Home - Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Communities in Action: Papers in Community Informatics
Editor: Larry Stillman, Graeme Johanson and Rebecca French
Date Of Publication: Jul 2009
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-0959-7
Isbn: 1-4438-0959-4
ICTs have become a very powerful community resource, viewed by many authors in this volume as two-way mechanisms, facilitating the perpetuation of and reflecting esteemed community values. The contents of this volume make it clear that ICTs have a huge capacity for incorporation into different forms of community action, including social change, community learning, community connection, and community development. Through studying the papers in this volume, readers can learn about multiple forms of ICTs and action and how action is understood, and improve their grasp of the complexities of social-technical relations.

The chapters in this volume began life as papers at the Conference on ’Community Informatics – prospects for communities and action’ in 2007, the fourth successful community informatics conference held at the Monash University Centre, Prato Italy. This book creates a platform for exchanging experiences, case studies, and possible solutions to address the difficulties in deploying ICT in many contexts, and will be of interest to all researchers and practioners who engage with ICT, particularly those in the community and developmental informatics field.

Dr Larry Stillman is a Senior Research Fellow of the Centre for Community Networking Research, Monash University Australia. He has a particular interest in the relationship between theory and practice in the transformation of non-profit institutional cultures with technology.

Additionally, he is increasingly involved in development informatics environments.

Graeme Johanson

As Director of the Centre for Community Networking Research (www.ccnr.net), Graeme has managed many practical projects at Monash University about the usefulness of ICTs for community improvement locally and internationally. Current projects deal with: sharing literacy skills in South Africa online; the power of mobile phones for poverty alleviation by improving women’s roles in micro-enterprises in Indonesia, India, China and South Africa; Chinese migrants and social inclusion in cities in Australia and northern Italy; improving networks between community-based organisations, home businesses, and local government; the formation of a National Non-profit ICT Coalition; prototyping an annotation system for capturing and sustaining indigenous oral culture. He helped launch the International Development Informatics Association (IDIA) in 2007.

Rebecca French completed her Master’s of Information Management and Systems at Monash University in 2007, after employment as a Psychologist for 10 years. She is currently undertaking her PhD at Monash University Faculty if IT on information behaviour and knowledge sharing in welfare organisations, while working as a Research Assistant and Records and Information Management consultant with non-profit organisations.

Price Uk Gbp: 39.99
Price Us Usd: 59.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)

We recommend

Language and Literature
Middle-earth and Beyond: Essays on the World of J. R. R. Tolkien

History
Arctic Discourses

Education
The Supportive School: Wellbeing and the Young Adolescent

Interesting reviews

From Navigating Music and Sound Education

“We rarely have the opportunity and time to engage with the practicalities of music teaching through the lens of evidence-based practice. This book provides us with a wonderful exception that is accessible to beginning and established teachers. It contains a wide range of stimulating and thought-provoking material that draws on real-world experiences and events, which are contextualised, informed and structured by theory. This is a powerful combination that we can visit again and again for insight and inspiration. Congratulations to all involved, particularly the editors for shaping such a valuable contribution!”
—Professor Graham F. Welch, University of London; President, International Society of Music Education

“Navigating music and sound education draws together a range of issues increasingly acknowledged to be at the basis of reflective and effective music learning and teaching: social settings, cultural dimensions, gender, indigeneity, varying cognitive approaches, inter-disciplinary connections, technology, types of learning, and creativity. It opens up areas of pedagogy that go beyond classroom methodology to acknowledge student individuality and encourage music learning and teaching grounded in the reality of students’ musical and social lives. It will be invaluable for those training to become educators and for teachers already in the field.”
—Associate Professor Peter Dunbar-Hall, University of Sydney

“This book brings an important contribution to music teacher education as it challenges the readers to rethink their paradigms of music education. It highlights the importance of preparing a reflective teacher, autonomous, creative and conscious of the multifaceted and multicultural locus in which they will work. The book also draws on the importance for music teachers to consider the context in which they work, and establish a dialog between local musical traditions, informal music practices and global trends of music teaching and learning. Most importantly, all chapters are in one way or another derived from research carried out on specific areas, thus stressing the importance of the research informed practice in music education.”
—Professor Liane Hentschke, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil; International Society of Music Education Immediate Past President

Many readers will appreciate Steve Dillon and Kathy Hirche’s description of the future of education in their work with dynamic technological contexts.

Navigating Music and Sound Education is a wonderful guide and resource for pre-service music teachers, for teachers in the field, and for teacher educators.

It offers a range of fresh perspectives on the state of music education as it is and as it might be. Kari K Veblen

Navigating Music and Sound Education is an ambitious project which features current research from 20 individuals whose professional identities run the gamut from musician to songwriter to student to educator to music therapist to ethnomusicologist. The book’s scope is perhaps the most exciting aspect of Navigating Music and Sound Education.
Kari K Veblen
University of Western Ontario
British Journal of Music Education
October 2011