#EDCMOOC Week Five: The Assessment!!

Quick intro:

This post begins with the assessment and link to my artefact. I link to some online tools that others can use to make their own… and also share some of the resources produced by other MOOCers and a link to those produced by the students on the MSc in E-Learning and Digital Cultures. Finally I have put links to all the videos and readings that we have had access to over the duration of this brilliant short course – just in case you want to see for yourself how you might build your own MOOC.

You are joking? Produce a digital artefact - me?!

It has to combine at least text and images… And it will be peer reviewed. Also - each of us will be required to review three artefacts against the criteria set for the course – writing 250 words saying how and why the artefact has done so…

There was a little flurry from some MOOCers worried that any old person was going to mark their work. But I’d been in the FaceBook group since November and had only been impressed by the quality and calibre and commitment of my fellow MOOCers – so have no worries on that front. (Of course, if I get a low mark that will change toot sweet!)

There was also some concern – not least from the not very techie people like me – about how to make an artefact – and just how artefacty it had to be … Did it have to have text, pictures, music – and oh god no – movement – please not movement! And what about interaction? Or clever cutting and editing tricks with online tools that I have not yet heard of?!

Thank goodness that my old mate Andy Mitchell was also taking this MOOC and he helped by giving me critical feedback on my first draft (“I must say I’m really disappointed…” I think Andy missed his true calling as a diplomat!) – and by helping with some of the technical bits. I am not content that I still have to reach out for technical support – so am playing with the idea of doing the whole MOOC again – but next time focussing on tools rather than the content…

Online tools

Talking of tools - we were told that there were several online tools that we could use to make our artefacts:
Voicethread: http://voicethread.com
Storify: http://storify.com/
Xtranormal: http://www.xtranormal.com/
Pixton: http://pixton.com/uk/
Issuu: http://issuu.com/
Storybird: http://storybird.com/
Weebly: http://www.weebly.com/
Animoto: http://animoto.com/
Prezi: http://prezi.com
Wikispaces: http://www.wikispaces.com
TedEd: http://ed.ted.com
Google Sites: https://sites.google.com
… or any blog, web space or wiki site …
More ideas: ‘50+ web 2.0 ways to tell a story’: http://50ways.wikispaces.com/

Other possibly useful resources:
Wordle: http://www.wordle.net/
Bubbl.us: http://bubbl.us/

*** In space no one can hear you scream!! ***

Here’s one I made… 

I have been overwhelmed by the quality of the artefacts that I have been looking at this week – and slightly terrified that I must assess and give critical feedback to at least three made by any of the 44,000 people out there who are in this MOOC!... But anyway, here is my artefact:

#EDCMOOC – in YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX282KWbesg

And a short one Andy made in GoAnimate of some of my text: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfx1_fVZbyI

And here are some cool examples from my classmates:

With apologies to all the other brilliant ones out there that I have not seen – or that I did see and forgot to copy and paste here…

Angela’s thinglink: http://www.thinglink.com/scene/360982057624535042#tlsite

Ary’s stunner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=II_1nwaTZBQ

Andy’s subversive one: https://twitter.com/HamishAMacleod (can you see what it is yet?)

Two-minute video: Log In: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-akQl-e1Awk

David Hopkins’ one: http://prezi.com/e9y6ipsovanb/digital-artefact-edcmooc/  

(And his whole blog on the topic: http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/elearning/digital-artefact-for-edcmooc-wk-5/ )

Fran Monaghan’s VoiceThread: http://voicethread.com/?#q.b4186028.i21377601

And June B’s blog plus vimeo artefact: http://www.jubo.co.uk/blog/2013/02/edcmooc-digital-artefact/  

And Ess Garland’s timeline: http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/101035/Edmooc-Digital-Artifact/#vars!date=2013-02-28_06:07:26!

Kevin Eagan’s unique take: http://digitalmarginalia.tumblr.com/post/44112018112/why-digital-marginalia-matters  

Theo Kuechel’s PinBoard: https://pinterest.com/theok2/education-and-digital-culture/

The University Bog’s post and artefact: http://theuniversityblog.co.uk/2013/02/25/digital-interactions/

  

Cathleen Nardi’s, Change your thoughts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jOC_BDhdMM&feature=youtu.be

Amy’s Digital Life artefacts:

§         The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO0-7YAxxDY

§         The process: http://amysmooc.wordpress.com/2013/02/23/digital-life-an-augmented-music-video-parody-edcmooc-final-artifact/

Predicting the future: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXF8Q9nX2vg

Responses to #EDCMOOC by MSc students:

https://class.coursera.org/edc-001/wiki/view?page=MScDigitalArtefacts

**** How lucky we have all been to be in such a wonderful immersive and creative MOOC with fellow travellers who were all prepared to give so much and do so much. If you want to see what inspired us – there follows links to the four weekly topics and the viewings and readings that we were asked to do. ****

Course Materials

Week one – four

I did not put the full links to the videos and readings in all my #EDCMOOC blogs – so this post offers a quick summary for those who might be interested – and for me when I re-visit this part of my blog to be inspired all over again:

Week 1: Dystopias 

Film 1: Bendito Machine III (6:35): Watch on YouTube 

Film 3: Thursday (7:34): Watch on YouTube 

Film 4: New Media (2:21): Watch on Vimeo

The readings:

This is ‘my’ Noble http://brentmblackwell.com/courses/engl210_StealThisUniv_Ch2.pdf 

This covers the arguments in the set text (the journal version) – but for me it is more cogent, punchy and powerful – and it has more passion. It also discusses notions of ‘education’ versus ‘training’. Love it! And it influenced our: ‘A journey into silence: students, stakeholders and the impact of a strategic Governmental Policy Document in the UK’ in Social Responsibility Journal, Vol. 5 No. 4, 2009 pp 566-574 – which critiqued the UK govt e-learning policy – and which at some point I shall shamelessly plunder for a blog post!

