Telling your story

Blogs are not simply about text. They can also encompass hyperlinks, sounds, videos, and images. Blogging is also about telling your story. Today I was involved in teaching a session for a BA group on the use of digital photography and communication. Specifically, the session focused on images as narrative, and all of the group managed to create some impressive and in some cases stunning image sequences. I used images from a trip with my students to the Gambia in 2009 to present my own example of a narrative at the beginning of the session. I thought I would share it with you here on my blog. I hope you find it interesting.

This image is of a man looking out over the sea, in a coastal village in the Gambia. Poverty is commonplace here, given that the Gambia is one of the poorest countries in Africa. One of the few jobs most young Gambian boys can do is fishing. It's a dangerous, low paid job, and this image depicts some of the boats they use to launch themselves out to sea.

This image is of children collecting firewood for the compound cooking fires. There is no electricity or gas in most parts of the Gambia, so open fires are the most common means of cooking. Children also fetch water, sometimes from several kilometers away from their villages, and because of the necessity for this work, they often miss school. As a visiting group, my colleagues and I, along with our students, saw the need and raised money for a new well to be sunk in the village. The children don't have to walk 4 kilometers each time they needed to fetch a pail of water anymore. Now they can go to school.

I took this image of a young girl sat in a village compound. I couldn't resist capturing the photo, because it was so iconic and representative of the children in this part of the world, and it conveyed innocence and hope. I showed her the image on my digital camera, and she was shocked but delighted. She clearly recognised herself, but I don't think she had seen a camera before, and probably not an image of herself anywhere else other than in her reflection.

I decided to use a reworked version of the picture of the young girl in a blog post called 'What Price Education?' to hammer home the message that every child deserves a good education. In the Gambia, children can only go to school until they are 11 years old, because the state only funds primary education, and it's very basic. There are few secondary schools, and children can only attend them if their parents can afford the fees. Very few can. As a result, Gambian children are some of the most disadvantaged children in the world. I couldn't think of a better was to use the image than in a manipulated front cover of the National Geographic magazine. It was very easy to do. Using PowerPoint, I created a yellow background, and a smaller blue background for the frame, and then placed the image above. Finally, I chose appropriate coloured font styles to mimic the familiar National Geographic livery. I saved the image as a .jpeg file and then uploaded it to the blog like any other image. I hope you like the images and that in some way, they speak to you.

 Photos by Steve Wheeler


Telling your story by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Capturing the moment

Photographs are very powerful things. I was looking through some old photographs this week, from my youth group days. An old friend was good enough to scan them and post them up to Facebook so we could all share the memories. I still remember the teenagers I spent time with, as they were then, frozen in time. I have lost touch with many of them, and I probably wouldn't recognise some of them now, but my memories of them then, as they looked then, evoke all sorts of emotions. The picture of me on the left was taken around 1980 (from another photo collection), capturing a personal moment in time for me. I wonder what happened to that old combat jacket?

When I trained as a photographer back in the early 70s, everything was done manually, in a dark room, with developing and fixing tanks, enlargers and various grades of printing paper. Photography took time. We had to learn all about lens apertures, parallax errors, film speeds and polarising filters. With the introduction and rapid take up of digital photography, a lot has changed. Photography is now more or less instant. It is now so much easier to create, edit, and share images over social media. Sites such as Picasa, Flickr and Facebook are full of shared images, many that have been posted to the web within seconds of being taken. The social web is an instantaneous, rich and fertile environment for sharing memories, capturing moments in time and preserving them for ever. Even the British Monarchy has this week widened its digital footprint by publishing a number of previously unseen images on its new British Monarchy Flickr site.

Never before have we been able to make the statement - this is me! - in such an emphatic and meaningful manner. Digital photography, when linked with social media, can offer endless opportunities for people to engage with each other. The discussion over the old photos of my youth group posted on Facebook last week has prompted a flurry of comments, tagging and sharing from us all - and although many of us had lost touch with each other - the images have brought us back together again, wherever we are in the world. That is priceless.

There is an undeniably emotional - and even spiritual - dimension to this kind of shared imagery. Capturing moments in time that will never be again. Sharing them, and talking about 'the old times' is not just about nostalgia, and remembering a time that once was. It's also about celebrating the 'here and now', marking the event, because it will quickly be gone. It is about recognising that although time is a constantly onward moving stream, we are able to share our common thoughts, emotions, hopes and aspirations as we encounter each other within it.

'You cannot step into the same river twice' - Heraclitus

Image source

Capturing the moment by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

A drastic ban?

I was somewhat surprised - no, gobsmacked - this weekend to read in a blog post by Abel Pharmboy that one conference in the USA - the American Society of Cell Biology Annual Meeting (sounds full of life) - has expressly forbidden its delegates from tweeting during presentations. They were also banned from audio recording or taking photographs of presenters' slides. Here's the strident message sent out to all delegates from the organisers:

"Use of cameras and all other recording devices (this includes digital, film, and cell phone cameras, as well as audio recordings) are strictly prohibited in all session rooms, in the Exhibit Hall, and in all poster and oral presentation sessions. Twittering (see above) and other forms of communication involving replication of data are strictly prohibited at the Annual Meeting or before publication, whether data presented are in the Exhibit Hall, poster area, poster sessions, or invited talks, without the express permission and approval of the authors. Persons caught taking photos, video, or audio recordings with any device or transmitting such information with any device will be escorted out of the hall or rooms and not be allowed room re-entry. Repeat offenders will have their meeting badge(s) revoked and will not be allowed to continue to attend the meeting. This policy is necessary to respect the willingness of presenters to share their data at the meeting as well as their publication opportunities."

