Using Media for Social Change

Since I last blogged 3 months ago so many things have happened to help set me on a path for future work. I’ve been fortunate enough to have funding to attend attend a conference on Digital Storytelling, hosted by the Center for Digital Storytelling in partnership with the Luso-American foundation in Portugal, and a week long International School for Digital Transformation, also in Portugal. I have also started my community fieldwork case studies and completed my classroom based case studies.

In each of these, I have met some inspiration people who have helped me to see the world in a slightly different way. Rather than gazing with terror at how badly broken our social structures are, I can see the cracks and in some cases how issues are intertwined and form the cracks, but also tiny little bridges starting to appear over them.

This video was just tweeted by one of the inspirational faculty members I met at ISDT09, and it represents one of those bridges. “Playing for Change” shows how music crosses cultural boundaries so beautifully and how technology facilitates such collaborations. And it is a really enjoyable way of spending 5 minutes.

Ada Lovelace Day

It’s Ada Lovelace Day today. I’m wondering which woman in IT I could blog about, as there are so many inspirational women out there working hard to create a more balanced society through technology or otherwise.

The first woman who really drew my attention to the world of IT was my mother. She started an OU degree when she was pregnant with me, and after long spells of inactivity, picked through modules of interest one by one. As the years went by, her focus shifted towards technology. I remember one day in 1986 accompanying her on a specially planned trip to the town library in Bracknell. She had booked half an hour on the modem to complete part of an assignment. I was puzzled that the Bakelite phone receiver could ‘talk’ to a computer in another room when placed on the mediatory device, which looked as though it might have been made by the Blue Peter team out of yoghurt pots and cardboard boxes, and painted shiny grey. Mum assured me that this was a perfectly normal thing to do and that one day I would get to use a modem too.

We weren’t really well equipped at school with the latest technology, but with our house being full of various computers it’s no surprise that I ended up taking a degree in IT. I still have our Spectrum 48k in the loft, and I’m looking forward to showing it to my sons one day, if it still works. The 7 minute wait for Hungry Horrace might teach them the art of patience, a skill that the CBeebies website doesn’t usually require.

Having listened intently to Emma McGrattan (Senior VP of Engineering at Ingres) speaking at Girl Geek Dinners recently, I’ve taken time to think about the gender balance in the world of IT, and what it means to be a woman in such a profession. Before I went into teaching, I was quite used to being surrounded by male colleagues. The ratio is bound to change over time, as social technology becomes ingrained in the human psyche.

But for now, Happy Ada Lovelace Day and thank you to my Mum for being such a great inspiration.