Transliteracy Research Group

Dipping my toes in the water

Thank you, Sue, for welcoming us to the blog.

I'm looking forward to contributing some thoughts on my journey towards transliteracy, although not without some trepidation in the august presence of the other contributors. I've been online for the majority of most days in the past twelve years or so, but I'm a relative newbie when it comes to the in-depth exploration of the undulating and tangential web.

The MA in Creative Writing and New Media that I've just completed under the expert guidance of Sue Thomas and Kate Pullinger opened my eyes to art and content possibilities that I had not encountered before. Because I hadn't even known that they existed, I had never looked for them, despite my love affair with online search.

I suppose this is one of the most valuable things I took from the course: that the journey in the networked world is inevitably a communal one to at least some degree ... to expand our knowledge and insight and to grow as 21st century people, we need not only our lovely machines and ever-cleverer software, but also other fellow travellers as companions and as guides. Otherwise, we are likely to follow only our own well-worn paths. These offer, of course, many joys and discoveries as sophisticated search tools enable us to mine the deepest seams in our areas of interest, but they may not challenge us to our full potential. 

For this reason, finishing my MA saddened me a little as it ended a time of sharing with the majority of the other students who have elected to do the course over two years and can look forward to another year of intense exchanges. So it was a relief to attend if:book's Fictional Stimulus launch event in London last Tuesday eve and realise that participation in the ongoing discovery and discussion of digital literature is still only a click away.

Splash! Splash! I'm in!

Welcoming new authors to the Transliteracy Research Blog

This month we welcome several new authors to the Transliteracy Blog. They'll introduce themselves over the next few days and weeks, and you'll enjoy their varied perspectives and insights into this research. Please welcome Tia Azulay, Heather Conboy, Gareth Howell, Anietie Isong, Jess Laccetti, Kirsty McGill, Kate Pullinger and Christine Wilks. I will of course also continue posting, so there will be 9 writers in all. Please post your comments and views as the spirit moves. Enjoy!

Transliteracy at Beyond Boundaries, 22 Sept 2009, Loughborough University

Today I ran a workshop on Transliteracy at Beyond Boundaries: Facing interdisciplinary challenges in humanities A conference for postgraduate students in the East Midlands  It was an interesting and thought-provoking event, and especially good to see such a mix of disciplines in one place. In my workshop there was a doctor retraining to be a forensic scientist, a linguistics specialist, a librarian, a computer scientist, and artists working in quite a few different fields. They drew some great diagrams of their personal networks and the literacies to be found within them, and we had a very illuminating discussion. I promised to share my somewhat basic slides, so here they are. Download Transliteracy workshop EMUA September 2009

Plus - as discussed in the workshop, Kate Hayles' provocative paper Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes (although personally I'm not sure I agree that it is relevant to age.)

New Blog Platform

Followers of  www.transliteracy.com will notice that we have moved to a different blog platform. The content has been moved over and soon will be supplemented by writing from some new blog authors. Watch this space.