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see here for slide show: http://www.slideshare.net/chris_khalil/the-new-digital-ethnographers-toolkit-capturing-a-participants-lifestream

This curated collection of online tools, tutorials and resources is designed to help nonprofits and ethnic and community news organizations navigate the often intimidating and ever-evolving new media landscape. Whether you're a beginner or a pro, you will find valuable information on the technologies and best practices you need to tell a community's stories in compelling ways; engage new audiences; optimize your website; and measure online impact.

Project Witness is a video-advocacy initiative (Founded by Peter Gabriel) that seeks to provide video tools/strategies to document human rights abuses. Forrest posted a link a few weeks back to their video toolkit. I recently read about their new Labs project (a collaboration with The Guardian) in another article - particularly their Smart Cam Project which is an app that helps gather data that will support any video documentation in a court of law (who shot it, surrounding context to prove "is this for real!"). Their Obscura Cam is a way to blur the faces of people who wish to remain anonymous. Just Vision - an organization that supports communities documenting non-violent resistance (of Palestinian, Israeli, and foreign activists) of the occupation Palestinian territories - critiques Witness' evidence-based model, arguing that documenting atrocity in such a way only reinscribes and simplifies complex conflicts into perpetrator-victim narratives. That these narratives mobilize shame (and denial) rather than hope. I'm wondering what people think? I'll post another link to a relevant article here too.

An article by Rosie Flewitt Provides insights that the well established traditions of ethnography can bring to the more recent analytic tools of multimodality in the investigation of early literacy practices.

Looks to be an article useful for Week 5, possibly Week 7; a recent look at how to use ethnographic "traditions" in a multimodal context. Topic concerns "literacies" for three and four year olds in the "digital age".

Here's the abstract: In this article I reflect on the insights that the well established traditions of ethnography can bring to the more recent analytic tools of multimodality in the investigation of early literacy practices. First, I consider the intersection between ethnography and multimodality, their compatibility and the tensions and ambivalences that arise from their potentially conflicting epistemological framings. Drawing on ESRC-funded case studies of three and four-year-old children's experiences of literacy with printed and digital media,1 I then illustrate how an ethnographic toolkit that incorporates a social semiotic approach to multimodality can produce richly situated insights into the complexities of early literacy development in a digital age, and can inform socially and culturally sensitive theories of literacy as social practice (Street, 1984, 2008).

One perspective on which digital tools are most effective (and practical) for ethnographic fieldwork.

Pretty convincing post about the potential for using the ubiquitous smartphone and cloud-based tools in ethnographic settings...but there are some assumptions, as well as some breaks with "tradition" (a few obvious, a few not so much...). I've been using my iPhone in a few ways that parallel the systems Horan has developed, and would be happy to explore some of these tools/apps/affordances...

I agree with some of his techniques, although I still find hand written field notes to be useful. You might be more inclined to write certain things down in the field rather than speak them out loud to be recorded in front of the people you are working with. I also was interested in his section on "local currency." ("Local Currency Whether we want to admit it or not, money talks. Obviously, one should adhere to the local customs regarding the proper use of money in every situation, but spending money can gain you access to areas of life that may otherwise be closed off to you. Generosity in time and money goes a long way, so remember to bring cash to gain access to people and places that you may be unfamiliar with.") This section seems to leave out the fact that spending money in a way which is not culturally appropriate can be as detrimental in certain cases, as it is helpful in other situations.