'What's on your mind?' Writing on Facebook as a tool for self-formation

In the context of modern western psychologised, techno-social hybrid realities, where individuals are incited constantly to work on themselves and perform their self-development in public, the use of online social networking sites (SNSs) can be conceptualised as what Foucault has described as a ‘technique of self’. This article explores examples of status updates on Facebook to reveal that writing on Facebook is a tool for self-formation with historical roots. Exploring examples of self-writing from the past, and considering some of the continuities and discontinuities between these age-old practices and their modern translations, provides a non-technologically deterministic and historically aware way of thinking about the use of new media technologies in modern societies that understands them to be more than mere tools for communication.

Negotiating the creative and the critical : Paul Dawson’s creative writing and the new humanities

In the first Modern Language Association newsletter for 2006, renowned poetry critic and MLA President, Marjorie Perloff, remarked on the growing ascendency of Creative Writing within English Studies in North America. In her column, Perloff notes that "[i]n studying the English Job Information List (JIL) so as to advise my own students and others I know currently on the market, I noticed what struck me as a curious trend: there are, in 2005, almost three times as many positions in creative writing as in the study of twentieth-century literature" (3). The dominance of Creative Writing in the English Studies job list in turn reflects the growing student demand for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the field—over the past 20 years, BA and MA degrees in Creative Writing in North American tertiary institutions have quadrupled (3)...

‘I now know I can do this now’: Indigenous women and writing in the Australian higher education sector

This paper explores the challenges of writing and publishing faced by Indigenous women who work in the Australian higher education sector. It demonstrates that Indigenous women are under-represented in the academy and argues that Indigenous styles of writing are typically not valued for broader publication. The authors describe a writing mentoring and support program specifically developed for Indigenous academic women in Australia. The Tiddas Writin’ Up Workshop provided a safe and culturally-appropriate space for women to learn about academic writing and develop their writing skills. The workshop led to the publication of a special issue of the Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues – known as the Tiddas Collection. The authors highlight the power and strength of well-developed support programs to address skills development, confidence, inequities and under-representation of Indigenous women within the higher education workforce.

Plain English writing in Sri Lanka - an achievable goal

The use of plain English in document writing, whether in correspondence, agreements and deeds, court documents or judicial writing, is an important goal for the legal profession in Sri Lanka.

Characterisation of the micro-architecture of direct writing melt electrospun tissue engineering scaffolds using diffusion tensor and computed tomography microimaging

This article describes the first steps toward comprehensive characterization of molecular transport within scaffolds for tissue engineering. The scaffolds were fabricated using a novel melt electrospinning technique capable of constructing 3D lattices of layered polymer fibers with well - defined internal microarchitectures. The general morphology and structure order was then determined using T 2 - weighted magnetic resonance imaging and X - ray microcomputed tomography. Diffusion tensor microimaging was used to measure the time - dependent diffusivity and diffusion anisotropy within the scaffolds. The measured diffusion tensors were anisotropic and consistent with the cross - hatched geometry of the scaffolds: diffusion was least restricted in the direction perpendicular to the fiber layers. The results demonstrate that the cross - hatched scaffold structure preferentially promotes molecular transport vertically through the layers ( z - axis), with more restricted diffusion in the directions of the fiber layers ( x – y plane). Diffusivity in the x – y plane was observed to be invariant to the fiber thickness. The characteristic pore size of the fiber scaffolds can be probed by sampling the diffusion tensor at multiple diffusion times. Prospective application of diffusion tensor imaging for the real - time monitoring of tissue maturation and nutrient transport pathways within tissue engineering scaffolds is discussed.

Drawing and writing on the screen

This chapter focuses on the physicality of the iPad as an object, and how that physicality affects the interactions children have with the device generally, and the apps specifically. Thinking about the physicality of the iPad is important because the materials, size, weight and appearance make the iPad quite unlike most other toys and equipment in the kindergarten space. Most strikingly, this physicality does not ‘represent’ the virtual vast dimensions of the iPad brought about through the diverse functions and contents of the apps contained in it. While the iPad is small enough and functional enough to be easily handled and operated even by young children, it is capable of performing highly complex, highly technological tasks that take it beyond its diminutive dimensions. This virtual-actual contrast is interesting to consider in relation to the other resources more commonly found in a kindergarten space. While objects such as toys, bricks, building materials often do prompt the child to imagine and invent beyond the physical boundaries of the toy, they not have the same types of virtual-actual contrasts of a digital device such as the iPad. How then, might children be drawn to the iPad because of its physical, technological and virtual difference? Particularly, how might this virtual-actual difference impact on the physical skills associated with writing and drawing: skills usually learnt through the use of a pencil and paper? While the research project did not set out to compare how digital and paper-based resources affect writing and drawing skills there was great interest to see how young children negotiated drawing and writing on the shiny glass surface of the iPad.

Writing Indigenous vampires: Aboriginal gothic or Aboriginal fantastic?

