Browsing by Author "Noakes, Travis"

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    Get ready for abundance culture at high school
    (2010) Noakes, Travis
    This presentation by Travis Noakes details the challenges and opportunities posed by 'abundance culture' and 'generation (Content)' in secondary and tertiary education. It can be used by teachers interested in understanding new web 2.0 technologies and their implications for teaching and learning in well-resourced teaching contexts in South Africa.
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    Improve your online presence (2010)
    (2010) Noakes, Travis
    What online search shows about you, can be an important aid to your CV. For my first tutoring session in the "Online Media Production" course, I prepared a presentation on the importance of students using their practical internet work to improve their online reputation. This is highly relevant in Film and Media, where examples of a student's practical work are critical when searching for employment in industry.
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    Inequality in digital personas - e-portfolio curricula, cultural repertoires and social media
    (2018) Noakes, Travis; Walton, Marion; Cronje, Johannes
    Digital and electronic learning portfolios (e-portfolios) are playing a growing role in supporting admission to tertiary study and employment by visual creatives. Despite the growing importance of digital portfolios, we know very little about how professionals or students use theirs. This thesis contributes to knowledge by describing how South African high school students curated varied e-portfolio styles while developing disciplinary personas as visual artists. The study documents the technological and material inequalities between these students at two schools in Cape Town. By contrast to many celebratory accounts of contemporary new media literacies, it provides cautionary case studies of how young people’s privileged or marginalized circumstances shape their digital portfolios as well. A four-year longitudinal action research project (2009-2013) enabled the recording and analysis of students’ development as visual artists via e-portfolios at an independent (2009-2012) and a government school (2012-2013). Each school represented one of the two types of secondary schooling recognised by the South African government. All student e-portfolios were analysed along with producers’ dissimilar contexts. Teachers often promoted highbrow cultural norms entrenched by white, English medium schooling. The predominance of such norms could disadvantage socially marginalized youths and those developing repertoires in creative industry, crafts or fan art. Furthermore, major technological inequalities caused further exclusion. Differences in connectivity and infrastructure between the two research sites and individuals’ home environments were apparent. While the project supported the development of new literacies, the intervention nonetheless inadvertently reproduced the symbolic advantages of privileged youths. Important distinctions existed between participants’ use of media technologies. Resourceintensive communications proved gatekeepers to under-resourced students and stopped them fully articulating their abilities in their e-portfolios. Non-connected students had the most limited exposure to developing a digital hexis while remediating artworks, presenting personas and benefiting from online affinity spaces. By contrast, well-connected students created comprehensive showcases curating links to their productions in varied affinity groups. Male teens from affluent homes were better positioned to negotiate their classroom identities, as well as their entrepreneurial and other personas. Cultural capital acquired in their homes, such as media production skills, needed to resonate with the broader ethos of the school in its class and cultural dimensions. By contrast, certain creative industry, fan art and craft productions seemed precluded by assimilationist assumptions. At the same time, young women grappled with the risks and benefits of online visibility. An important side effect of validating media produced outside school is that privileged teens may amplify their symbolic advantages by easily adding distinctive personas. Under-resourced students must contend with the dual challenges of media ecologies as gatekeepers and an exclusionary cultural environment. Black teens from working class homes were faced with many hidden infrastructural and cultural challenges that contributed to their individual achievements falling short of similarly motivated peers. Equitable digital portfolio education must address both infrastructural inequality and decolonisation.
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    Online content creation: looking at students’ social media practices through a Connected Learning lens
    (Taylor & Francis, 2016) Brown, Cheryl; Czerniewicz, Laura; Noakes, Travis
    As the boundaries between technology and social media have decreased, the potential for creative production or participatory practices have increased. However, the affordances of online content creation (OCC) are still taken up by a minority of Internet users despite the opportunities offered for engagement and creativity. Whilst previous studies have addressed creative production by university students for specific purposes, there is a research gap concerning OCC in the everyday lives of African university students. This paper describes the stories of three students who are online creators of content, the social media they utilised; their trajectories; their linkages with career interests; the types of online presences they created, maintained or discontinued into their university lives. As the case studies spanned digital practices that were informal and extracurricular yet peer supported as well as interest-driven and academically-oriented, the pedagogical framework of Connected Learning proved an appropriate heuristic. The study shows that being a digital creator gives students a competitive edge in our globally competitive society.
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    A private high school's staff responses to a Web 2.0 and "abundant digital media" presentation
    (2014-09-15) Noakes, Travis
    This presentation sums up questionnaire feedback from fourteen South African private high school staff. This follows a talk I gave on "abundant digital culture" and its potential benefits and hazards for their school. Loud Speaker image by woodleywonderworks shared under a CC-BY license.
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    Researching online portfolio social networks at high school
    (2014-09-23) Noakes, Travis
    Can be used to understand and present the basic motivations and enablers of online student portfolios. This presentation was delivered to visual art students about Online Portfolio Social Networks.
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    Students as Creative Producers
    (ICEL, 2017-07-05) Noakes, Travis; Czerniewicz, Laura; Brown, Cheryl
    This paper follows two South African Media Studies university students and their activities as producers of online content. It considers the online publication services they chose to express media-related academic and creative interests outside of formal curriculum requirements. Through peer guidance and using online search, both students were able to access educational resources and communities of expertise relevant to varied creative production interests. These relationships supported self-directed and interest-driven learning across academic, civic and career domains. Such cross-linkages are a unique feature of the pedagogical approach of ‘Connected Learning’ (Ito et al., 2013), which knits together three crucial contexts for learning: peer- supported, interest-powered and academically-oriented. It argues that learners flourish and achieve their potential when they can connect their interests and social engagement to academic studies, civic engagement, and career opportunity. This paper shows how the varied online publication services used by both students provided them with inter-connected and relevant extramural experiences.