I enjoyed this paper a lot more than I thought I would - although it got a bit techie in some areas I think I got a lot ot of it - mainly the highlighting that any discourse is a product of its participants. Those participants bring to that discourse their own expectations and histories, what had led them to have tose expectations, and external influences such as institutional / social policies and discourses.

Reading this paper has made me quite excited about doing some actual discourse analysis. I know I've got a lot more reading to do first but I think I'm starting to understand the complexity of the subject and intend to have a fisrt bash at things quite soon - I think I'll record one of my sessions at work next week and see what I can do about analysing it.

Good things I got from the paper - the actual process

Analysis of the teacher-pupil discourse

• Looked at how the teacher and all of the pupils interacted
• Was there any encouragement / discouragement? What forms did these take?
• How was discourse encouraged / discouraged? Did these change from pupil to pupil / over the time of the study?
• How much did each pupil talk and did this change over the course of the study?
• Was the students' talk "useful"? Did it use the vocabulary of the subject or help others in the class forward their understanding of the subject?

Analysing the teacher's intentions within the discourse

• Why did the teacher behave the way she did in the classroom?
• Where some pupils encouraged / discouraged more than others? If so then why?
• What were the teacher's expectations of the discourse and were these satisfied? Waht are the sources / aspects which have defined the teacher's expectations?
• How controlling was the teacher in the classroom? Did this have an effect on the discourse?
• What assuptions were made by the teacher in the classroom and did these have an effect on the overall discourse?
• Are there any sorts of pressures acting on the teacher which could have / did have an effect on her in the classroom/ If so, how did they manifest themselves?

Alignment of teacher's intentions with policy / institutional discourse

• Did the teacher's actions support the policies of the institution / society or not?
• How did policies and institutional discourses manifest themselves in the classroom and did they affect the classroom discourse in a beneficial / detrimental way?
• Did the teacher manage to achieve or advance the curriculum requirements or not? How? Why?

So much food for thought!

I ended up quite disappointed with this paper - it started out quite well and then just sort of fizzled out and I'm not sure that the so-called paradoxes were paradoxical enough to write a peper on them. I feel that they are more like "considerations" than bases.

The best part of this paper for me was the discussion about the over-romanticising of the idea that the provision of material will overcome the digital divide in some sort of magic way - it will, prpobably, actually increase the divide. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink! Also, so much of the world don't have the basic access so providing them with more things they can't access with help not one jot!

I did like the idea of not just throwing away the old traditional literacies though - use them as building blocks and as an access to the digital / information literacies required in a digital future.

From the paper:-

 Does the possession of multimedia literacy or the lack of it create a new divide between those who have it and those who don't? Will it make those who do not have the literacies into passive consumers of pre-packaged information?

 What is the relationship between traditional literacies and the new multimedia literacies? This question needs to be addressed if those with weaker IL skills are not to be left behind / out

 Competence in traditional literacies are often the gateway into new literacies.

 "We strive towards post-industrial forms of knowledge acquisition" - I hate this comment! It makes us sound as if we have been languishing in some sort of knowledge-poor Dark Age and the industrial age has been over for about 50 years or so - comments like this are way too late!

Wow!

I'm impressed with the speed this site was set up. It's great that it contains all of the functions that Eduspaces had too as I really liked that site.

Here's looking forward to a new term - making some new friends and reacquainting with some old ones (if thirteen weeks could be considered old)

Have a great term eveybody!