Chandler paper: https://spark-public.s3.amazonaws.com/edc/readings/chandler2002_PDF_full.pdf

Useful as a primer with students interested in Sociology or sociological perspectives…

Reading Dahlberg:

http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol9/issue3/dahlberg.html

Liked the introduction and references to the Frankfurt School & kulturkritik … pessimism and focus on high culture, Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, oppositional politics and popular culture (Kelnner 97) and Audience reception theory – Fiske (1987) and polysemy – drawing on Barthes = a text when read… More to follow.

Daniel, J. (2002). Technology is the Answer: What was the Question? Speech from Higher Education in the Middle East and North Africa, Paris, Institut du Monde Arabe, 27-29 May 2002.http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=5909&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9/5. http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20-%20part1.pdf

Wesch, M. (2007). The Machine is Us/ing Us? (4:33): Watch on YouTube 

Week 2: Utopias:

Film 1: A Day Made of Glass 2. (5:58): Watch on YouTube

Film 2: Productivity Future Vision (6:17): Watch on YouTube

Film 3: Sight (7:50): Watch on Vimeo

Film 4: Charlie 13 (14:20): 

(optional) Film 5: Plurality (14:14): Watch on YouTube

Ideas and interpretations

Johnston, R (2009) Salvation or destruction: metaphors of the internet. First Monday, http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2370/2158

Newitz, A. (2011): Social media is science fiction. Google I/O conference, 10-11 May 2011, San Francisco: Watch on YouTube 

Advanced
Bleecker, J. (2006). A manifesto for networked objects — Cohabiting with pigeons, arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/14748019/Why-Things-Matter

Perspectives on education

Shirky, C. (2012). Napster, Udacity and the academy. shirky.com, 12 November 2012.http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2012/11/napster-udacity-and-the-academy/ 

Bady, A. (2012). Questioning Clay Shirky. Inside Higher Ed, 6 December 2012.http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/12/06/essay-critiques-ideas-clay-shirky-and-others-advocating-higher-ed-disruption

Campbell, Gardner (2012). Ecologies of Yearning. Keynote at Open Ed '12, October 16, 2012, Vancouver BC. (63:19): Watch on YouTube 

Optional extra material for this lecture:

Audrey Watters’ Storify notes: http://storify.com/audreywatters/ecologies-of-yearning-and-the-future-of-open-educa 

Richard Sebastian’s blog post: http://edtech.vccs.edu/openness-the-double-bind-and-ecologies-of-yearning/ 

And there’s more....
If you want to dig deeper into how the media is representing the emergence of MOOCs, and continue your hunt for metaphors, we recommend these two pieces. The comments on both are also worth exploring. What metaphors can you identify in these, and how are they operating to position MOOCs? 

Anderson, N. (2012). Elite education for the masses. The Washington Post, 4 November 2012.http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/elite-education-for-the-masses/2012/11/03/c2ac8144-121b-11e2-ba83-a7a396e6b2a7_story.html 

Carr, N. (2012). The Crisis in Higher Education. MIT Technology Review,http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/429376/the-crisis-in-higher-education/

Week 3 – We’re all post-human now…

Film 1: Toyota GT86: the ‘real deal’ advert (1:01): Watch on YouTube

Film 2: BT: heart to heart advert (0:40): Watch on YouTube

Film 3: World builder (9:16): Watch on YouTube 

Film 4: They’re made out of meat (7:20): Watch on YouTube

Ideas and interpretations

Humanity 2.0: defining humanity - Steve Fuller’s TEDx Warwick talk (24:08),http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/podcasts/media/more/tedx?podcastItem=steve_fuller.mp4

View the presentation slides here 

Advanced
Badmington, Neil (2000) Introduction: approaching posthumanism.Posthumanism. Houndmills; New York: Palgrave.http://www.palgrave.com/PDFs/0333765389.Pdf

Perspectives on education

Kolowich, S (2010) The Human Element. Inside Higher Ed: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/29/lms

Monke, L (2004) The Human Touch, EducationNext: http://educationnext.org/thehumantouch/

And this went to the Disrupting HE Symposium, Dublin, Feb 2013:

http://edcmoocteam.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/shoring-the-fragments-of-edcmooc/

Week 4 – Post-  & Trans-human

Film 1: Robbie (8:45): Watch on Vimeo

Film 2: Gumdrop (8:05): Watch on YouTube

Film 3: True Skin (6:12): Watch on Vimeo 

Film 4: Avatar Days (3:54): Watch on YouTube

Ideas and interpretations

Bostrom (2005) ‘Transhumanist values’ reproduced from Review of Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. 4, May (2005): http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/values.html

Advanced
Hayles, N K (2011) Wrestling with transhumanism:

http://www.metanexus.net/essay/ h-wrestling-transhumanism

Perspectives on education

System upgrade: realising the vision for UK education (2012) EPSRC Technology Enhanced Learning Research Programme:

http://tel.ioe.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/TELtaster.pdf
(The link is to a taster document for the full report, which you will find here).

Carr, M. (2008) Is Google making us stupid?

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/

 CODA: We all blogged our responses each week - and read and commented on the blogs... Many engaged in the Forums set up by the course itself - and there were two Google Hangouts with the tutors. Many of the MOOCers held tweetchats - with thousands of tweets posted... I can't imagine it being any better! 

