Click here to view the embedded video.

I have chosen these web applications to demonstrate my digital activities throughout the course as part of my learning process:

• Facebook
  Twitter
  YouTube
  Flickr
  Delicious
  My Blog

Although I have setup 6 applications but my digital activities through out the course are mainly using Facebook as shown in my lifestream feeds. There are 226 entries on Facebook compared to 3 on Flickr.

I mainly used Facebook because I am familiar with this application. I feel more comfortable to reflect my reading on Facebook as it is does not have word count restrictions compared to Twitter with 140 characters. Also as it is popular with the online community and I am connected with many of my friends via Facebook. I was hoping that I will get more comments for my status, friends helping me with questions or answers. I did get few comments but not as many as I would have liked. Also by extracting a sentence or quote from my reading helped my understanding of, and provoked thinking about the blocks’ readings.

Twitter is new to me, I registered to this because it was a requirement for the course, where there was a Twitter activity in the first block. I used Twitter in the first block of the course mainly to post my thoughts about the ‘Film Festival’ week we had and links to any useful video which I found on YouTube.

I used YouTube to find clips of the blocks’ topic that could help me to understand the readings and also to understand the course – digital culture. In the first weeks of the course, where we watched clips from films to demonstrate topics such as Matrix and AI, I have used YouTube to find similar clips which demonstrated the theme – dystopia, worlds and being human.

I have heard of Flickr but not actually signed-up to the service until this course. Throughout these 12 weeks I have only managed to have three activities on it – added two photos of my 17-month old sitting in front of the computer which I believe demonstrated that the new generation start the digital culture at a very young age. I have also used Flickr to upload my digital artefact.

I have used Delicious to bookmark any articles and websites which I found useful and related not just to the course but the e-learning community.

Last but not least were my occasional blogging entries which I have used to reflect in detail where I can on the readings. I found blogging a very useful tool to reflect my learning process digitally. Unfortunately I did not manage to do it as often as I would like to due to circumstances.

I am surprised that I am able to use various social web applications to demonstrate my digital learning activities. Many believe that students are unable to separate the social and education activities when it comes to using the applications as found from the JISC research on the relationship between social networking sites and education.

I have enjoyed the course but I must admit it was not an easy journey for me.  I found it difficult to divide my time between the “anologue” culture and the digital culture.  I have not managed to contribute daily towards my lifestream (as suggested by the course) as I just haven’t got the luxury called time.  My daily activities are divided among being a mother, wife and career person plus a student.  Another barrier is the poor wifi coverage, even at digital library forum!!!  It’s not just happened once but on four occasions where I had to attend or facilitate courses.  It reminded me of the dystopia theme where machine rules and how human are afraid that they might lose control.  Hence they feel the need to control how other human access and using the technology – restrict access to wifi and Mas cannot use her iPod Touch!!!

If digital lifestream is about pulling your social websites together what about my other digital activities such as accessing e-mail and using Google search to find information?  These are my digital activities to help me learning, especially using the search engines looking for information or accessing college electronic resources.

I struggled to use Flickr to reflect my learning as I just could not or haven’t got the time to produce an image to be uploaded onto the site which could reflect the learning for the course.  I might be able to produce the images but to upload them – time and sometimes the technology are not on my side.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say here is even though you are up for the digital challenge but sometimes it go against you and it is all down to human who just doesn’t like to see other human enjoying, liking and benefits from it.

Well not being online so much and again Facebook wins over Twitter.  Trying to concentrate on the readings also been doing some thinking on the final assignment.  Have emailed Sian of the topic and how to present it also been Skyped with Sian yesterday to discuss further on the topic – would like to carry on with my Digital ethnography on Twitter community for the course.

Did my blog on my reflections of Bayne’s and Usher and Edwards’ reading.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The last two readings took me back in time when I first started my journey as a MSc in e-learning student doing IDEL, using various online tools for learning, talking about digital immagrants and natives (Marc Prensky).

How I wish somehow I could distribute these two readings among my teaching colleagues to introduce them to the education in the digital culture.

I had a brief discussion with my e-learning manager this morning asking me what are other advantages of e-learning that he could convey to others besides engaging learners and availability. We need to do more that just telling them the advantages of this type of learning. They need to know and be able to adapt their teaching style from being the teacher who dictates students what they need to know to a facilitator offering guidance and prompting the students to think about the information received and interpret them into knowledge that students are able to apply. Accept their (students) opinions, encourage them to reflect and come up with their own answers based ton the reading provided.

How I could convince some of my colleagues who are skeptical about e-learning and to persuade the to change/adapt their teaching approach to fit in the new learning environment – online. Not just to use the VLE as portal for uploading course content material but use it to engage with students, taking a step back to facilitate learners, guide them rather than dictate what they need to do and know.

I supposed I cannot blamed them (lecturers) for not adopting to e-learning in their teaching practice as not everyone feels comfortable using the technology and it is not easy to change one’s habit from using a chalk and a blackboard to using a computer screen, having to meet the students in a physical space and using chat room to communicate – familiar yet strange – uncanny?

