The final post: a reflection and a farewell …

The end of the module and time to reflect on the lifestream.

I’ve already made some summarising comments in an earlier post in which I describe the course as an example of ‘loosely coupled teaching’ and, to a lesser degree in an even earlier one on my tweet cloud. However, I don’t think I’ve taken the time to reflect on my lifestream proper.

I understand the broad idea of a lifestream – aggregating content from dispersed sites – a favourited YouTube video, an annotated Delicious bookmark, blog posts and  tweets  – into a single news feed-style stream as a record of twelve weeks of engagement with digital culture and e-learning.

The lifestream might be viewed as an unmediated record of participation (as reader, writer, bookmarker, commenter, creator of multimodal texts) over a particular period of time. However, I’m always suspicious of the word ‘unmediated’ and however artless a lifestream may seem in its streaming of data, it too is a construction. I allow interactions from some sites to be made visible but not others. For example, I’ve been quite selective and, in some ways, secretive – creating a new Twitter account – digitalanthony – instead of using my anthonymcneill account, excluding the Delicious account I use for work and so on. I’ve kept details of my iTunes purchases hidden too. My lifestream is as carefully an arranged selection of artefacts as anything else on the web (e.g. my blog or my Facebook profile page).

Rebecca Black, writing of identity performance in the context of young people’s fan sites  writes of the importance of being recognised as a particular ‘kind of person’  within a particular social context (2008). I think this is what we do online all the time: project a preferred identity through a performance that involves selective omissions and inclusions. I’m tempted to go back to a now old essay by Paul de Man called ‘Autobiography as de-facement’ (1979) I first came across when doing a PhD on French autobiography.  In stablising identity through textual (also visual?) representation we simultaneously create a ‘face’ (or, indeed, a Facebook profile) but also ‘de-face’ by creating a false front. Self-representation “deprives and disfigures to the precise extent that it restores” (de Man 1979: 930)

mallix: My Twitter class of ’08

As my belated retrospective weekly summaries suggest, I see the blog as being the dominant tool in my lifestream with other technologies in walk-on roles (Twitter to advertise blog posts, YouTube, Slideshare and Flickr to host the media I will embed in them etc.). Does this reveal a tendency in me to view Masters-level work as primarily textual and of more than 140 characters in length? Is there a residual reluctance – in spite of my love for Twitter – to view microcontent as no more than notes that will be later developed into more expansive prose rather than as text that is valuable in itself?

It seems fitting that I should end my summary and, indeed my lifestream for this course, with questions.

References

Black, R.W. (2008). Adolescents and Online Fan Fiction. New York: Peter Lang.

de Man, P. (1979). Autobiography as de-facement. Modern Language Notes, 94(5): 919-30

The deadline for the submission of our lifestreams approaches – just 90 minutes left as I write – and I realise how important the blog has been to my lifestream with other technologies in walk-on roles (Twitter to advertise blog posts, YouTube, Slideshare and Flickr to host the media I embed in them etc.). These retrospective summaries will focus primarily, then, on my blog.

Week 1: 21 September

Other than a short post on the Wallwisher ice-breaking activity (an idea that’s already been used on a KU course I’ve had an influence on), my first blog post was Walking the walk on the technologies used on this distance learning but VLE-free course. I was intrigued by the idea of a course that allowed us to use a range of technologies of our own choosing – a PLE if you like – whilst retaining something of the centralising, pull-it-all together in one place characteristics of a VLE. But who needs a VLE when RSS can pull together disparate media? I also had a go at a film review – not quite pulling off Pauline Kael – and a third, slightly superficial blog post bringing together my reading of Hand, Twitter and Iran.

Week 2: 28 September

Week 2 began with one of my early reflections on visuality with a blog post on the polysemous nature of the visual image. I enjoyed writing it – and name checking artists I enjoy – and the comments of Sian and fellow students. This post, like the next one, We’re (culture) jammin‘, was written in response to another student’s reflection. That week I took a rare foray into the multimodal – uploading a short film made on my iPhone to YouTube. Finally, I had another go at a film review – Girlfriend in a coma. At the end of week 2 I did a rare and beautiful thing and wrote one of my few of-the-moment summaries of my lifestream (http://digitalculture-ed.net/tonym/2009/10/04/reflections-on-my-lifestream/) which has some comments on the lifestream I’d still stand by.