#EDCMOOC: Week Four: H+: Re-defining the human

It’s week four already! I will be so sad when this wonderful MOOC is over! Next week the artefact - agggghhhhh! Started the day with a Google Hangout with @andydmmitchell – talking about life, the universe and all things EDC – and he has wonderfully offered to help me put my artefact together next week… I know that the tutors have said to start this week – but Friday is my MOOC day, so today I do the viewing and reading – and posting… Next week I hope to put both Thursday and Friday aside for artefact production.

As a learning developer interested in creative, authentic and engaging teaching, learning and assessment practices, I have for a long time been promulgating (?) the setting of just this sort of an assignment in modules across the University, but it is only now in this MOOC that I can truly see the potential of this. In a couple of weeks I have a practical hands-on resource-making session booked with a group of Anthropology students, as you can imagine, I will be showing many of our artefacts to try and inspire theirs… And if you can think of any that I definitely should show – please let me know?

Week four: H+: Re-defining the human

Some truly beautiful films this week - especially Robbie and Gumdrop - both on the subject of Artificial life  - and both moving in very different ways. 

Film 1: Robbie (8:45)

Watch on Vimeo

Short, haunting and beautiful film about what is a good life – and a good death – through the eyes of AI Robbie. It made me cry…

Film 2: Gumdrop (8:05)

Watch on YouTube

Yes – it is true – after crying at Robbie, Gumdrop made me smile: a totally different perspective on AI and being ‘human’. Magic.

Film 3: True Skin (6:12)

Watch on Vimeo 

Yeah baby – here we are back at the dystopia that a misanthrope like me can relate to! This is Blade Runner+ … monetised, augmented, brutal… and not so scifi – ‘they’ are already buying the body parts of the poor…

Film 4: Avatar Days (3:54)

Watch on YouTube

Not really on the same theme as the others, to me… This is an exploration of our avatars – made ridiculous perhaps by striding through the ‘real world’… but… 

So what's so special about augmented reality?

When I was oh so much younger we played Dungeons and Dragons – I was an Elf - with magic powers – and we made up a board and built our strange world and played together – on quests – gathering ‘treasure’ …  and it was compelling and we were engaged – and thus it was real.

Winnicott (1971) argues that play is essential to counter the implicit threat of transitional spaces: between worlds, between social classes, in alien educational settings – he also argued that it is only in play that we are really our true fiercely alive selves. No wonder we love these virtual, augmented spaces so much. It is not technology, but the monetised world that dehumanises us all.

I was reading Rick’s thoughtful blog: http://drrbb2nd.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/everything-bad-is-good-for-you.html  and commented as he does on the recurrent trope: the fear that these virtual spaces diminish us – reducing our emotional intelligence, make us inhuman … but when I walk in the real world and parents teach their children not to move aside for other pedestrians and not to smile at their neighbours and not to care for the elderly or the infirm – surely *that* is what makes us inhuman? When neo-con governments offer us ‘choice’ – by which they mean giving the care of the social side of our lives to private corporations to cut costs, wages, accountability, services… surely *that* is what makes us inhuman? (Oops – back here again! Moving swiftly on…)

In this post, I am going to focus on just one reading:

Bostrom (2005) ‘Transhumanist values’ reproduced from Review of Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. 4, May (2005)http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/values.html

Reflection on the potentialities offered to us mere mortals if we were trans-human or post-human (H+) – oh the wonders that we could behold, the things that we might do… 

I do see and understand the arguments made here – but so many of us could do so much in the scant years we have been allotted if only we lived them!

Think Groundhog Day – after the protagonist cursed with living the same day over and over stops trying to kill himself he learns to play the piano, he learns to love life and he finally learns to love his fellow human beings – and he is allowed to live his normal life again.

Fear, insecurity, insurance policies and pensions – all convince us to keep quiet, don’t rock the boat, don’t reach for the stars; to stay in our box and not live the life we could lead… Sadly I see that this H+ debate contributes to this worst side of us fearful humans. As I read , I hear, if only, if only, if only… If only I had been born rich, a boy, a girl, healthy … someone else altogether. If only I’d been dealt a better hand… been braver, stronger, more independent.

Whilst wrapped in intellectual justification and reasoning, debate on the potentialities of an H+ future seems to be just another aspect of the addiction of being in capitalism. Capitalism needs us to want and to buy – it requires us to yearn and to strive - to be restless and discontented. Capitalism needs us to be forever unhappy … always to project towards tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow… an endless stream of tomorrows of greater potentiality and happinesses – all purchasable – no down payment necessary.

Well – that is addiction pure and simple. The addict is never in *this* moment – but always yearning for another moment… or, as Schopenhauer put it, only oscillating between the pain of wanting something and the despair of having it.

There is only today and the life we have, the health and class and gender and aptitudes that we have … This video (will change your life) is serendipitously moving around FB atm and seems to capture it so well: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=377067949058685

Live your life . Feel your dream. Find your joy – and do that thing.

It’s no surprise that so many lose themselves in the wonder of augmented reality given the paucity we accept in our real lives. It is only a miracle that more don’t disappear into the virtual forever… So don’t just save the Whale or the otter or the Greater crested newt – let’s save ourselves – now and in this life and today…

So I really cannot take H+ and that debate too seriously – yes – wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was telos – and teleology - the world developing positively: the work and the wealth and the wonder shared equitably; life and technology moving forward ethically and with concern for justice, kindness and love - but it ain’t so.  But I/we do have today – and I/we do have this very shabby body (well, I do) – I/we do have this limited life span – and if I/we try to live this one well… then being human *will* be enough.

