Potential Digital Literacies Sites

In this stage of my research for my Digital Literacies site, I am divided between two interests: linguistics, which seems to infiltrate everything I do to some degree and has influenced my choice to become a speech-language pathologist; and caricature work, which stems from art in general, which infiltrates everything else I do to some degree and has become a requirement for my job at Twisted Balloons. To that end, I am currently debating whether to follow Proz.com, a translation and general interpretation forum; or the forum for the International Society of Caricature Artists. In either of these forums, I would be considered a beginner at best and outsider at worst, as I only began my caricature week last month, and my interest in linguistics has been transient and too widely spread for me to find my niche quite yet.

Proz.com is the leading contender in this race to find the site to study. It is split into countless sub-forums dealing with translation in different fields (literature, theory, resources, etc.), interpretation and accessibility issues, and the business side of being a professional translator. I would focus on the interpretation and accessibility forums, as they relate most closely to my interest in the use of multimodality in universal design.  An internship with the Governor's Council on Disabilities and Special Education initially sparked my interest in the subject several years ago, and it was refueled this past summer by my experiences at the Digital Media and Composition institute. Those events give me some knowledge so that I would be able to understand and participate intelligently in the conversations. From the standpoint of digital literacies, Proz.com is interesting because the problem of translation and interpretation can be answered in so many diverse ways. Each person will translate a text in slightly different ways, depending on the way he understands the context of the conversation. Seeing a group from around the world work out problems together has the potential to standardize some issues and inflame others. I look forward to seeing how translating and solving problems in the physical world will translate to the digital world. 


The ISCA forum interests me because I am a highly visual individual. The recent requirement at work to become a caricature artist was really just an excuse for me to pursue a dream years in the making. I have been drawing since I was a small child, but haven't found many productive outlets in which to practice my skills. A couple of years ago, I found information about visual recorders, artists who lecture and record lectures and other information through a visual medium - sketching it out in real time. I think that as I improve my skills as a caricature artist, I can begin to follow that path. The ISCA forum would allow me to be in contact with other caricature artists of varying skill levels, to swap knowledge, and to find out more about capturing the real world on paper. The ISCA forum is interesting from a digital literacies perspective for similar reasons as Proz.com. An online community gives visual thinkers a great opportunity to combine words and pictures neatly, no matter where they are. That very combination is worth studying, as my particular interest is in how they will blend to create a cohesive product rather than words and images competing with each other.