New Times, World Kids, Third Space: ICT, multiliteracies and multilingualism
Abstract
This talk explores the subtle and supple notion of identity in the context of what sociologists have described as New Times in relation to the shared knowledge and experience of ‘globalised youth’ under the term World Kids. Both of these notions try to address a remarkable level of horizontal (youth to youth) communication, unmediated by adults and institutions, via the Internet and popular culture. The talk will discuss these ideas in relation to language learning and multilingualism in which most language communities live in two distinct spaces, homelands and diasporas, brought together by the horizontal connecting mediation of digital media. What are the consequences for more stable formations of identity around language that arise in this radically new context? The idea of the Third Place will be considered as a way to move forward in thinking about these deeply new and dynamic innovations.
02THURSDAY.KEYNOTE-SPEECH.Pr.JO.LO.BIANCO.mp3Prof. Joseph Lo Bianco
Professor Joseph Lo Bianco, Chair of Language and Literacy Education, The University of Melbourne.
He has worked on language policy, peace education, literacy planning, bilingualism and multicultural education in several countries, including Australia, Sri Lanka and Scotland and is presently adviser to the Royal Thai Institute on a National Language Plan for Thailand. He is the former Director of the National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia and is an Honorary Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong. For his research and policy work in language and literacy, Professor Lo Bianco has been elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and Fellow of the Australian Council of Educators, and awarded the Order of Australia and the title of Commendatore nell’ordine di merito della Repubblica Italiana.