Wow. What do you think about that? Makes you wonder why they took such a decision and took such a threatening stance. I wonder what the delegates felt? Did they feel welcome and relaxed at the conference? If it was Twitter alone that was jumped on, we might point to some of the harshtags and Twitter lynchings of speakers that has been reported recently at other conferences as the spur. But no - it's all digital devices. Even the airlines aren't that strict. I know that conference organisers have a duty of care to ensure that everything is conducted decently and in order, but I am left wondering... is this all just a little over the top?

I'm only speculating but the reason behind this stance might be something a little more prosaic. It is highly likely that given the highly scientific nature of this conference, many of the presenters at the conference are presenting new research and wish to protect their intellectual property from their peers until their work has been published. This may sound like a reasonable idea at face value, but I ask you - why do we go to conferences in the first place? People have many reasons, but an aggregation of these reasons might be to meet other people interested in the same subject, to hear expert commentary and reports of research in your specialist areas, and to discuss and learn. In my recent experience, the beauty of digital media is that it can include those who cannot attend a conference physically, but who can still participate remotely. I have done this with both Online Educa Berlin and ASCILITE in Auckland this last week.

So the organisers of this conference have banned the use of digital media. Exactly what will the conference police ban next? Chatting to each other over coffee? Writing down notes on a pad? Will there be 'thought crimes' too (Bless you George). Will we all need to sign non-disclosure agreements before we can register for such events? I'm just saying.

Look. I assure everyone who attends the Plymouth e-Learning Conference in April next year that there will be no such bans on any image capture, backchannelling or any other form of dissemination of what you have learned. In fact it will be positively encouraged. Those who come to present at my event do so on the understanding that their ideas will be 'out there' and shared with all who are interested as quickly as possible. I agree with Terry Anderson's sentiments which he aired at this year's ALT-C conference in Manchester. Open Scholarship, he said, is not only about sharing your work free to your peers, it is also about being open to constructive criticism from them. Here's to open scholarship, and also to open conferences!

Postscript

To be fair on the conference organisers, I draw your attention to a note of clarification from the conference chair Rex Chisholm who writes:

"I serve as chair of the ASCB public information committee and have discussed this with the executive director of the ASCB. The prohibition as written is being interpreted (...although I can see why) too restrictively. The real goal is to limit specific tweeting of prepublication data, not the general concepts, the enthusiasm (or not) for an idea heard at the meeting, or comments about the meeting itself. The ASCB enthusiastically endorses spreading of exciting stories from its members and encourages an open discussion about the meeting. After all, science is about debate and discussion. On the other hand it is important to respect authors presenting data prior to publication. Hence the policy against cameras and against tweeting of SPECIFIC data elements. I am working the the ASCB leadership to "officially" modify the policy on the ASCB website. But I want to assure all meeting attendees that as long as the rights of the authors to not have specific data widely disseminated without their permission, we would like to encourage sharing about the meeting."

So I was correct in my assumption that the ban was intended to protect authors/researchers who had not yet published their findings. Fair enough. But the wording of the edict could, as has been admitted, have been a little better phrased. This little episode serves to highlight the growing gulf between traditional academic values and the insurgent social media practices that are engulfing education. I'm sure we will see similar issues arising as culture clashes continue over the next few years.

Related posts:

The dark side of digital backchannels (Joe McCarthy)

Tweeting expressly prohibited (Abel Pharmboy)

What do you mean I can't Twitter? (Steven W. Anderson)

Banning electronic devices from conferences (Open Education News)

Image source (edited)

Czech this out

Blimey. I'm a published photographer, me. Digital photography is a many splendoured thing. Schmap came to me a few weeks ago and asked if they could use Timbuckteeth's photograph of St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague in their latest online travel guide of the Czech Republic.

The picture appears in the Prague sights and attractions section. The travel guide blurb says:

Rising up from the centre of the castle grounds, the Gothic cathedral dominates the Prague skyline and is one of the defining images of the city and its tourist centre. The cathedral hides a number of valuable monuments including the Royal Crypt wherein lies the remains of Czech Royalty, the St Wenceslas Chapel, and the Coronation Chamber where the Crown Jewels are exhibited. The cathedral's foundation stone was laid in 1344 on the initiative of Charles IV (1316-1378) on the site of an earlier 10th century rotunda dedicated to St Vitus. It was not until 1929 that the cathedral was actually completed. Entrance to the cathedral is free although there are discreetly placed collection boxes. A charge is made for entrance to the crypt and other attractions.

I have to admit I had never heard of Schmap before now, but they seem like jolly decent chaps, and are obviously very discerning of high quality photography.... their tag says 'Beyond the Map'. All those hours spent in the darkroom were not wasted then. Timbuckteeth is off now to practice his exposures....