#EDCMOOC week 3: Are we posthuman now?

Week beginning 11^th Feb 2013

Right – make a cup of tea – then… Question of the week:

Q: is the essential nature of ‘being human’ under threat from techno and biomedical advances?

A: Listen to Fukuyama (2002) on his book Our Posthuman Future:

Fukuyama discusses the effect of culture and social capital on economic life. Previously notorious for article, then book, The End of History (1989): the new modern viz. post-USSR … all walls falling down, history over, liberal values won.

Some of us watching those walls saw Russian people lose their right to employment, homes and pensions: we saw grannies on the street selling plastic gew gaws to live… and thought this was not the end of history - this was pre-history!

Worryingly, he really did not see the rise of theocracies and theocratic dictatorships. (I seem to remember that in the early part of the twentieth century GK Chesterton - of Father Brown fame – did; I must check that out…)

Fukuyama’s main argument seems to be that there is something that could be called human nature, and that moral choices, human emotions = source of our humanity = source of dignity and political rights citing Jefferson: all men created equal, 1776… except slaves of course.

Fukuyama argues that extension of rights to all (!) emanated from biological awareness of genetic equality – and thus genetic engineering will lead to inequality because people really will be born genetically different – and this is a politically serious issue.

Phew – thank goodness that all that scientific awareness has led to such an equal society!

Love the implicit techno-determinism: these terrible human behaviours somehow emanate from the technology qua technology rather than the sort of constructed and enacted humanity that allows people to live in and accept terrible inequalities and terrible behaviour in society.

The implicit metaphor set up by Descartes helps me here:

I think therefore I am

Arguably this rationalist model of humanity was so embraced because it reinforced and propelled our whole binary, dialectic world:

rational: irrational…

man: woman …

civilised: native…

white: black…

mind: body…

M/class: w/class

human: non-human

… and this is a problem for the ruling class, for the techno must surely fall on their side of this binary, it is so much more rational, more modern … it allows uber-man. The techno = threat for those who currently hold power.  

Perhaps that is why this debate seems a bit recherche to me: I am on the other side of that binary. I am already discounted. The techno holds no inherent fear for me – how can it displace me more? The only problem with the techno is that once I too am work-less, I may not be able to afford to be connected to the WWW – but I will still be connected to people.

Now off to my counterbalance - an Asimov clip from 1988 on the Technology Enhanced Learning blog: http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/elearning/the-future-of-education-from-isaac-asimov-1988-edcmooc/

Asimov predicted the internet – and the ability to learn at your own speed, in your own home – to follow your own interests – to enrich learning and have a one-to-one relationship with knowledge – not mediated by the tutor… JAs in the 17^th C  radicalised religion with Protestantism said you could have a one-to-one relationship with god – not mediated by the pastor or priest.

Four hundred more years to even think about radicalising education suggests that the power of socially constructed ‘education’ is even more powerful than the church: that the ideological state apparatus of education is stronger than that of religion. I knew this tacitly – but Asimov’s words threw a new light upon this.

‘Like prison, the reward of school is getting out!’ The sorrow here is not that so many of us flee learning – but that school kills our natural love of learning…

On to the next cup of tea – and the next position:

Q: universal human nature does not exist… with am implicit optimism that what is made can be made differently…

A: see: Core Reading: Steve Fuller’s Warwick TEDx talk: Humanity 2.0: defining humanity Which I accessed through: http://krustelkrammoocs.blogspot.com/2013/02/steve-fuller-isaac-asimov-what-is.html (thank you).

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/podcasts/media/more/tedx?podcastItem=steve_fuller.mp4

Continues thread opened last week – we are metaphorical beings conceptualising the world through metaphors and metaphorical processes – and reminds us that what and how and who that we think humanity and being human is has also been thus conceptualised.

What humanity and the human IS – is not abstract or a meta-narrative – but we are beings and concepts of being, inextricably embedded within our own contexts, cultures, times. If this is so – then for us in the west – existing as we do in these stressful, hierarchical, unfair and unjust digital times… whatever we are now, is being human within digital cultures…

This reminds me of Plato and his notion of the perfect forms existing in the cave of the gods, that we are but humble shadows of… and his concept of three types of human being: bronze, silver and gold – and that these different forms of people had different aptitudes and were suited to different roles and rewards in society. So people who saw themselves as enlightened could contemplate possessing slaves because they did not see those as truly ‘people’… which of course resonates with class and caste – which is still very healthily alive in society today… and notions of the deserving and undeserving poor, the rhetoric of hardworking families struggling to earn an honest coin whilst the feckless wallow behind their closed curtains. I particularly like it when Etonian millionaires like Cameron & Osborne (UK prime minister and chancellor) condemn the workless for feeling ‘entitled’ to their unearned £75.00 per week unemployment benefit – whilst feeling perfectly entitled themselves to inherit their unearned millions, their unearned and highly paid sinecures as directors of companies… Ah – but I digress again.

Finally, the overarching Q for this week seems to be:

Q: Can we reassert something quintessentially human in our digital world? Can we reaffirm ‘our commitment to humanist ideas which underlie many educational philosophies and approaches to practice, such as equality, freedom and autonomy[?]’

