is to imitate adults. This explains the success of the toy weapons and miniatures which copy the tools, engines, arms, and machines used by adults. The little girl plays her mother’s role as cook, laundress, and ironer. The boy makes believe he is a soldier, musketeer, policeman, pirate, cowboy, Martian, etc. (Caillois, 1961/2001, p. 21)

Design notations for creating virtual environments

This paper proposes a new design notation to improve communication between members of teams creating virtual environments (VEs). Commonly, programmers and designers creating VEs do not use the same formalisms or design techniques. Consequently, ambiguity and misunderstandings can bedevil VE design and production processes. After teaching a selection of specification techniques to design students, we realized that we needed to create our own formalism. We used this notation with designers who found it useful and intuitive. More importantly, programmers were able to interpret the formalism more accurately and reduce the time required to create virtual environments than was possible using a design document alone.