Dear Nancy and others, Since I'm from Australia I've ended up late into this great discussion. I am working with groups of tweens and teens across a range of contexts and have just written a paper about the seemlessness of children's social practices across a range of spaces - both online and offline. I've pointed out that there is no dichotomy for them and that they blend into each other. The paper will appear in a journal called "E-Learning" at: http://www.wwwords.co.uk/elea/ for anybody interested. Since the paper covers the 11 - 18 age group I've used the words children, adolescents and young people accordingly. Here's my asbtract: Childrens virtual experiences as an interface to their identities and their everyday lives Angela Thomas University of Sydney Abstract In this paper I will explore the seamlessness between childrens online and offline worlds. For children, there is no such dichotomy of online and offline, or virtual and real the digital is so much intertwined into their lives and psyche that the one is entirely enmeshed with the other. Despite early research pointing to the differences that mark the virtual as a space of otherness, I want to suggest that the fabric of childrens everyday lives knows no such distinct demarcation, and that what they do in their virtual worlds significantly affects how they connect to society. Moreover, through the virtual, children are simultaneously engaging in acts of self-reflection, self-fashioning and identity formation. Using data from a longitudinal ethnographic study of children online, I illuminate a number of case studies which support this argument. I do so by using narrative accounts based on extensive interviews with focus children. Here's a bit of the conclusion and my references: Throughout the paper I have made six key points: · Children live in complex, heteroglossic, dynamically interactional worlds, with the ability to multitask and exist successfully across a variety of spaces, cultures and roles at any given time · Childrens lives in online communities connect to and blend into their lives in offline communities: socially, emotionally, sometimes phyically, and intellectually · What children do online is essentially similar to what they do offline: make friends, talk about their interests, engage in hobbies and pursuits that interest them, and have fun · Young people are engaged in struggles of identity formation: they struggle for power, popularity, to define who they are, and to understand their early sexual development. This is reflected in their online worlds, though sometimes expressed through alternative semiotic means. · Discursively produced themes of angst, power, romance and sex can be drawn from these case studies, reflecting the parallels of everyday lived experiences and fluidity of emotions between the online and offline worlds inhabited by young people · Online communities are important socialisation agents for youth culture REFERENCES Agger, B. (2004). The Virtual Self. MA, USA: Blackwell. Arnett, J. J. (1995). Adolescents uses of media for self-socialization. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 24, pp. 519 533. Bakhtin, M.M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Beavis, C., Nixon, H. & Atkinson, S. (2005) LAN cafes: cafes, places of gathering, or sites of informal teaching and learning? Education, Communication and Information (Routledge UK), 5(1), 41-60. 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Metamedia Literacy: Transforming Meanings and Media. Handbook of Literacy and Technology: Transformations in a Post-Typographic World. D. Reinking, McKenna, M. C., Labbo, L. D. & Kieffer, R. D. London, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers: 283-301. Malson, H. (1998). The Thin Woman: Feminism, Post-Structuralism and the Social Psychology of Anorexia Nervosa. London, Routledge. Nanowrimo.org. (2005). What is Nanowrimo? Retrieved February 27th, 2006 From: http://www.nanowrimo.org/modules/cjaycontent/index.php?id=2 Phillips, L. & Jörgensen, M. W. (2002). Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London, SAGE. Stone, A. R. (1991). Will The Real Body Stand Up?: Boundaries Stories About Virtual Cultures. Cyberspace. First Steps. M. Benedikt. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Street, B.V. (1984). Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Subrahmanyam, K., Greenfield, P. and Tynes, B. (2004). Constructing sexuality and identity in an online teen chat room. Applied Developmental Psychology 25. pp. 651-666. Suler, J. (2005). Adolescents in Cyberspace: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Retrieved February 27th, 2006 From: http://www.rider.edu/suler/psycyber/adoles.html Thomas, A. (2004). Digital Literacies of the Cybergirl. E-Learning, (1), 3. pp: 358-382. Thomas, A. (2005). Fictional Blogging and the Narrative Identity of Adolescent Girls. Paper prepared for Blogtalk Downunder Conference, May, 2005, Sydney. Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the Screen. New York, Simon and Schuster.University Press. Valentine, G., & Holloway, S.L. (2002). Cyberkids? Exploring childrens identities and social networks in online and off line worlds. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 92, pp. 302-319. Kind Regards, Angela http://anya.blogsome.com _______________________________________________________ Angela Thomas Lecturer in English Education, Faculty of Education and Social Work University of Sydney Phone: +61 2 9351 6229, Fax: +61 2 9351 2606 "Ceci n'est pas une .signature" ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.