A: I think all the blogging that I’ve been doing rather insists that the only truly human characteristic that I can think of is cruelty: we are in-humanity… It’s been that sort of week! But now to the viewings, Lay on MacDuff… 

Film 1: Toyota GT86: the ‘real deal’ advert (1:01)

Wow! Whilst it is so easy to see all the flaws with this – the glorification of an implicitly macho technology and an unsustainable ecology/economy all being normalised as the very opposite of that… I see the evocation of Blade Runner… I see the pixellated burger in the hand of the guy who has the conduit to an idealised freedom… I hear, ‘No Regrets’ and know that it is saying that we have so much to lose… by which they mean the castration implied by safety technology which will take the life out of driving and out of our culture… while they sell you back technology and a de-natured culture…

But, there is a dangerous beauty to the piece, a density of ‘poetry’: so much conveyed in one minute…

Film 2: BT: heart to heart advert (0:40)

Yes – mediation posing as non… with the telephone offered as more ‘real’ than say a Skype contact… Couldn’t possibly be because Skype is online and cheaper than a phone call? Boy – what an old cynic…

Film 3: World builder (9:16)

Suggests a world where ‘god’ is a blue collar worker building a life size Second Life perfect world, against the clock, for his terminally ill wife… Even as she wonders at the space he has created for her – he can see something menacing on the skyline – a blot – a flaw in his heaven… And yes, she is Cinderella-summoned back to ICU; and although he was absent from her dreams he can enter the nightmare of her illness, placing a flower plucked from the virtual into the glass on her bedside table. ‘There are more wonders… than you can dream on in your philosophy, Horatio…’ – and we are all alone for aye that. (I thought the Windows logo glowing on her forehead very spooky!)

Film 4: They’re made out of meat (7:20)

Two suitably strange almost human looking life forms commenting on the human race: they are made of meat… their brains are meat… they communicate by meat. Nifty references to alien abductions – and desperate smoking to convey life… Absolutely excellent short film – that just is a commentary on our frail humanity.

Google+ Hangout with the tutors:

I do so enjoy these opportunities to meet our excellent tutors and see them discuss the course – and their apprehensions of our participation. There was some discussion of the different ways we are negotiating this MOOC – and that this in itself also creates difference – some privileging the visual and synchronous over the disembodied; others seeming to prefer the fragmented and contingent asynchronous. Interesting as it illustrates how immediately we as humans tend to inhabit new space in these habitual ways… and thus that there will be potential for research… but reminds me of why we created our Beach Space in SL to support student learning by stimulating different ways to inhabit and stake claim to educational space.

Advanced reading: Badmington, N (2000) Introduction: approaching posthuamanism Posthumanism NewYork; Houndmills: Palgrave

http://www.palgrave.com/PDFs/0333765389.Pdf

The posthuman… (Hah - also references Descartes; happy self-congratulatory smile on my part!) - Descartes: there would be no de facto difference between a machine monkey and a monkey, because no monkey possesses reason; but there must be that difference between man and machine man… 

Badmington cites the Germans: Marx, Freud, Althusser, Engels – overturning Hegel:

• Our consciousness is shaped by our contingent material conditions. Rather then being essentially something that is naturally human, different material conditions produce different humanities.
• We are prompted by our unconscious and desires that are not controlled by our consciousness…

And notes that whilst the theorists argued about humanity, post-humanity, non-humanity and a-humanity – Hollywood produced Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Blob, War of the Worlds: we are at risk from the in-human ‘other’; this debate was not the sole preserve of the intellectual.

Though critics assumed these to be a reaction to the Cold War rather than the second world war: communists look like us, they masquerade as us… but they are not us, Badmington cites them as evidence of man’s insecurity :

Man, the films insisted, would survive: this was destiny, the law of nature… [but] why defend Man if ‘his’ position at the centre of things is inevitable? … Humanism was in trouble: Hollywood knew this but took refuge in denial. To borrow a paradox from Jean-François Lyotard, the cinema depicted Man dying in abundance, passing away from prosperity, croaking from health. And yet, although they shared a common concern with the end of human sovereignty, theory and mass culture were kept generically apart. When they eventually met, however, posthumanism was born.

Cyborg nature

Baudrillard proposed that technology is transformational: the supposedly autonomous Cartesian man now dependent on technology for everything – including access to and views of ‘the world’. Of course everything from anthropology to feminism were already de-centring ‘man’ from the centre of this universe… So, did Derrida’s post-structuralism bring us finally to the post-human? But Derrida points out that systems always contradict themselves from within…

Postscript

Reflecting on my own response to this week’s questions on ‘being human’, I see that whilst I obviously believe that we are not essential beings, but human beings formed by our relationship with contingent circumstances – material and virtual – I obviously hoped or wished for an essential quality, something that valued and values all life no matter how ‘not like me’ that might be. Though not religious, it might be summed up as ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’. Simple and elegant – and manifestly not embraced by secularism or any of the religions struggling – and sometimes with terrifying success – to reassert their power over the world… perhaps that is the posthuman quality that I am hoping for.

#EDCMOOC week 2: Welcome to Utopia

This week Utopia – funny how the utopian visions are more terrifying than the dystopian ones isn’t it?

First I watched… and then I read...

Film 1: A Day Made of Glass 2. (5:58)

Augmented reality world: ‘hermetically sealed’ like the buildings and as sanitised as the futuristic medical centre.

Don’t get me wrong, I do love the tricky things that technology can do, I love being able to flick a message from one handheld to another or to another device altogether… I would relish being able to hold up my phone or tablet and ‘see’ real dinosaurs coming at me and I hope to  be able to do all these things one day.

However, once these are commonplace will they cease to create the wonder acted out in the video – and without wonder what would be left? Definitely not the ‘human’: ‘as the patient lays etherised upon the table’ (TS Eliot, ‘Prufrock’); and still they talk over his body – indeed they take his body out of his body and discuss that. Pace Foucault!

