Literature Review

In 2001 Mark Nichols published his eBook "Teaching for Learning". You can read reviews in Open Learning, 18(2), 2003 pp.197-200; The Journal of Distance Learning, 7(1), pp.71-73 and Educational Technology and Society, 5(1), pp.207-208.

The book has sold well however it is now two years old. The publishers have decided to offer it free of charge as of December 2003.

Download book here.

Web literacy, web literacies or just literacies on the web?
Reflections from a study of personal homepages
Anna-Malin Karlsson

Abstract

"This article raises the question of whether or not we can talk about such a thing as web literacy in general. Perspectives from media studies, literacy studies and the study of multimodal texts are used to find the main contextual parameters involved in what we might want to call web literacy. The parameters suggested are material conditions, domain, power or ideology and semiotic mode. These four factors, and their relevance for describing literacy on the web, are then further discussed by experiences from an empirical study of personal homepages. The results from this study are accounted for in terms of the literacy practices connected to the pages, the conceptions of textual norms among the users and in terms of the textual role played by writing in relation to other textual elements. In all these three aspects the personal homepage is highly heterogeneous. You find what might be call modern conceptions of texts as multimodal units, as well as more traditional writing. It is argued that web literacy should be understood as literacies, and furthermore as socially situated practices rather than technologically determined conventions of reading and writing. Thus, the parameter of domain (public-private, local-global, professional-"vernacular") is of great importance."

Comment: Haven't read this article at the time of blogging it. Need to pay attention as she has researched on web pages and multimodality from a systemic framework, I think??

The Semiotics of Writing: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on the Technology of Writing


Comment: Very interesting since Jim Martin is a contributor too!

This abstract is interesting. Try to find the copy of the thesis!

Anna-Malin Karlsson

Literacy traditions in change
A semiotic study of the personal homepage


In this thesis, the phenomenon of personal homepages on the Internet is explored. While the general purpose of the study is to provide a description of the personal homepage and its use, the more specific aim is to characterise it as a product of literacy. Theoretically, the homepage is viewed as a multimodal text product situated within two layers of context: the context of situation, where homepage use can be described in terms of literacy practices and textual norms, and the context of culture, where the conceptual dichotomy between new and old visual literacy can be seen to constitute the overall frame for the investigation. The main material consists of 26 personal homepages assembled in 1998. The owners of these pages form the major part of an informant group involved throughout the study.

The methods combine text analysis on different levels with online field work and experimental interviews. As one result of these analyses, a typology of homepage sections is established and each page category is given a description which reveals what may be called a prototypic structure. Based on the established page categories, the homepage as a format is characterised as a heterogeneous collection of pages with different textual structures and different functions. Another result is a set of literacy practices, generalised on the basis of the informants’ utterances about activities around the homepages. Of these judging and being judged, promoting the page and socialising with friends are practices that are especially dependent on writing, whereas practices such as looking for inspiration and making plans and producing, where the page is more in focus, are more genuinely multimodal. A third kind of results emanates from the text analyses. The semiotic components, i.e. the visual elements, of different page types are identified and analysed, different principles of textual relations between visual elements are explored and the cohesion of a genuinely multimodal page is described. By means of this analysis, certain specialised uses of the two different modalities, language and the non-linguistic visual resource, can be pointed out. In sum, the personal homepage is characterised as highly heterogeneous, relating to both traditional language-based literacy and a less established multimodal text culture.



ISBN 91-22-01956-1
ISSN 0562-1097

Thread - Intelligence - Article:


There Are Only Four Things That People Do On the Web
December 4, 2003
By Dirk Knemeyer

"Web development can be extremely confusing. Between the interface and application side, between the many different titles and functions that go into creating websites, between the various organizational units, agenda and concerns that must be balanced in the development process, it is no wonder that there is a cacophony of opinions and perspectives on web development. Unfortunately, the problem will continue to get worse before it gets better."

Comment: This is an interesting article that informs us of the 4 major reasons why people go online, which is to:

1. learn
2. feel
3. connect
4. trade

This is pretty similar to what 'Train of Thoughts' says in the chapter expounding on why surfers go online.

Vic's Paper on Research Method:

Barrett, E. and Lally, V. E. (2000)
Meeting New Challenges in Educational Research Methods:
The Signposts for Educational Research Methods CD-ROM
British Educational Research Journal, Vol. 26, No. 1

Schnotz, W. (2002). Towards an Integrated View of Learning from Text and Visual Displays. Educational Psychology Review, 14(2), 101-120.

