You are currently browsing the daily archive for March 5th, 2008.
Language.
Interesting subject indeed. Within our group, we tried to indentify ‘clusters’ of interest within our mind maps. Some of the big words that were coming up were things like: Culture, Literacy, Education, Communication, Society. These are all very broad topics, but we figured its better to start broad, and through our readings, narrow in and identify the areas of interest in terms of issues we can hopefully help solve. From the mind map, i tried to think about some questions, that could help me with a starting point for research. These were:
1. Effects of technology, eg: mobile phones and the internet (myspace etc.) on youth literacy rates. Are these devices affecting kids in terms of language skills? So often i see kids spelling words so stupidly on myspace, using ridiculous abbreviations and “leet speak” type language.
2. Is the language used to describe and communicate the environmental issues in the world (eg global warming) accessible to the common public? Do they understand it? A lack of understanding could lead to a lack of participation in sustainable practices. This point sort of delves into classes, and educations levels of people in the community. While more educated people may be fine with all the scientific talk on the news, is it as accessible to the masses as it maybe could be?
These questions were kind of specific in terms of social issues, but i used them as a basic starting point when i started researching the journal databases on the library website. So far i have read 2 journals. The first was a journal titled: Language as Power on the Internet which is a journal that talks about how English is the dominant language of the internet, and how a system that is supposed to be connecting the world together is actually dividing cultures that do not speak the dominant language. It was quite an interesting read, as it brought up areas of discussion that i had never really thought about before. Being part of the dominant English speaking internet population, its pretty easy to forget about the minorities that are missing out.
A second journal i read was one of the listed suggested readings on our Research Methods brief. This document was titled: Design Research and the New Learning (sorry i lost the link) by Richard Buchanan. I figured i’d make an attempt to read a few of the suggested readings. Honestly, it was a pretty big waste of time… its 23 pages, and really the only good parts are towards the end where he talks about different methods of research, and describes a case study.
I have a lot more reading to do, obviously, and i plan to get really stuck into that over the next few days and over the weekend.
Wow, what a long rant.
That’ll do for now,
Alex.
My name is Alex Turnbull.
I live in Belgrave Heights. I’ve lived here all my life, except for a year I spent living in england back in ‘97.
I am currently studying Communication Design at Swinburne, and working at the design studio D.I.G Multimedia. Besides design I enjoy music, soccer and other sports, and just spending time with friends.
I’ve been studying since 2004. I started in Applied Design at Swinburne TAFE, then moved up to the Communication Design course at the Prahran campus. I just completed a year in the industry thanks to the IP Program, which was fantastic.
Outside design, I’ve worked for casual labor agencies over holiday periods to keep my bank account up before going back to study. Lots of boring factory work… Its horrible, but its easy money.
So thats a quick intro to who I am and what I’ve done. I plan to put a more in depth CV of sorts on here in the near future, but this will have to do for the time being.
cheers,
Alex.