And what a vision of education is created. Rather than watching a whiteboard or interactive wall or PowerPoint 3.0 or video or – as is the case now – sit still, be quiet and complete a worksheet; the best way for children to learn is to do stuff – real stuff: grow vegetables and harvest and cook them; raise chickens; work with old people in a day centre. And what work our young could do: preparing meals, transcribing stories… singing with… re-decorating – teaching how to use the web to construct their own wonders…

Of course we cannot blame technology for de-naturing education – that happened long long ago – but the wonder of technology lends glamour (in the old magical sense of the word) to something that is currently so reduced, and thus lends spurious credibility and seduces us, so there appears to be less of an imperative to fight for real education…

And of course a sneaky part of my brain asks – and who makes these online razzle dazzle programmes or programs? Who sells them and to whom? At the last Discourse Power Resistance Conference I attended in the UK – some time ago now (but a new one coming around Easter) an American academic and high school teacher showed me how with technology he was able to keep constant track of every pupil, of every MCQ they had taken and every score they had attained… He also told me that School book and School test producers were very heavy funders of the Republican Party. I drew my own conclusions about what was therefore shaping the US education system – and shudder that this profit monster is now technologically enabled to shape the education of the world.

Fortunately education and the world is much messier than the education business would like it to be…

Film 2: Productivity Future Vision (6:17)

In 1971 I was studying biological sciences at a Technical College – day release from work – my employer paid me to attend and paid for the course (none of this happens now – there goes teleology!) – in the midst of this scientific day, we had general studies – because even as potential scientists they thought it would be good for us to think, to discuss ideas, literature, contemporary issues… engage in debate – learn how to think for ourselves – produce arguments… engage in the sorts of things that make you human. Anyway – I remember that back there in 1971 they argued that with technology enhanced employment, productivity would be so increased that the working week would be reduced for everybody as people shared the labour and shared the profit…

Come 1983 or thereabouts – after several Right to Work marches in the UK with no sign of employment being fairly shared – a friend of mine proudly showed me his beeper. With the beeper attached to his belt he was on-call by his employers – a private hospital – 24/7. Of course he was not paid 24/7 – but he was on implicit duty for that long.

Watching this film I am reminded of these things.

The film, as with ‘World of Glass’, portrays a world where all the working ‘privileged’ are now on call 24/7. Labour is not shared out and definitely neither is the profit. There is no work/life balance – rather the child working at home on her homework can contact the mother working on the other side of the world (why?) to help her – and all about them are people shown constantly attached to work, as they travel, as they step towards a taxi, as they sit in the hotel room prior to the meeting… Nowhere and at no time is anybody free from contact, from duty and from labour.

Except perhaps those who are completely and utterly excluded from work and labour. For where are the non-privileged? Where are those without work and without income? Those disconnected from the web? As Macherey (in Walder 1990) argues: the text says what it des not say – and there is a lot not said here – about what sort and quality of life human beings could and should be living, about who is ‘in’ society and who is excluded.

Coda: I come from the working class. I do not see that my education has made me middle class, I did not want to be ‘socially mobile’ and escape the class that shaped me – and frankly find the term offensive. I wanted to be an educated working class person – still connected umbilically to the forces and voices and feelings and values of my birth… My class is flawed as are all people (though perhaps my class is the one that is blamed for everything!) and some say that given our post-industrial world the working class does not even exist anymore – but if it were still to exist – it would be collectivist, it is rude and bawdy, it is uproarious and disgraceful, it is disrespectful… and it does not fit in this brave new world!

Film 3: Sight (7:50)

Interestingly I could not get this one to work – might try again later…

Film 4: Charlie 13 (14:20)

“No more adventures! You’ll be safe – and never have to worry about anything ever again…”

I run a positive thinking session for students – not the bullying and unforgiving kind of session that people are now revolting against – but one where we explore fear and the over-weaning power it can have over us as human beings. We fear everything and nothing – and this fear is fanned by the government as it exhorts or compels us to buy that insurance policy and to worry that we haven’t enough invested in that pension… We are taught that we can be safe – and to avoid risk. But to avoid risk is to avoid life and living. To be alive is to take a risk – if we are not we are as good as dead. The anodyne world that is depicted in this film is a living death – and probably one of the reasons why I do like post-apocalyptic zombie films.

The freedom that Charlie is searching is left unspoken – it is sketched in by the presence of the father and the compass given by the mother – but really can it be worse than the reality that he is fleeing?

 Film 5: Plurality (14:14)

Again is depicted the control of the anodyne, conformist bourgeoisie – where surveillance renders us all ‘safe’. Okay so they actually called him Foucault - but the heart of this film was in the right place and I did enjoy it. Liked the concept of ‘plurality’ being verboten – here because it flags up a time traveller come to warn them of the consequences of the all-seeing surveillance system to which they have subscribed and which is literally inscribed in their DNA; but all these safe Utopias render plurality paradoxical and that is especially evident when Foucault himself time travels back with his warning.

The reading:

Core
Johnston, R (2009) Salvation or destruction: metaphors of the internet. First Monday, 14(4).

http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2370/2158

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) argued that our speech, thoughts, and actions are based upon metaphors. These metaphors are so entwined in our lives that they are invisible to us; however, since our conceptual system defines our reality, we only understand reality through metaphor.

What is so potentially ‘dangerous’ about these metaphors is that people are unaware that they and we are thinking metaphorically. There is the assumption that the world and our language is autochthonous – springing from the earth itself rather than shaped by us and our ideologies, beliefs or lack of beliefs, our cultures and families. Once we understand that we are metaphorical we have the power to explore those metaphors to see what they reveal back to us about how and what and why we are thinking.