Available at MUSE. Please check it out.

Title: Towards an Analysis of Visual Images in School Science Textbooks and Press Articles about Science and Technology Author(s): K. Dimopoulos ; V. Koulaidis ; S. Sklaveniti
Source: Research in Science Education
Volume: 33 Number: 2 Page: 189 -- 216
Publisher: Kluwer Academic Publishers

Abstract:
This paper aims at presenting the application of a grid for the analysis of the pedagogic functions of visual images included in school science textbooks and daily press articles about science and technology. The analysis is made using the dimensions of content specialisation (classification) and social-pedagogic relationships (framing) promoted by the images as well as the elaboration and abstraction of the corresponding visual code (formality), thus combining pedagogical and socio-semiotic perspectives. The grid is applied to the analysis of 2819 visual images collected from school science textbooks and another 1630 visual images additionally collected from the press. The results show that the science textbooks in comparison to the press material: a) use ten times more images, b) use more images so as to familiarise their readers with the specialised techno-scientific content and codes, and c) tend to create a sense of higher empowerment for their readers by using the visual mode. Furthermore, as the educational level of the school science textbooks (i.e., from primary to lower secondary level) rises, the content specialisation projected by the visual images and the elaboration and abstraction of the corresponding visual code also increases. The above results have implications for the terms and conditions for the effective exploitation of visual material as the educational level rises as well as for the effective incorporation of visual images from press material into science classes.

© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers
Keywords: classification; formality; framing; press articles; school science textbooks; visual images

Ingenta Select - The University of Sheffield Library; Health Sciences Library (cid66005563):

Title: A semiotic perspective on aesthetic preferences, visual literacy, and information design
Author(s): E.T. Kazmierczak
Source: Information Design Journal Volume: 10 Number: 2 Page: 176 -- 187
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Abstract:
To indicate that the world 'out' there' is what we, as humans, conceive it to be, and not as it is in and for itself, I will consider the image-making process as a process of visual modeling of concepts. As such, visual modeling is equivalent to the meaning-making process, since a graphic model is the conceptual model of structural and conceptual relations. I will discuss functional differences between images and diagrams, as categories fulfilling different expectations, the former being tools of art-making, and the latter being tools of information design. In order to facilitate the goal of advancing the level of visual literacy, I will examine the factors contributing to the shaping of the boundaries of visual literacy and aesthetic preferences. In doing so, I will relate the evolutionary process of form development to the development of its semantic dimension, using examples from the art of children. I argue that the rules of constructing images at the early stages of form development are identical with the rules of designing diagrams.

© 2003 John Benjamins Publishing Company
Keywords: aesthetic preferences; aesthetic education; visual semiotics; visual literacy; spatial organization

Visual Literacy Bibliography - XII. Research / Methodology

This site has a pretty interesting list which I should look into through MUSE.

Visual Methodologies : An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials

Book > Visual Methodologies

Testing the Usability of Visual Languages: A Web-Based Methodology:

"Among the possible evaluation methods (Preece 1993), we elicited observational evaluation, which involves observing or monitoring users' behavior while they are using an interface, and survey evaluation, which means seeking users' subjective opinions. To collect data about what users do when they interact with the test interface, employment of direct observation was avoided. In fact, if users are constantly aware that their performance is being monitored, their behavior may be strongly influenced (Hawthorne effect). Instead, we used software logging to record the dialog between user and system. In particular, our methodology is based on the use of the log files of a Web server, as will be illustrated. Moreover, we elicited questionnaire forms to support the survey evaluation. "

An Introduction to Visual Culture:

"An Introduction to Visual Culture
by Authors: Nicholas Mirzoeff
Released: July, 1999
ISBN: 0415158761
Paperback "

The life we lead today is very different from the one we grew accustomed to twenty, ten, or even five years ago. Information that took centuries to accumulate can now be sent from Singapore to San Antonio at the click of a button. More and more, our digital culture is depending on non-textual imagery to translate this information into a vast collage of cultural messages. It is the study of these images and the culture that interacts with them that Dr. Nicholas Mirzoeff is concerned with in his book An Introduction to Visual Culture (1999, Publisher: Routledge). Much of Mirzoeffs book is dedicated to examining the expansive manner in which the image is playing a role in the development of our global culture.

Home - Research Trek: "Research Trek"

Writing the Literature Review

Welcome to this blog. I hope to use this blog to track and document all the literature for my research which I found online.