 I love to hydrate a font and I will not be embarrassed. In our iwi, in our rio, in our waka, tena koto, tena koto, tena koto katoa. Once upon a time, and not that horribly long ago, I got really obsessed with two things. Digital culture and oral cultures. Now, this presentation is a story of a research project that I did to try and get it out of my system. In case you're wondering, I didn't. Before I go into the story itself, though, I might talk about a couple of terms. The first term is the Gutenberg parenthesis. It's not something I made up, I wish I did. But the idea behind the Gutenberg parenthesis is basically this. That with the invention of the printing press, the Gutenberg press, everything changed. Now, while we had literacy before the Gutenberg press was invented, it was not mass literacy as we know it now. So this period before the Gutenberg parenthesis we call pre-literacy and the period after we call post-literacy. Now, the idea of post-literacy is not so much that it is after literacy but that it is a period when we get learning and communication strategies both from a literate period, the period we're sort of living in now, and from a pre-literate period or oral cultures. A way to sort of look at that is to think of pre-literacy as oral cultures, to think of the Gutenberg parenthesis as a book culture we're living in, and post-literacy maybe as digital culture, I sort of made that up. The second term, and a lot of you here will be familiar with this, are makerspaces. Please forgive me for my rather narrow definition of what makerspaces are. We think of makerspaces as places where people can make and create. This tend to be digital-ish. DIY, definitely creative and collaborative learning spaces. Makerspaces tend to be, well, self-evolving communities have invented them all over the country and abroad. Libraries, museums and schools are definitely picking it up. Now, one of the beauties of makerspaces is that they're beginning to break down the barriers between the digital or the online and the physical. So think of 3D printing, for example. So that's making a digital file real, or you think of robotics where you're making computer code walk and talk. To get back to the story itself, though, so I got really obsessed with digital culture and oral cultures and started a small research project as part of my master's. Two themes came out really, really strongly. The first theme was that of storytelling. The second theme was that of making. And these themes related to how we communicate and how we learn. Interestingly enough, these themes came out very strongly as pre-literacy strategies or what people did before we invented mass literacy as we know it. So it was less of, do you learn to learn about something here as a book and more of, do you want to learn something here? Do it or listen to the story. These are some quotes from the researcher that did quite a few interviews. And one of the things that came out was this idea of Talanoa. Talanoa is a Pacific word that, well, it could call it discussion, I guess, but it's definitely about talk, talk, talk, listen. And another thing, another example that came out of this was of this person who wanted to learn how to fix cars. And to fix cars, instead of reading a book about fixing cars, or going to a course about fixing cars, would go and live with a mechanic, with a car mechanic for a few years to learn how to fix them. Storytelling and making as communication learning strategies also come out really strongly in maker spaces. The literature is full of them wherever you look. Learning is an act of social participation among young people or even people constructing new knowledge just by making things that are special to them. So while it may not be revolutionary to the rest of the world that you can 3D print a Yoda head, for the person that 3D printed the Yoda head, that is pretty damn cool. Pre-literacy therefore, and that's what the research really got at, is, well, quite related to maker spaces. And because, like we said earlier, post-literacy is so related to pre-literacy, post-literacy is related to maker spaces. So what? Who cares? One, New Zealand has, out there in New Zealand has a really unique, is a really unique example of oral heritage. Now this is not just from Maori and Pacifica cultures, but also from European cultures that moved to New Zealand. You'll find, those of you that have spent any time or belong to blue collar or working class cultures, that a lot of real life is done orally. It is not done literally, in terms of reading and writing. So our oral heritage, we're in a unique position in New Zealand where we can actually look at our oral heritage and learn from it. To what end? To claim our digital future. Now if post-literacy is an idea, or the Gutenberg parenthesis is an idea, makes sense. We can apply what we're learning and how we interact with, and how oral cultures interact with to the future. Now examples, one of the examples that was given me some time ago about a post-literate culture in a digital sense was the use of texting. Now those of you that are teachers here or some of the librarians like myself will be quite upset, or maybe parents, by how teens tend to text, or how all of us text, without very much respect to syntax, to grammar, or even to spelling. I don't care, but my parents certainly do. One of the things, really interesting things about texting as an activity is that while you're using the tools of literacy and of type, so you're typing things out, you're more working in an oral context because it is about the immediacy of the communication, it's about getting the message across. Damn the syntax. Who cares about the grammar? Put in a couple of smileys. And that is exactly what post-literacy sort of is. Taking from the literate, but also taking from the oral and moving back towards that. I do, however, have three questions. And the big, what I really wanted to come and talk to you was I don't have enough feedback. And these are some of the questions that I find myself worrying about. What are post-literacy skills? So we know of texting. But if post-literacy is a real thing, what are the skills we need to handle a post-literate world? What are the skills we need to handle digital culture? And it's not just about being able to code. How do we use maker spaces to develop these post-literacy skills? We know that maker spaces work. We know that people learn really well in maker spaces. But how do we use these maker spaces to develop these post-literate skills? And of course, the really big question, how do we measure all of this stuff? Almost every single measure we have belongs to a literate world. So whether we're measuring the number of people, it presumes the fact that you can count. And counting, at least in these numbers, is often something that is related to print literacy. How do we understand what we're doing? So, watch and reckon. And here is my moment of truth. Those of you that don't think this idea is completely shit, please raise your hands. Oh, I have three people, thank goodness. And those of you that think this idea is completely shit, please raise your hands. Part of this whole idea is I really, really want feedback. I want to be able to discuss this. I think this is a great idea. I've had a few people think this is a good idea. It would be really good to be able to discuss this. This is my email and my Twitter handle. Don't go crazy. There's also, these slides are up on, it's good, Logain. I really love, just a quick plug for it's good over Google. It gives you pronounceable, lower case, shotting URLs. Thank you very much for your time. Go ahead.