Week 3: 5 October

This week began with a bang: a longish post on one of the set readings, another go at the multimodal (another video) and a quick swipe at Prezi (ed techies’ new preferred presentation software). I posted quite a lot that week (a lull at work perhaps or real enthusiams for readings and tasks?) and managed to select the visual artefact I wanted to share. I also thought of the phrase that best sums up why I love Twitter: “ambient collegiality”.

Week 4: 12 October – literacies

Well, this too looks like another very busy week. Looking back I’m clearly much more into the readings and ideas explored in block 1 than perhaps any of the other blocks. I took another stab at creating more visual artefacts (still and moving images) and got into an interesting discussion with Sian about Kress (who I find interesting, but disagree with – especially about the decline of the textual). I enjoyed engaging with fellow students’ visual artefacts – and their engagement with my own. I also found debating the hidden cultural politics of the ‘cabinet of curiosities’ with Jen to be really stimulating. So, sort of a week of disagreeing with the course team but in an intellectually rewarding way. You know, without disagreement, there’s no learning … sort of thing.

Block 2: Virtual communities and online identities is another really exciting course chunk. As with Block 1, we’ve an artefact to produce: a study – in whatever format we choose – of a virtual community. As with Block 1, there are some terrific energies being released here.

week 5: 19 October

Twitter seems to be abandoned at this point in preference to more traditional discussion boards. There’s no doubt it’s a better way to have a debate but it feels a rather backward step. Never mind though, as there’s plenty of activity going on in the blogs.

week 6: 26 October

This week saw me getting to grips with the concept of community – not a term that I feel one should use to describe two or more people doing stuff on the web (Yes, Michael Wesch, I’m talking ’bout you: a bunch of kids riffing on the Numa-Numa song is not a community!). I’m also fretting about the idea of the virtual ‘field site’ (I think I’m the only course member who thinks they might exist!) and the ethics of online ethnography. There are lots of good debates going on here.

week 7: 2 November

Trawling through my blog I can see no posts this week. I suspect this was the week we spent making our ethnographic study – mine on a section of the political blogosphere – or commenting on other people’s.  I know it was a lot of hard work, a lot of fun and hugely rewarding.

I think it may be fair to say that, like many, I found Block 3: Cyborg learners – critical perspectives on digital culture to be the toughest of all the blocks and the one I least enjoyed. I think I find the whole idea of cyborgs and the posthuman to be a bit, well, silly.

Week 8: 9 November – cyborgs and the posthuman

There’s a 10-day period of inactivity at the start of this block. In part, it was work-related (lots going on) but also I think I was guilty of a certain amount of reading avoidance and a certain reluctance to properly engage with the content.

Unlike Blocks 1 and 2, there was no requirement to produce something – other than reflections on the set readings. I felt this led to a blunting of intellectual appetite. There was something about the tasks in the earlier two blocks – a visual artefact and a study of virtual community – that brought the theory to life. In contrast, the theory in Block 3 felt rather disconnected. I also felt a bit disconnected from my fellow students (ok, this is partly about the ten-day vacation) but think that not having a task to share with others may have had a role to play.

Week 9: 16 November – cyborgs and the posthuman

By the 19th November, I’ve returned to the course and blogging about my resistance to the idea of the posthuman. I’m easing my way into readings I want to leave unread by starting with those that take a critical position on the posthuman (I am drawn to Muri). However, Shields turns me on to Haraway and, having read Haraway I’m totally blown away. I still feel unsure where this block is taking me conceptually. Where does Haraway fit for example?  I’m much less interested in the posthuman than what cyberspace means for the development of ‘oppositional consciousness’ and new forms of affinity that are no longer based on fixed notions of identity (e.g. class, race, gender).

Week 10: 23 November – cyborg pedagogy

This week seemed to be mainly filled with reflections on Sian’s paper on uncanny pedagogy. As with Kress and Prezi, I find myself not agreeing with Sian’s position but learn a lot while articulating why. I come away from this block with less of a feeling of acheivement and engagement than with Blocks 1 and 2 though.