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Composite family portrait by Jean |
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Students are discovering new forms of expression via the Internet and new digital technologies. Jean is in her ninth year of schooling and is undertaking second year at a public high school in rural Queensland. Exploration of the Internet, relevant software and a digital camera has led to a new expression of her hobby of breeding and caring for guinea pigs. She nows shares this knowledge of these pets through web site publishing and regularly corresponds with the worldwide community of guinea pig lovers. She records events through text and digital photography and follows this up with E-Mail conversations. Jean’s site has become popular and many other guinea pig sites on the web have included links to her site. She has also gained awards and has had excellent reviews in children’s websites. Her work has been described in the literature (Lankshear and Knobel, 1996, 1997) as an example of how emerging technologies provide a new context for literacy learning. Jean’s daily E-Mail correspondance usually exceeds 500 words, no doubt assisting in her developing writing craft. Her written expression is an important and relevant part of her everyday life outside of school. She has gained immense pleasure from her friends in Alaska who have related stories of being chased up their backyard by bears and from her regular chats with her friend in California. No doubt, they also marvel at Jean’s stories of koalas and kangaroos visiting her backyard. Jean uses the web extensively to assist her school research, recently quizzing members of a South Australian research team about their work with glossy black cockatoos and downloading their newletters, but she is also an active participant in the web , making her own contribution. Jean has recently lectured at the Queensland University of Technology on World Wide Web design and using Scala Multimedia authoring software and has been contracted to produce web sites for Australia academics.