Multimodality and Learning Conference - updated info

Multimodality and Learning Conference: Environments, Rhetoric, Recognition, Play, and Methods
July 6th and 7th 2010
Institute of Education, London
Conference information
 
Aim and scope
The overall aim of the conference is to explore multimodal perspectives on learning and to open up theoretical, methodological and pedagogical questions and debate.The conference will be of interest to educational practitioners, research students,researchers and academics from a variety of disciplines including semiotics, linguistics, sociology, anthropology and design.
Call for papers (symposiums)
Individual call for papers

Thematic strands

• Environments of learning: institutional, work based, and beyond
  School, home, work places, museums, digital environments
  Keynote: Dr Jonathan Hindmarsh, Kings College, London, UK
• Rhetoric and the politics of representation and communication
  Narrative, persuasion, genre, argument, information design
  Keynote: Professor Lilie Chouliaraki, London School of Economics, UK
  
• Recognition, evaluation, assessment
  Discourses of accountability, criteria for evaluation, power, processes of assessment
  Keynote: Professor Gunther Kress, Institute of Education, University of
  London, UK
  
• Play: games, experience, and learning
  Oral traditions, ludic modes, cultures of play, play and creativity
  Keynote: Professor Suzanne de Castells, Simon Fraser University, Vancover,
  Canda and Dr Jennifer Jensen, York University, Toronto, Canada
  
• Methodologies
  Multimodal data collection, transcription, analysis, multimodal dissemination
  Keynote: Dr Jennifer Rowsell, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA and Dr
  Kate Pahl, Sheffield University, UK

multimodality and learning conference 2010 - call for papers

Multimodality and Learning Conference: Environments, Rhetoric, Recognition, Play, and Methods

July 6th and 7th 2010
Institute of Education, Bloomsbury, London, UK
Aim and scope
The overall aim of the conference is to explore multimodal perspectives on learning and to open up theoretical, methodological and pedagogical questions and debate. The conference will be of interest to educational practitioners, research students, researchers and academics from a variety of disciplines including semiotics, linguistics, sociology, anthropology and design.

Call for papers
We welcome symposia and individual papers on multimodality and learning that address the conference themes outlined in the attachment:  Thematic strands. Abstracts can be submitted using the forms available at: www.multimodality.org.uk. Further information on submitting an abstract will be posted on the website shortly.
All abstracts will be peer-reviewed. Deadline 5pm on 26th February 2010.

Registration
Conference fee: £200 full fee; Students £100. Lunch and light refreshments included, acommodation not included. Registration deadline 31 May 2010

Key dates
26th February 2010 Deadline for submission of abstracts 31st May 2010 Deadline for registration 6th and 7th July 2010
Conference Organizing committee: Centre for Multimodal Research, Institute of Education, University of London – Richard Andrews, Jeff Bezemer, Andrew Burn, Sophia Diamantopoulou, Carey Jewitt, Gunther Kress, Diane Mavers, Caroline Pelletier

multimodality & learning conference

i'm here in london attending the multimodality and learning conference, and having a fabulous time! not only b/c the weather is lovely and everyone says 'cheers' :), but also b/c getting out the national context with which i'm familiar and engaging with a range of international discourses about multimodality and about learning

the conference was kicked off with a kick ass talk by charles goodwin, whose conceptualization of human communication as being constituted simultaneously by language (the linguistic stuff), embodied action (how the body reveals engagement in the communication), and engagement with the surrounding structures (or how the environment is consequential to the communication). then today, gunther kress followed up with another keynote in which he proposed a social semiotic theory of learning - two concepts (semiotics and learning) which, as he put it, are not common bedfellows. pushing against (or maybe past) a traditionally psychological model of learning, gunther suggests that when we research learning - or propose to research learning - we might not really be doing that at all. that in fact, we might actually be looking at environments or conditions of learning. makes me think about connections to varenne's recent work on retheorizing education...

i'm loving the explicit talk of power in these presentations about multimodality - something we either seem to shy away from or dichotomize in the states. i'm not sure why that is... also a rich interrogation and exploration of multimodality: pedagogically, theoretically, methodologically; and it relates to literacies, language and identity, meanings across space and time, and math and science.

there's LOTS more but i'm out of battery and forgot both my charger and converter, so this will have to do for now.