As cultural metaphors become tacitly understood, individuals and their communities can choose to accept or reshape metaphors, thus changing reality for that community. As we become aware of metaphors, we can determine the accuracy and appropriateness of them (Sims, 2003)…

This underscores the point that we need to be conscious of metaphors – and then we can wittingly express ourselves through our chosen metaphors.

Some of the metaphors this piece discusses include:

… information superhighway and even the Web, provide an initial structure to Internet experiences, they also “carry with them the entailments of government funding, teams of experts, and large bureaucracy.” [8] 

Potentially interesting there – taking away our own agency – and giving the power to governments…

As these Internet and computing metaphors, such as the Web, become embedded in our society, they in turn spawn new metaphors for understanding our experiences. For example, computer and Internet metaphors now determine our very sense of selves: We describe ourselves and others as binary; we describe our brains as hard drives or storage systems; we talk about thoughts as being coded in memory (Denny and Sunderland, 2005).

Creating ourselves in binary form – dialect, oppositional – reduced (see ‘Plurality’ notes).

Wyatt (2004) also examined the metaphors used to describe the Internet “in order to understand the perceptions and expectations of some of the actors involved in its shaping.”[11] She uncovered six main metaphorical themes in Wired: “revolution, evolution, salvation, progress, universalism, and the ‘American Dream’.” [12] These metaphors often promoted a form of social justice and global access, change, and equality.

Metaphors of space and time also discussed in this article… war, destruction, arming and fighting back… decay, destruction… revolution and salvation… This makes it sound like ‘all human life is here’ or is possible here – but …

Discussion

With ‘A journey into silence: students, stakeholders and the impact of a strategic Governmental Policy Document in the UK’  (in  Social Responsibility Journal, Vol. 5 No. 4, 2009 pp 566-574)… we undertook a discourse analysis of that policy document to uncover the metaphors that the government was using in discussing technology – and education, justifying our method thus:

“Crowther and Mraovic (op cit) offer a paradigmatic model with respect to the application of the critical and analytical tools of literary theory to organisational documents with a special focus on accounting documentation. The authors provide an informed overview of the theoretical field alongside a discussion of the ‘myths’, ‘truth’ and ideological signs of organisational documentation. Citing Levi-Strauss (1980) and Leach (1982, 1983) they argue that ‘to decode the message embodied in the myth as a whole [one] must search for the structural pattern underlying the entire series of metaphors’ (Crowther op cit; 77) where language is the ideological sign … [offering] concrete not abstract views of the world … inseparable from the social praxis and class struggle’ (Ibid; 93). This model offers an explanation at organisational level, and we have developed this work further to explore societal issues via the critical analysis of a government document. The framework for our analysis suggests that the government text in question offers a series of metaphors that construct myths around education. [new bold/ital]

Our conclusions were that those that were unsuccessful in the education system were themselves blamed – branded as Special Educational Needs or cognitively impaired. The solution that was offered was that they be individually plugged into remedial packages to be ‘fixed’. This pathologising language and those metaphors served to construct a Foucauldian medical model of education ‘failure’, denying government and institutional agency in creating inequality – and dislocating individual fragmented people away from their collective class or cultural positions when ‘fixing’ them.

Welcome to Utopia!

More recently we (me with Tom Burns and Debbie Holley) developed an interest in the metaphors that students themselves use about education – but also when they are *in* virtual spaces. We linked this to Soja’s ‘third space’ and analysed the avatars that the students created for themselves as embodied metaphors.– Sinfield et al (2012) ‘The shipwrecked shore and other metaphors…’, in Investigations Vo 8, Summer 2012.

This is leading us to use visual Literacy as part of our academic and digital literacy work with students – harnessing the power of metaphor as conceptualisation process and therefore as research tool – which we are introducing to first year students to get them thinking divergently and rigorously about research. We also explore the visual as a learning/meaning making tool in its own right – as students draw their learning – as part of the understanding process – and to develop their own mnemonic aids.

… and we are interested in working with others who are using metaphors, animations and the visual in their teaching, learning, assessment and research practices.

#EDCMOOC: ELearning and Digital Cultures Rocks: First reflections from week one

ELearning and Digital Cultures Rocks

This five-week online course is cleverly embedded within Edinburgh University's MSc of the same name - so we are exploring EDC and we are part of EDC for that student body. Fine by me - I like it. 

We started with much pre-course activity - lots of postings in FB - and some people very active in Twitter - and now more happening in Google+. This is still a bit over-whelming and I can still imagine the less self-confident student finding all these spaces over-whelming and being in an increased state of anxiety in case they 'missed something vital' in another space. Another stressor is if, like me, you still do not know how to do what are still apparently the most simple things: setting up an RSS feed (I think Andy Mitchell has sorted that out for me) - or where we are really supposed to post our reflections on each week's activities (I have posted mine in Google+ - and I'm sort of posting again here in my blog - I don't think that is at all right!)...

I really enjoyed and was so impressed with/by all that posting, contact, discussing... I have not managed to keep up with it all - but I have felt part of a vibrant community - I have felt engaged - and I have felt joy. How cool is that?

After such a leisurely run in to the course - my work week exploded this, the first week of the course proper. I have not been able to join in until today... so I have been reading instructions, making notes, watching videos and reading stuff - all excellent. And as we have a Google Hangout in a little while - I thought I'd post my first notes/reflections on the course so far, here in the blog - hoping to communicate at least with my other quad-bloggers!

