Phone Commercials and Changing Mobile Media Practices: Relentless creation

I feel I know what marketing and advertising is about. I am aware of how it is designed to manipulate emotions, harken back to some real or imagined nostalgia, epitomize what we want and how we want to get it. I worked a bit in marketing, crafted text to such effect, framed banners and logos […]

Taipei ambient sounds: audio backdrop of a book conference, more din

Taipei, Taiwan: February 2012

I was in Taipei, Taiwan last week for a very large book conference. I wrote a blog post about this a few days ago, but wanted to revisit this with a different context. I use Audiboo quite a bit to record ambient noise of the places I go and Taipei was no exception. I made […]

Elearning and the torrents of sound; some thoughts on sound in elearning

Working on a research project at the University of Edinburgh that is meant to explore the notion of space for elearners, namely what does it mean to be at a university (in this case, the University of Edinburgh) without physically being there. How do we position ourselves, orient ourselves as elearners? Some fascinating research that […]

Siri voice programming: offloading process & optimizing reflective attention

Mapo Bridge, Seoul

(even the examples highlighted for Siri are either process oriented or low-order (low attention) cognitive tasks) I think of Siri and the automation (programming) of routine, how its greatest contribution to the learning discussion might be the reclaiming of cognitive capacity (and time) from process. Siri is significant if not for it what it is then […]

Modern literacies and music composition: To compose and to perform?

I have been doing some thinking about modern literacies recently. What does it mean to be literate in an information driven world? Does literacy pertain to technological skills, the ability to navigate a series of systems and tools? Does literacy refer to traditional textual literacy, the ability to read, write, and disseminate textual information? Or […]