“…the familiar being rendered unfamiliar, a blurring of the boundary between the animate and the inanimate, … the embodied and the disembodied, the present and the past or absent.” (Bayne, 2010, p2)

However, that should not be an excuse for not accepting/adopting e-learning as being digital is now seen as part of today’s youth culture as indentified in our (Northampton College) training event in November.  We were asked to describe Youth Culture and many of us put down – Internet, online to define our youth culture.  So,  how do we…

“… make the unfamiliar become familiar, to ‘normalise’ to an extent the uncanniness of the digital text.” (Bayne, 2010)

And also we must not forget that not all students will be able to accept this new way of learning.  One must not assume that all “students are digital”, being online is part of their day to day life as not everyone can afford a computer or even time to sit infront of the computer.  This might be the case for many mature students, returning to education or students coming from the low income family.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1710

With the new technology coming into place, new skills are introduced – information skills, information literacy.

“The need now is to learn how to access and use information…” (Usher, R & Edwards, R, 1998, p4)

Whose job is this?

As you can tell, not much been happening in this week for me in terms of my lifestream activities. Been concentrating on the last two readings – “Academetron, automaton, phantom:uncanny digital pedagogies” by Sian Bayne & “Lost and found: ‘cyberspace’ and the (dis)location of teaching, learning and research” by Robin Usher and Richard Edwards. I must say that I enjoyed my reading this time and one of the easiest that I found so far.

I have been ‘off the grid’ to concentrate on the reading especially on “Cyborg manifesto” as I found the Facebook in particular quite distracting at times. And still reading the manifesto…

So…
Again, I’ve been using more Facebook than Twitter to reflect on my reading. Have not done any serious blogging on the reading as I found it difficult to concentrate and finished the reading on time. Hence the Facebook as I go along. Also been using Youtube to find for more information/notes that could help me understand it better.

I’ve also read the Hayles’ paper for the second time and just realised that there are questions I need to address when reflecting on the reading via blog.

What’s the difference between cyborg and posthuman? I thought I’ve understood the two papers but start asking myself again what’s the difference… So I definitely have to read the papers again to really understand them and hopefully I will produced a blog that could explain the difference if there is any…

A cyborg is a cybernatic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction (Haraway, 2007, p34)

Will an individual who had a prosthetic arm a cyborg?  So Detective Spooner in I, Robot a cyborg – being part human and part machine to help him function…better?  What about a human who operate like a machine – ie, you wake up in the morning, have shower, dressed, breakfast, drive to work, do the tasks required one after another only having break during lunch time?  I sometimes feel that I am a machine as working not stop from morning till nite – especially at work – able to have lunch is like a bonus to me some days.  I even had a colleague who reminded me to take a break – will this make me a cyborg?  As far as I am aware – I haven’t got any mechanical part in my organic form.

What feminism got to do with cyborg?  I struggle with this when reading Haraway’s.  I will get back to this…

I’ve used Facebook this week more compared to other applications to reflect on my reading as I go along.

Also used of Youtube to find any related videos to help my understanding of the topic this week – Cyborg.

I’ve been using my delicious account a lot more this week too compared to previous weeks as I found a number of articles which I have found relevant and interesting for the course not just the Cyborg week.

Not so much on Twitter as I found it frustrating with its word limit. Perhaps I should include this as part of my ethnography which was also brought up by one of the “commentor”.

What frustrate me so far studying this course is when human still wanted to practice power (dystopia?). Power to control others, especially on how others use the technology for a good cause. For example, I went to a LRC forum: The impact of technology to the Library and its profession. There are a few wifi services available but none that I could have access to. Surely there is a way to overcome the security issue if that is the reason why it’s not being public. So there I was sitting with my technology (IPod touch) try to Tweet my reflections of the forum to give some spice to my followers but I could only do the notes offline. It is not the same as it has to be spur of the moment – even with blog! With technology most of the time (in my experience) when things went wrong usually are caused by human error.

Is this one of the reason what Haraway trying to point out in her reading – to make the human better by creating cyborg?

Introduction

Before participating on the online community which is Tweeter #mscdystopia, we are required to watch four films under the theme – “dystopia” which were selected by our tutors.  We were required to comment, give our opinion/views and also suggest a film which falls under the theme.  We also need to set-up an account with Tweeter and pick a name for our online identity on Tweeter and mine is m45n1 just because someone already used “mas”!

There are all together 199 entries for #mscdystopia and it starts on the 21 September 2009 and ends on the 30th October 2009 (but this was me asking for help searching/retrieving the #mscdystopia for my study).  Really it ends on the 6th October 2009 with an entry from lesley1004 “wud you feel any emotion if videos had no accompanying music …next step , watch the eyes”

This is how it begins on Tweeter:

This is how it all begins

The first tweet post was from “hyperscoped” giving his views on what is dystopia.  There are various threads available on this:

1. Opinions/views on the four suggested films:
2. The use of the social websites for example: Tweeter, Facebook, etc and how they influence our life
3. Individuals response to other individuals
4. Suggested clips related to the theme
5. Comment on the readings and its relation to the theme and suggested films –
6. Real life example – government –

And this is how it ends…

Conclusion

Not everyone involves in the community is  an “active contributor” me included.  Individual bounce ideas about their thoughts on the theme.  There are also some comments on the key reading for the theme.  Answering questions with questions to provoke thinking and some share the same ideas/views.

I hope this inform my readers about the ethnography of Tweeter #mscdystopia for MSc E-learning – E-learning and Digital Culture.

I am open to any suggestions on how to improve my “story telling”.  Sorry that it is not presented in a sophisticated online way.