Digital oral feedback written assignments as professional learning for teacher educators : a collaborative self-study.

Allan Luke (2008) uses a “pedagogical economy where literacy education is taken as a cultural gift”. This paper reports on the digital oral feedback provided to pre-service teachers in a literacy unit and explores the pedagogical gift this feedback is to the teacher educators marking this work. Rather than mark their written work as individual lecturers, we collaboratively read the assignment and recorded the sound file of the conversation around each assignment. We then participated in another conversation with a critical friend, which enabled us to explore the impact of this form of assessment on our professional identities as teacher educators. We found these conversations provided a rich context for our professional learning about ourselves as teacher educators, as well as specific content knowledge we both brought to the teaching of this unit. We found we were working as a team to provide more in-depth feedback of the assessment criteria for each assignment than we did with written feedback. Through this dialogical feedback we were able to construct the pre-service teachers' assignments as an important textual gift in our collaborative professional learning about assessment, and in exploring our beliefs and practices as teacher educators.

What can we say about 112,000 taps on a Ndjebbana touch screen?

This paper reports on the use of touch screens to display simple talking books in a minority Indigenous Australian language. Three touch screens are located in an informal context in a remote Indigenous Australian community. The popularity of the computers can be explained by the form of the touch screen and by the intertextual and hybrid nature of the talking books. The results suggest the Kunibidji choose to transform their own culture by including new digital technologies which represent their societal practice

The role of the computer in learning ndjébbana

While Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) is being superseded by an integrated approach to language learning and technology, it still has great potential to assist indigenous peoples in becoming print-literate in their own languages. This can also help to combat the disempowerment experienced by indigenous people as their world is penetrated by others with radically different backgrounds. This paper reports on research on an application of CALL implemented among the Kunibídji, a remote, indigenous Australian community. It focuses on the use of talking books in Ndjébbana, a language with only 200 speakers; the books were displayed on touch-screens at various locations in the community. Investigations into the roles of the computer to support language learning and cultural understanding are also reported. The computer was found to be a useful tool in promoting Kunibídji collaboration and cultural transformation.

Why should I present my thesis on computer assisted ndjébbana on dvd?

This paper justifies the presentation of a Phd thesis about Computer Assisted NdjTbbana on a Digital Video Disc (DVD). NdjTbbana is a language spoken by 200 Kunibfdji who are the traditional indigenous Australian landowners of Maningrida in Arnhem Land, Australia. The tools of this study are simple digital talking books that were created in NdjTbbana and then presented on touch screens computers. The data was the interaction around the touch screens that was recorded on digital video. Using DVD technology, the NdjTbbana talking books and the digital video can be integrated into a scholarly text for academics and NdjTbbana narrated report for the Kunibfdji, which can be combined to present a thesis. From a theoretical perspective, a thesis on a DVD can be located in the centre of critical literacy, a critical theory of technology and critical research methodologies. There are also logistical, semiotic and ideological reasons for presenting a thesis on about computer assisted NdjTbbana on DVD. Presenting Computer Assisted NdjTbbana on DVD will link the tools and data of the research with academic discourse to enhance the examination process and will also support the empowerment of the Kunibfdji as they are more informed about the research process.

A middle approach to literacy in a minority Indigenous Australian language context.

Kunib-dji live in Maningrida, a remote community in the Northern Territory and speak Ndj-bbana as their preferred language of communication. Kunib-dji are one of many groups of Indigenous Australian languages who speak a minority language. Very little has been documented about the social practices of literacy with speakers of such languages, particularly with the texts that mediate these languages. Knowing about the beliefs and attitudes towards enacted by these speakers towards these texts is useful for understanding the process of learning of minority and majority languages. This paper presents a middle approach to literacy as distinct form top-down and bottom-up approaches, that has emerged from the minority Indigenous Australian language context in Maningrida. The proposed middle approach to literacy incorporates non-indigenous intervention in Indigenous social practices and technological transform of Indigenous texts. The methodological aspects of such intervention and transformation together with the implications of a middle approach to literacy are presented in this paper. Throughout the paper references are made to Kunib-dji children's access to digital Ndj-bbana texts and their engagement with these texts in a home environment.

Factors to consider when planning to submit a digital thesis

Emerging technologies offer new possibilities of text production. Consequently there are important implications for submitting a digitalised thesis. This paper reflects upon some of the issues associated with the digitalisation of the thesis entitled "The literacy practices of Kunib¡dji children: Text, technology and transformation". This PhD thesis was submitted in a multimedia format on a DVD and reported on the literacy practices of a group of Indigenous Australian children who spoke a minority Indigenous Australian language. Factors to consider when digitalising a thesis include the social possibilities of emerging technologies. These are explored with reference to the purpose of research in changing times. The opportunities to integrate a number of texts in the submitted thesis are demonstrated. The use of multimodal texts to improve the validity of the research is discussed using examples of digital video and interactive texts in a minority Indigenous Australian language context. This paper concludes that the digitisation of a thesis should be guided by the possibilities for conceptualising and reporting new knowledge while upholding an ethic of respect for the participants.

Talking books for children's home use in a minority Indigenous Australian language context

Members of the Kunibidji community are the traditional owners of the lands and seas around Maningrida, a remote community in Northern Australia. Most of the 200 members of the Kunibidji Community speak Ndjebbana as their first language. This study reports on the complexities of transforming technology to provide Kunibídji children with access to digital texts at home. The printed Ndjebbana texts that were kept at school were transformed to Ndjebbana talking books displayed on touch screen computers in the children's homes. Some results of the children's interaction around these touch screens are presented as well as some quantitative results of the computer viewing in the homes. The processes of rejecting technological determinism, upholding linguistic human rights of speakers of minority languages and viewing technology as practice rather than a set of artefacts are discussed in this paper. The results of this study highlight the need for speakers of minority Indigenous Australian languages to have access to texts in their threatened languages on technologies at home.

Letter to a dead playwright : daily grind, Vicki Reynolds, and archive fever

’Nothing is less reliable, nothing is less clear today than the word “archive”,’ observed Jacques Derrida in his book Archive Fever: a Freudian Impression (1996). This paper reflects on the unsettling process of establishing (or commencing) an archive for the Melbourne Workers Theatre, to form part of the AusStage digital archive which records information on live performance in Australia. Glenn D'Cruz's paper juxtaposes two disparate but connected registers of writing: an open letter to a deceased Australian playwright, Vicki Reynolds, and a critical reflection on the politics of the archive with reference to Derrida's account of archive fever, which he characterizes as an ‘irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the return to the most archaic place of absolute commencement’. Using Derrida's commentary on questions of memory, authority, inscription, hauntology, and heritage to identify some of the philosophical and ethical aporias he encountered while working on the project, D’Cruz pays particular attention to what Derrida calls the spectral structure of the archive, and stages a conversation with the ghosts that haunt the digitized Melbourne Workers Theatre documents. He also unpacks the logic of Derrida's so-called messianic account of the archive, which ‘opens out of the future’, thereby affirming the future-to-come, and unsettling the normative notion of the archive as a repository for what has passed. Glenn D’Cruz teaches at Deakin University, Australia. He is the author of Midnight's Orphans: Anglo-Indians in Post/Colonial Literature (Peter Lang, 2006) and editor of Class Act: Melbourne Workers Theatre 1987–2007 (Vulgar Press, 2007).