Good Childhoods?

This week has seen the launch of the 'The Good Childhood Inquiry' Report - yet another publication on childhood which mixes helpful and constructive messages with some plain scaremongering, not least about single-parent families. Research linked to single-parent families is not reviewed in relation to the other factors which might be at play in many single-parent families, such as poverty, and this leads to judgements about causation rather than correlation. Thank goodness for the NSPCC, whose Director of Services for Children and Young People, Wes Cuell, has sensible things to say about this "child-panic". If only all public bodies that have children's interests in mind were this sensible...

Barbie celebrations

Just what Barbie-lovers (or maybe haters?) everywhere have always wanted, jewellery made from hacked-off Barbie body parts. Margaux Lange makes quite mind-boggling jewellery that is now getting talked about in the New York Times. Perhaps she will be invited by Mattel to make a special 50th anniversary medallion or something, given it is Barbie's half-century celebration year. And what a year it promises to be, with a 'House of Barbie' department store due to open in Shanghai (see report here) and a Barbie fashion show during the New York Fashion Week in February.In addition, as Mattel inform their shareholders, Barbie is also to have her own Facebook page - what about a Twitter stream? That way we can get to hear about every move she makes in her 50th year. Mmm - now where did I put that Swiss Army knife...?

Barack Obama

This is certainly an exciting day, as it is the inauguration of America’s first black president and also a president who is cognisant of the power of technology (just look at the list of social networking sites Obama and his campaigners use as an indication of this). Indeed, he has appointed two Second Life innovators to his ‘Innovation Agenda’ group and so no doubt US educators look forward to virtual worlds becoming a more central part of the education agenda in the years ahead. I will be reading RezEd to find out how this agenda emerges, but in the meantime check out the very interesting report on ethics in virtual worlds produced by the group, available here. As for now, there's only one thing left to say - Go, Obama!

Girl Ambition

I noted with interest the launch of a new social networking site aimed at girls aged 7-12, titled Girl Ambition. It was formed by three parents keen to provide a safe space for their children to engage in online activity and develop a site that challenges the traditional, stereotyped discourses about girlhood that circulate the internet. Whilst there is certainly a need for sites such as this that aim to develop girls’ self-esteem, I feel that it is unfortunate that the site looks so retro. It is hard to compete with the designs of commercial sites, given the marketing budgets they enjoy, but nonetheless a more up-to-date design would attract more users. I can’t help feeling that the site will appeal to a certain demographic and miss an opportunity to speak to a wide, diverse audience. I hope I am wrong and will be monitoring the site’s development. In the meantime, if anyone has had an opportunity to review the content of the site, do post your comments (or link to your review) here.

A Chuggington chunter

Oh dear...I once talked on Radio 4's 'Woman's Hour' about the gender-bias of pre-school animations, citing in particular Underground Ernie's gendered stereotypes. (The interview can be found here if you are interested.) Unfortunately, Cbeebies on BBC1 have just started airing another series featuring trains as characters - 'Chuggington', which appears to be demonstrating some of the same problems. Only three of the ten trains are female and two of them are described thus:

Olwin is an older steam train who is a wound a bit tight. She always runs to schedule and can’t stand being late! She is a sweetheart, though, and loves mothering the young trainees. (It's just that the "little chug-a-chugs" find her caring ways a little too much, sometimes.)

Zephie is a young scissor-lift trolley. Unlike the other chuggers, she can spin round and scissor up and down in excitement. She is flighty, giggly, girly and fun. She knows when it's time to get to work, too.

Only one of the three female trains appears to escape stereotypes:

Koko is a fearless passenger engine built for high speed. She loves to explore and have adventures, and to challenge her friends to a dare or a race. Although her spirit might get her into mischief, she is always well-meaning and knows when to apologise.

With reports that the programme is scheduled to be shown in 100 countries and is to be linked to a range of toys, we can be sure that this is yet another objectionable programme, with gendered sterotyping that is completely unsuitable for a 21st century pre-school audience, which will become embedded in young children's popular culture with little critique.

Dear Santa...

I noted in the THES this week, amongst the endless RAE reports, a list of the 'most cited papers on Santa Claus research'. Maybe the paper Cathy Nutbrown and myself are writing will be on next year's list! Here's the abstract:

“To Santa with Love: An analysis of Children’s Letters to Father Christmas”. In this paper we outline findings from a study in which children in early years settings and primary schools in England wrote letters to Father Christmas in December 2007. The aim of the study was to identify how far the 260 letters reflected constructions of economic gendered subjectivities and aspirations towards the acquisition of new technologies in the digital age. A content analysis of the letters was undertaken, focusing on the requests children made. Findings suggest that contemporary childhoods are inflected by the technological landscape of the twenty-first century and that children demonstrate gendered consumerist patterns in terms of the items they wish to own.

Happy holiday season to all - will be back to the blog in the new year!

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.