Author Archives: Brian Farrell

Text connections – quality over quantity?

Frye was right. We’ve now moved the notion of reading horizontally rather than vertically online, and it is constantly changing the way we use text. This course has helped me gain a better understanding of how text has developed and … Continue reading

Posted in Making Connections | 2 Comments

Rip.Mix.Feed. Braille Gallery

I was able to write a research paper on braille for this course, and found the topic quite interesting. This was the first time that I had really conducted any research into the subject, and I’ve been intrigued at the … Continue reading

Posted in Rip.Mix.Feed | 2 Comments

Commentary #3: A Response to Bryan Alexander’s “Web 2.0: A new wave of innovation for teaching and learning?”

What exactly is ‘web 2.0’? Bryan Alexander’s discussion on the emergence of social media begins with a discussion around the attempt to define this term that has been pervasively used when discussing recent online developments. The author acknowledges rightly that … Continue reading

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Response to Dobson & Willinsky’s “Digital Literacy”

Teresa Dobson and John Willinsky’s “Digital Literacy” article offers a thorough historical overview of the realities and challenges of the written word in a digital landscape, but falls short in fully analysing some of the important changes in this evolving … Continue reading

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Braille as a text technology (Assignment 3)

In a society that places a high value on the ability to read and write, those with visual disabilities were once at a tremendous educational loss and not able to participate fully in society. The current technology available to those … Continue reading

Posted in Research Paper | 1 Comment

The Virtual Library

James O’Donnell’s 1994 article, “The Virtual Library: An Idea Whose Time Has Passed” was written quite some time before the advent of widely available consumer access to large digital storage devices, and certainly quite a great deal of technological development … Continue reading

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Text is a verb too

I went searching for a dictionary definition of text in use as a verb, and was surprised to not find anything listed in the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang. To me, using the word text as a verb (as in, … Continue reading

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Yahoo Technology

“You know the kind of situation. You’re at the office and your teenager and her cell phone are out there somewhere. You need to know what she’s up to, but you don’t really want all your cubicle neighbors to listen … Continue reading

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Japanese writing desk

I selected this photo because it represents a different perspective from my primarily western-influenced education. This is actually a photo that I took a couple of years ago when I first moved to Japan and began to explore my new … Continue reading

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