Contexts, codes and online communications – a case study exploring issues related to using CMCs in a drama education project

Many educators are currently interested in using computer-mediated communications (CMCs) to support learning and creative practice. In my work I have been looking at how we might create drama through using cyberspaces, working with teachers and students in secondary school contexts. In trying to understand issues that have arisen and ways of working with the data I have found a number of frameworks helpful for analysing the online interactions. These frameworks draw from O'Toole's work on contexts negotiated in the creation of drama and other frameworks drawn from Wertsch, Bakhtin and Vygotsky's work on speech utterances, dialogic processes and internalisation of learning. The contexts and factors which must be negotiated in online communications within learning contexts are quite complex and educators may need to provide parameters and protocols to ensure appropriate languages, genres and utterances are utilised. The paper explores some of the types of languages, genres and utterances that emerged from a co-curricula drama project and issues that arose, including the importance of establishing processes for giving and receiving critical feedback This paper is of relevance to those whose research strategies may involve the use of computer-mediated communications as well as those utilising cyberspaces in educational contexts.

Archives information publishing new design in post-custodial regime: The National Archives Experience Digital Vaults

The uses of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Web environments for creation, treatment and availability of information have supported the emergence of new social-cultural patterns represented by convergences in textual, image and audio languages. This paper describes and analyzes the National Archives Experience Digital Vaults as a digital publishing web environment and as a cultural heritage. It is a complex system - synthesizer of information design options at information setting, provides new aesthetic aspects, but specially enlarges the cognition of the subjects who interact with the environment. It also enlarges the institutional spaces that guard the collective memory beyond its role of keeping the physical patrimony collected there. Digital Vaults lies as a mix of guide and interactive catalogue to be dealt in a ludic way. The publishing design of the information held on the Archives is meant to facilitate access to knowledge. The documents are organized in a dynamic and not chronological way. They are not divided in fonds or distinct categories, but in controlled interaction of documents previously indexed and linked by the software. The software creates information design and view of documental content that can be considered a new paradigm in Information Science and are part of post-custodial regime, independent from physical spaces and institutions. Information professionals must be prepared to understand and work with the paradigmatic changes described and represented by the new hybrid digital environments; hence the importance of this paper. Cyberspace interactivity between user and the content provided by the environment design provide cooperation, collaboration and sharing knowledge actions, all features of networks, transforming culture globally.

Do ciberespaço à iconomia: projeções metapóricas

Na sociedade contemporânea o ser humano se vê inserido – ou invadido – em ambientes cada vez mais configurados por complexos recursos tecnológicos. É o ciberespaço, onde as imagens inundam o cotidiano e se traduzem em valor, o corpo adquire novo status imaterial e as noções de lugar e tempo se transformam e quase se anulam. O cinema pensa e produz também uma desterritorialização da imagem em movimento desde os seus primeiros tempos de imagem-máquina. Este trabalho reflete sobre as transformações da ordem social que implicam a emergência de uma “iconomia” a partir dos espaços simbólicos, tomando três momentos críticos na história do cinema como índices de uma convergência entre material e imaterial que se consolida a partir da emergência do ciberespaço. O quase-método metapórico é mobilizado como ferramenta de reconstrução metodológica desses ícones da história do cinema relacionados à desconstrução do Homo faber. O “outro lado” do ciberespaço, abrindo continuamente novos espaços-tempos de criação de valor, identifica-se a uma iconomia em que as projeções narrativas tornam-se fontes paradigmáticas de valor e de “mais gozar”.