Virtual literacy ethnography

Students on the fabulous online MA in New Literacies course have completed their virtual ethnographies of literacy in Second Life and in their presentations detailed a range of interesting findings. The most interesting findings related to the way in which literacy practices in-world were informed by RL understandings of literacy; those who took a rather functional approach to literacy in RL appeared to do so in SL. Others wished to transport RL literacy practices into SL e.g. their poetry. Given the cross-over across domains that is inevitable, but the data regarding this were fascinating. In addition, many literacy practices in SL are related to a traditional model i.e. focusing on words and letters - multimodal practices are, apart from navigation and streaming audio and video, related to building in-world, or the creation of machinima, which not all residents feel confident about undertaking. I am encouraging the students to write a paper on their study and if they do, I will post it here. In the meantime, Steinkueler's work on literacy in the MMOG World of Warcraft is a fascinating read for those of you interested in this area.