The usual postmodern suspicions about diligently deciphering authorial intent or stridently seeking fixed meaning/s and/or binary distinctions in an artistic work aside, this self-indulgent essay pushes the boundaries regarding normative academic research, for it focusses on my own (minimally celebrated) published creative writing’s status as a literary innovation. Dedicated to illuminating some of the less common denominators at play in Australian horror, my paper recalls the creative writing process involved when I set upon the (arrogant?) goal of creating a new genre of creative writing: that of the ‘Aboriginal Fantastic’. I compare my work to the literary output of a small but significant group (2.5% of the population), of which I am a member: Aboriginal Australians. I narrow my focus even further by examining that creative writing known as Aboriginal horror. And I reduce the sample size of my study to an exceptionally small number by restricting my view to one type of Aboriginal horror literature only: the Aboriginal vampire novel, a genre to which I have contributed professionally with the 2011 paperback and 2012 e-book publication of That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! However, as this paper hopefully demonstrates, and despite what may be interpreted by some cynical commentators as the faux sincerity of my taxonomic fervour, Aboriginal horror is a genre noteworthy for its instability and worthy of further academic interrogation. (first paragraph)

Writing and the disappearance of architecture theory

One of the first architects to write a book was Vitruvius, the Roman architect who published De Architectura in the 1st century BC, a book that would become the foundation for Western Architectural Thought. When I was an undergraduate, the history of architecture was taught via a series of books by architects that were at least, if not more significant than the buildings. From De Architectura to Alberti’s rejoinder De re aedificatoria (On the Art of Building) in the fifteenth century, Palladio’s Quattro Libri (The Four Books of Architecture) 1570, and Laugier’s Essai sur l'Architecture 1753. In the 1990s, we treasured the heroic architecture books of the 20th century from Le Corbusier, Vers une Architecture, to Aldo Rossi’s the Architecture of the City, Rem Koolhaas’s Delirious New York, and of course Robert Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas which for me was the very starting point for the postmodern movement.

Time, space, and text in the elementary school digital writing classroom

Theorists of multiliteracies, social semiotics, and the New Literacy Studies have drawn attention to the potential changing nature of writing and literacy in the context of networked communications. This article reports findings from a design-based research project in Year 4 classrooms (students aged 8.5-10 years) in a low socioeconomic status school. A new writing program taught students how to design multimodal and digital texts across a range of genres and text types, such as web pages, online comics, video documentaries, and blogs. The authors use Bernstein’s theory of the pedagogic device to theorize the pedagogic struggles and resolutions in remaking English through the specialization of time, space, and text. The changes created an ideological struggle as new writing practices were adapted from broader societal fields to meet the instructional and regulative discourses of a conventional writing curriculum.

The sideways hourglass : establishing the lemniscate as a narrative structure for writing and reading non-linear stories

This thesis is a study in narratology that examines the pre-theoretical ideas that underlie the study of narrative and time. The thesis explores how the lemniscate can be transported from geometry to narrative in order to structure a non-linear story that breaks the rules of causality and chronology by coupling physical movement through space with the backward pull of memory. The findings offer new possibilities for understanding the nexus between shape and story and for recording non-linear narratives that are marked by simultaneity, counterpoint, and reversal.

Reflexive writers : re-thinking writing development and assessment in schools

Writing is a complex and highly individual activity, which is approached in different ways by different writers. Writers reflexively mediate subjective and objective conditions in specific and nuanced ways to produce a product in time and place. This paper uses a critical realist theory of reflexivity to argue that the teaching and assessment of writing must account for the different ways that students manage and make decisions in their writing. Data from linguistically and culturally diverse primary students in Australia are used to illustrate how four distinct reflexive modalities constitute the ways in which students approach writing. The paper offers a new approach to assessing writing for and of learning that considers writers as reflexive and agentic in different ways. It posits the importance of making visible and explicit the context and reflexive decision-making as writers shape a product for a purpose and audience.

The pirate of Karoussades

A travel memoir about the village of Karoussades, Corfu. When Liam and I caught the overnight ferry to Corfu we didn't have money for food, and my shoes had opened at the seams. Our last lira had been spent on a carton of Lucky Strike, which had been stolen by the time we docked the next day. In the haze of a Greek morning we were ushered into a minivan by the owner of the Karousades Camp Ground, who said there was work in the north of the island. Your best chance was with the Pirate. He took a little getting used to, but you were sure to get something...

Bluebird AR

"What is Bluebird AR? Bluebird AR was the ABC's alternate reality drama set around the leak of Bluebird, a clandestine geoengineering initiative created by eco-billionaire Harrison Wyld. Proposing a fictional scenario set against a backdrop of real world possibilities, Bluebird AR took some of the conventions of the well-established alternate reality game (ARG) genre and pulled them into the relatively new area of online drama, to create a hybrid entertainment form best described as 'participatory drama'. With Bluebird AR's interactive narrative centred on the experimental science of geoengineering, the deliberate manipulation of the Earth's atmosphere to counteract global warming, the events and characters in the Bluebird story were entirely fictional but fused with reality online. Inhabiting a mixture of third party social media spaces and websites created by the ABC, the story incorporated real online articles, scientific journals, media and debate around geoengineering. In an Australian first, ABC Innovation launched Bluebird AR on 27 April 2010, with a 6 week live phase. Audience members were invited to play collectively to help 'unlock the drama' and push forward the emerging narrative, or passively watch the story unfold in real-time across the internet. Bluebird AR subverted ARG conventions with the high quality of its production and assets, and raised the stakes for online drama with its level of audience participation." © 2014 ABC "Introduction One of the most exciting creative challenges of producing Bluebird AR was formulating the broad array of visual styles and treatments required for the project's diverse range of content. Many assets also needed to translate well not only online but across other media, including television and print. With the project's producers keen to create a visually rich narrative with high production values from the outset, inspiration for the production design for various aspects of the Bluebird story began in the earliest pitching phase in September 2008. Particular visual treatments and styles for Bluebird's characters, their web spaces and real world possessions were formulated concurrently with the creation of their profiles. Ideas around how various clues and gameplay spaces might look and feel were also explored at this early stage. Bluebird AR's small but tight creative team produced 7 website designs and brands, motion graphics for title sequences and logo animations, rotoscope animation, 3D compositing and animation, 3D wireframes and schematics, countless Photoshop composites, and a vast array of character assets for the DC (including Kyle's Bluebird Labs security pass and resignation letter, Kruger's American and Russia passports and birth certificate, Harrison's divorce papers, and more)…" © 2014 ABC