The readings:

This is ‘my’ Noble http://brentmblackwell.com/courses/engl210_StealThisUniv_Ch2.pdf 

This covers the arguments in the Digital Diploma Mills article to which we were linked; but for me this is more cogent, punchy and powerful – and it has more passion. It also discusses notions of ‘education’ versus ‘training’. Love it! And it influenced our: ‘A journey into silence: students, stakeholders and the impact of a strategic Governmental Policy Document in the UK’ in Social Responsibility Journal, Vol. 5 No. 4, 2009 pp 566-574 – which critiqued the UK government e-learning policy – and which at some point I shall shamelessly plunder for a blog post!

Chandler paper: https://spark-public.s3.amazonaws.com/edc/readings/chandler2002_PDF_full.pdf

Felt resistant to this text – but will use as a primer with students interested in Sociology or sociological perspectives…

Reading Dahlberg ATM:

http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol9/issue3/dahlberg.html

Handwritten notes only really – but already liking the introduction and references to the Frankfurt School & kulturkritik … pessimism and focus on high culture; Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, oppositional politics and popular culture (Kelnner 97); and Audience reception theory – Fiske (1987) and polysemy – drawing on Barthes = a text when read… More to follow.

The video clips

Bendito Machine

This short animation took a long time to paint a picture of technology falling from the sky – reified – polluting – worshipped: entrapping, awe-ing & enslaving us. I did not like the fact that the characters were portrayed as primitive people (sic). We 21^st century westerners are the ones who create and inhabit this landscape…

Inbox

Short film of a FB relationship between an ‘Indian’ (?) man and woman – enacted via post-its and bags instead of FB proper. I do not see how we can ignore the context and sub-text of this film. In the west we hear that this is a culture that abhors free mixing. On the one hand that suggests that these FB encounters are potentially liberating – allowing individuals to escape social conventions that constrain and inhibit them. BUT – he is half naked and she is on a bed… absolutely not a problem and nor should it be – but it also seems to me that this would reinforce repressive prejudice in a traditional viewer: this free mixing, even virtually, is pernicious! He seems to propel most of the action – she is very sweet – and ultimately so is he.  Hmmmm.

Thursday 

I loved this animation which has two inter-twining story lines: the blackbird feeding the chicks and the two people inhabiting the inhuman landscape. Their lives cross over when the blackbird takes essential wiring in mistake for food to the chicks – thereafter the chick seems slightly connected to the techcity… and the power cut that ensued from the initial, natural mistake allows the female human to contact the male – and they go on a date – despite techno failures – up up up onto a space station by a carbon filament lift (assumed) to get a bird’s eye view of the world (that the birds get anyway). Life goes on – hints of big brother and the failure of a palm print just snip at your unconscious… The world that is painted is bleak, unappealing and inhuman – you would not want to live there. But nature as with the birds seems to have agency still – and love – as with the people – seems transcendent (even if again only the male character is seen naked.)

New Media 

I loved this eerie portrayal of a completely dystopian landscape – with strange creatures floating by – reminiscent of evil unearthly jellyfish – or the aliens from War of the Worlds. Harsh and broken sounds emerge – there is no joy – no life – nothing human or loving can live here. We are invited to compare this with ‘Bendito’ – but I prefer to c.f. with ‘Thursday’. This is the world that emerges if the people in ‘Thursday’ do not get up and fight for their love and their humanity.

Popular Culture

I am a devotee of post-apocalyptic drama – loved ‘Jericho’, ‘The Walking Dead’ – and many films from the Zombie genre. Currently for very light trashy fun, I am watching ‘Person of Interest’ – an American TV series on a UK channel (Channel five) – where the builder of an all-seeing anti-terrorist surveillance system – horrified that alerts to ‘normal’ human murder are going ignored – hires his own vigilante to step in and stop the chaos (shades of that Tom Cruise movie with the same theme – name escapes me at this moment). Trashy as this is – I do enjoy the hope that flutters there: yes this world is evil and monetised and we are powerless within these inhuman currents – but at the same time – down these mean streets a man (and a woman) will walk who is not themselves mean… Yes powerlessness is being reinforced – ‘victims’ are being rescued not in anyway at all taking agency – but …

On Channel 4, UK, I am watching ‘Utopia’ – a very dystopian view of a just about in the future world where conspiracy theories are told in comic books, where evil monetised power seeks to manipulate everything – and where we do not know and perhaps will not ever be quite sure in whom we might trust. Very bleak and full of torture and death at the moment: captures the zeitgeist of a planet destroyed by bankers who still get their bonuses whilst the poor are further punished for their poverty…

Big popular culture point!!!

I am writing this on an old laptop that has an old version of Microsoft Word – one that still gives you an animated Help character – and I do still love the Paper Clip. What a wonderful thing is that Paper Clip! It keeps me company when I have to write – it has taken me through several publications including three editions of our student textbook and one of our staff textbook – and of books that I have edited or contributed to. Given how inhuman this world can feel at times; and how isolating the writer’s task; and how distracting online social spaces can be… how did we let them get away with getting rid of the paper clip?

I know he was loathed by many – but they could turn him off (yes, my companion is a he) if they did not want him – why did they have to turn my paper clip off as well? Bah humbug – and bring back the paper clip!

Social Stuff:

There will be a Google Hangout hosted by the course teaching team at the end of week one. To watch this live, visit the Announcements page of the Coursera site https://class.coursera.org/edc-001/ on Friday 1st February at 17:00 GMT. The session will be available for viewing later on YouTube and on our G+ page, which you’ll find at: https://plus.google.com/104505101854214069712/posts

Twitter Chate Saturday 02/02/13 21.30 GMT:

http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/  with the hashtag #edcmchat.

Onwards and upwards!