October 2010 Canadian book tour

14 October 2010

I’m about to head off on a two week book tour in Canada, visiting festivals in Whistler, Vancouver, Ottawa, and Toronto.  For details of these events, please go to the Events page. 

The Mistress of Nothing

Events

TOC Frankfurt - Tuesday 5 October 2010

27 September 2010

I’m really looking forward to the TOC Frankfurt day, Tuesday 5 October.  Great speakers, including Douglass Rushkoff and Jeff Jarvis. 

Inanimate Alice:  The Evolution of Online Language Arts Resources

6 September 2010

INACOL - the International Association for K-12 Online Learning - is hosting a Teacher Talk Webinar on “The Evolution of Online Language Arts Resources”

on Thursday, September 16, 2010: 
18:00-19:00 Eastern (US)
23:00-00:00 GMT

They will use my work ‘Inanimate Alice’ as an example of the way teachers and students can extend stories outward for teaching and learning.

Digital content and technologies are transforming learning, communications, and society itself in ways that are still unfolding, but akin to the communications revolution following the invention of the printing press. While digital content and texts have made inroads into the classroom, several hurdles remain surrounding access, costs, and the training required, as well as the focus on core reading and mathematics standards, standardized testing, and budget crises.

Today’s new technologies require a broad rethinking of books and other resources for teaching and learning language arts. While many digital texts are merely an electronic image of a paper product, others have employed the electronic format in broadening the spectrum of learning. Digital storytelling or new media writing employ computers or electronic devices such as an iPhone in both writing and reading digital stories, and utilize multimedia in ways impossible in printed books.

This session examines the emerging future of digital curriculum resources for online language arts teachers and issues surrounding multimedia literacy. We will examine a digital novel utilizing text, sound, images, and gaming in storytelling, and what teachers and students have done to extend the story further into teaching and learning.

Speakers:
Bruce Friend, Director, SAS® Curriculum Pathways®, SAS Institute
John Warren, Director of Marketing, Publications, RAND Corporation

Teacher Talk Webinar

Inanimate Alice

TOC Frankfurt - Tuesday 5 October 2010

29 July 2010

October 2010 book tour in Canada

20 July 2010

This coming October I’ll be doing events at the Whistler Writers Festival, the Vancouver Writers Festival, the Ottawa Writers Festival, and IFOA in Toronto.  I’ll also be doing an event in Toronto for the Heliconian Society.  More details are on the Events page. 

Events

ARCs of The Mistress of Nothing ready at S&S USA

10 June 2010

Advance Reader’s Copies of ‘The Mistress of Nothing’ are ready and available from Touchstone Fireside, Simon & Schuster, US.  The hardcover edition of the book will be published in January 2010.  If you are interested in the book, you can request a review copy at TFPublicity@simonandschuster.com. 

Riposte to ‘A (S)Creed for Digital Fiction

7 June 2010

My riposte to DFIN’s ‘A (S)Creed for Digital Fiction’ is published by ebr - The Electronic Book Review - today. 

Riposte to ‘A (S)Creed for Digital Fiction.

Original ebr piece:  ‘A (S)Creed for Digital Fiction’.

Lifelines reviewed on Merlin John

26 May 2010

‘Lifelines’, the multimedia digital fiction project Chris Joseph and I created for Rising Stars, features in a write-up on the prestigious education tech website, Merlin John Online. 

It’s a favourable review by Chris Drage.  Here’s a brief quote: 

“Digital literacy is fast becoming an essential skill in our society and resources like Lifelines help prepare youngsters to interpret, understand and use digital resources effectively. In the hands of an imaginative teacher, Lifelines should prove a hugely effective tool. Recommended.”

Lifelines

Digital Media Competition:  Maternal Subjectivities:  Care and Labour

19 April 2010

`Maternal Subjectivities: Care and Labour` Digital Media Competition

As part of the Motherhood, Servitude and the Delegation of Care Conference, 23- 24 September 2010, at Birkbeck College, London, MaMSIE is delighted to launch a Digital Media Competition.

Digital media entries should respond to the title `Maternal Subjectivities: Care and Labour`. This might take the form of a digital photographic work or a more abstract piece, such as a work of multimedia digital fiction or creative nonfiction, an experimental digital film, or website. Any form of digital output will be considered.

Everyone is welcome to enter, professional or amateur.  Finalists will be chosen by a distinguished panel of artists, writers and journalists.

Prize: There will be a cash prize of £150 for the winning entry and two small runners up prizes. The winner and runners up will also receive free entry to the conference and their work will be featured on the conference website, and the online journal, Studies in the Maternal. Maximum 2 works per entrant, either as a digital file or URL.

Deadline for entries is 1 August, 2010.  Successful entrants will be informed by 15 September, 2010.

To enter, please:

• mark entries with your name, contact details and the title of the work,

• include a max 250 word description of your piece,

• include a 100 word biography of yourself

• include the work itself as digital file or url

• write ‘Maternal Subjectivities: Care and Labour Digital Media Competition and Exhibition’ in the email header,

• send entries to Kate Pullinger at kpullinger@dmu.ac.uk.

MaMSIE is an international network of scholars, artists and activists working in the emerging interdisciplinary field of maternal studies. Our 6th conference focuses on the interrelations between labour, capital, care and the maternal. In particular, it will consider the diverse ways ‘maternal care’ has been, and continues to be delegated and shared, and the implications for our understandings of maternal subjectivities and the labour of care. The conference will open up ‘maternity’ as a term that includes the paid and unpaid work of a diverse range of social actors: carers, domestic workers, au-pairs, nannies, child-minders, nurses, care-workers, extended family members and members of friendship networks, in addition to complex organisations such as charities and NGOs. The aim of this event is to generate a dialogue between two rich and substantial bodies of feminist scholarship; work on the history of domestic labour, service and servitude and current debates about globalism, migration and the care industries, recasting existing scholarship through the lens of maternal studies.

www.mamsie.bbk.ac.uk