Preparing for EuroCALL
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009I’ve been flat-out the past couple of weeks preparing for the EuroCALL conference. As postgraduate students, we can apply for funding to attend one overseas conference during our degree if we are accepted to present there. My proposals for a paper and a poster were accepted by EuroCALL, and so I’m off to Spain on Sunday!
This trip has been months in the planning. Years, even. I’ve always wanted to go to Europe, and this is a great opportunity. Although the university funding only partially pays for expenses, without it I’d not be going at all, so I am very grateful!
I will blog more about my paper presentation later, but it’s my Poster (with a capital ‘P’!) that has been occupying my time recently. Mimpi, my cat, has been a lot of help as you can see.
And the finished product:
In order to demonstrate the value-addedness of digital media, I’ve included an iPod with 5 audio tracks and a digital photo frame with a few photos. I had thought about attaching an iRiver with video footage, but the menu system on those cheap players is too complex for a poster. I’ve tried to keep it as simple as possible so that “viewers” can just press a button rather than having to scroll through layered menus.
I found constructing this poster to be a useful way of planning my methodology chapter, and visualising it in a different way. The challenge of incorporating audio-visual material alongside static, written text was also interesting. The aim, after all, is to value-add and not just to “add”. In this, I’m guided by Coffey et al. (2006, p. 19) who tell us:
“…multimodal research is not simply a mosaic, which adds together various separate forms of modes of data (including visual data). The contemporary technological environment potentially widens the opportunities for multimedia (re)presentation of data and for the emergence of new multi-semiotic forms of analysis and argument – enabling the innovative inclusion of film and video, still images, documentary materials, sound clips, online and other digital data alongside textual representations”
And so I’m enabled to include these on a poster.
We’ll see what the response is.
