Introduction time...

Hi Everyone - it's Ewan here!

I have to say I'm glad we get to do this, as I found myself with so many questions after hearing everyone's introductions in our first class.

My undergraduate degree is in Psychology and English from York University. I studied part-time for that degree and finished it a little over a year ago. Way, way back in my past, I also studied Photography, Sound Engineering, and Music Technology. I started in the MI (Culture & Technology concentration) last year as a part time student but now I am on a professional development leave from my job, so I get 12 months of being a full time student.

I have worked for the past ten years in a college library in various technology roles. For the last four years I have helped create and coordinate a media lab / makerspace at three of our four campuses, as well working on developing and delivering workshops, and designing learning objects for a program which  promotes digital literacy skills.

It has been hard for me to step away from a project that has been such a big part of my life for the last few years but after about 8 years of juggling work, school, and family, I am excited to just have to juggle two for a year!

I'm excited about this class for a number of reasons: I mentioned my experience with the eBooks and the Victorian Literature class and maybe in some of our later postings I'll get a chance to reflect on that in a little more detail. As someone who works in an academic library, one thing that really interests me is the future of the textbook. I have already witnessed a step away from the traditional textbook with the growing use of Open Educational Resources and in courses (such as this one!) where Faculty create custom course readings gathered from huge databases - databases which students have already paid to access. But there is a flipside to this: I recently spoke with a university professor from the US whose institution is pushing to have no physical textbooks at all for first year students. These students must purchase time-limited access to an (expensive) eBook package, all provided by a single publisher, regardless of the subject area. I find that distressing on a number of levels. I am hoping to explore this in some of the postings or papers.

My other interests in the future of the book stems from being a parent of three kids. My children have all had fun with audio books and interactive eBooks but I have to say, I never want to pull out anything other than a "real" book at bedtime. In addition to being a time of wonder and genuine connection, I have found that storytime is a joint endeavour between me and my kids, at their various levels of reading ability. Modelling is so important, it's not just about the story, it's about how we read, how we question, how we look for context clues, how we apply texts to our experiences, and vice-versa. And this teaching and learning goes in two directions - it's not simply adult to child. So I wonder how these activities (or "programmatic functions," as Drucker calls them (169)) - activities which are so particular to the shared act of reading children's books - translate into new forms of publishing. Again, something I would love to explore in more depth at some stage.

Do we still need an unusual fact? My one from class was that I used to share a house in Ireland with a pastry chef - not unusual in itself but a bit of a coincidence in light of my classmate's summer job. But a new one? I once sold a Polaroid camera to Elvis Costello - does that count? I hope so...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e1/Elvis-Costello-This-Years-Model.jpg

Looking forward to hearing all of your thoughts, ideas, and insights over the next few weeks.





Drucker, Johanna, "Modeling Functionality: From Codex to E-book." In SpecLab: Digital Aesthetics and Projects in Speculative Computing, 165-75. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.