Comments on: Digital vs. digitalised

By: Amy Woodgate

Amy Woodgate — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 18:15:51 +0000

Hi Dirk! I used Camtasia to make it and Freesound for the audio files – I’m glad you liked it! Are you considering your digital artefact creation for the EDC MOOC?

By: Dirk

Dirk — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 15:59:03 +0000

Hello Amy,

what was the tool you used to create this wonderfull video Learning to Listen with. I just loved the intensity and simplicity of the design….

Best regards

Dirk

By: Sem

Sem — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 22:44:29 +0000

Whilst I take the point about the nature of audio recordings, I think thinking about the difference between digital and digitalised is valuable when thinking about how we use technology. It seems to me it’s a vital distinction.

Amy’s comment that people lose sight of what’s important in the learning process struck a chord with me. A few years back, my classroom was fitted with an smart board. My argument that it should go on a different wall so I could keep my huge rolling white board was ignored on the grounds it was more interactive, and would so better student learning. Yet this only applied to watching it. It only had one interactive pen. Whereas i could have 5+ students up with pens doing group and whole class work on the rolling board, and still use it with the projector for the laptop. No one looked to see what we already had, and how to enhance and build on that. They only looked at substitution. They certainly weren’t prepared to even consider using flexible teaching space to use both options. The technology had to be the best way. It seems to me that this is short sighted, and very much limits the tool set, digital or otherwise, as a narrow approach limits the tool set available.

By: Amy Woodgate

Amy Woodgate — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 10:40:12 +0000

Hey Walt – I completely agree and the arbitrariness of the distinction is precisely that. Often people get hung up on what is or is not ‘digital’ often as a defence mechanism to the unknown, when you can look at any entity in our world and at least indirectly link it to the digital (touched on a little in later posts) – a spectrum of digitalness! Yet the fixation very often makes us lose sight of what is important for the learning experience, which will differ between subjects, individual learning styles, etc. It is a very muddied picture with on one hand schools throwing as many computers into classrooms and hoping they’ll make a difference whilst simultaneously battling against the technologically augmented spell-check generation habits! Technology to supplement not substitute but only where relevant and only if you make a ‘digital’ distinction of your tool set.

By: Walt P.

Walt P. — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 10:12:30 +0000

Amy – audio recordings have always been ‘processed’ in some form or other to store them on a medium (wax cylinder, for example) and replay them at a later date. I don’t see digital processing as being different in kind from these. All forms of audio processing change the nature of the original sound (in terms of frequency range and harmonics, for example).

I would suggest that you reflect on the relevance of your thesis to e-learning and the expectations of learners – does this distinction really make any difference to the process of learning?