I have experienced multi-model transliteracies through the blog, visual artefact and ethnography, struggled with the varying notion of order to access information. Seen the real become unreal and then made real again. I have visited and become part of various communities. Then I went on to look at relationships with technology which lead full circle to question the original assumptions of Utopia and Dystopia!

The running theme for me has been the post-human, which I have interpreted as the – The space in between – Now and the future, between people, community members and between human and technology – the place where ideas can bounce back and forth, replicated, imitated, develop and continued – which are of course essentially the blocks of teaching on the course. It has led me to my final destination which is looking at the transference of information in this space and the idea of creative replication.

Although I didn’t know it, this started in week 1′s bog post – Just Awesome! The first appreciation of a congregation of people coming together to create a positive event. This was a great example of Culture with a capital C being used as part of a popular culture activity – the flash mob. What is interesting for me is how social networks are used to bring people together to form a temporary community who are all engaged in similar activity but without the necessary relationship bond of interaction a community usually requires. I reflected on the most apt modes for the literacies to be represented in and experimented with different modes and looked at what was appreciated and found that the key word was APTNESS for the representation. This followed with my own participation in a cultural meme – The Harlem Shake which felt important due to the work on Ethnographies Unfortunately, I couldn’t share my imitation, but this was probably fortuitous as…… The journey has come full circle for me with the realisation that we are already part of a dystopian society, where the real is unreal and Global Capitalism is in fact driving the “Space in between” in the direction it wants us to go!

My journey has been amazing and has given me a greater understanding of what is culture in the past, now and in the future and how is it transferred and replicated. The Harlem Shake meme which was commercially led, is a real time example of one of the earliest readings by Bell (2001) about the counterculture leading technological and thus commercial advances.

It has been great being part of something so public, and I hadn’t quite appreciated what that would be like and the links I would make with others outside of our community. Thanks very much to all who have listened, read, commented and interacted with me over the course of this study.

This weeks blog has focused mainly on the film festival and reactions to the Mooc – my own and others.
The films helped revisit the ideas of utopia and dystopian societies, and linked with Bell’s (2001) idea of dronoeconomics, the suffering of the people building the internet and the capitalist control from the government figures at the top. Also the idea of re-finding the real world and introducing nature. Identifying what is actually important and what are the things we want to hold onto.

I have been reflecting on the enormity of the The Edcmooc experience, which was fantastic, very exciting but also very bewildering.

One of the thing I really enjoyed was the real time shared activities I felt like it reduced feelings of isolation and lack of purpose and direction. Twitter was very good for maintaining these links I also found it manageable as I could scroll back easily and see everything #tagged.

I liked the idea of Utopian and Dystopian futures from the films and as I discuss I decided to go with a musical representation a Sound track to the mooc based on the ideas of the sound track to the future as represented by the people on the course, I loved that people responded to my question and I really felt a member of community because of the interactions. Although the response rate to my twitter question and retweets from course tutors was limited considering how many participants there were on the course.

My original idea was to blend all the songs together to create a soundtrack, a mash up of the mooc. But I kept receiving ideas till late on Friday afternoon and the “song” I created was so rubbish and ear bleeding I decided I couldn’t make it public I was very disappointed, but think perhaps it was too ambitious, I felt part of something big and felt inspired to do something bigger than my capabilites!

I began to think of alternate representations of the information which I had received either as Youtube links or names and lists from tweets. It needed to be multi-model with varying entry points after the weeks readings identifying us as coming from various different starting points. I chose Glogster, It looked like a picture yet showed video’s, people could start where every they wanted, depending on their interests – perhaps they had heard of the artist before, like the image, liked the look of the band. They could listen to the songs and watch the video’s in any order as they were not linearly represented. The guest was then invited to vote for their favourite.

I liked what I had done, it was not what I set out to do but seemed to work
Perhaps I should have just used this:
The ultimate soundtrack to the future

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thank you very much Giraf87 for this link

The Internet map.

This multi-modal representation of the Internet got me thinking about Entry points and how people get to where they want to be on the Internet.This map shows the different sites visited on the internet. I was very surprised to see that although Google is ranked number 1 less than half of internet users visit this site 45.610 %

The map and the journey through the Internet provides and example of what Kress (2005) describes as the use of space and spatial arrangement to represent information and meaning in spatially organized representation, and said that “it is the viewer’s action that orders the simultaneously present elements in relation to her or his interest” Information is present and people come from various start points and get to the information or action they require through which ever method is most suitable to them.

EdcMOOC – The first thing that strikes me is the feeling of enormity and excitment.

K Mackinnon ‏@Mala_Cara 22 Jan
Right up for getting started on this course with 1/4 of a millon other folk… https://www.coursera.org/course/edc #edmooc
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There is a buzz about the whole thing and lots of commentary about arrival and participation, students locating themselves as players within the course.

Sue Watling ‏@suewatling 17 Jan
#edmooc Hi All, I’m Sue Watling from Lincoln, UK, http://staff.lincoln.ac.uk/swatling , am on #oldsmooc and looking forward to MOOCing around here

Yet others express feelings of isolation which is perhaps more to do with locating themselves within the course.

describing modes mediums literacies and transliteracies
medium – email, video
mode – Speech, drawing, writing
literacies – Speech, drawing, writing
transliteracies – social, cultural economic method of sharing

Basically from the beginning of time humans have been using literacies to communicate either through speech, drawing, or writing. They have moved on and evolved their societies with the passing on of information to one another.
Blackmore (2008) “Language is a parasite that we’ve adapted to, not something that was there originally for our genes, on this view. And like most parasites, it can begin dangerous, but then it co-evolves and adapts, and we end up with a symbiotic relationship with this new parasite”
Thomas et al (2007) talks of the modes of communication and describes this evolution :
Through speech – arranging group hunts for larger prey
Through drawings developed bartering system and sales of excess meat
Through the alphabet – development of the roman empire
Through email – immediate global communication

Kress 2005 Talks of mediums are just reproductions of modes of communciation e.g.g writing drawing, sound and states reproduced through e.g. email, video etc.

Both appear to state the original forms of communication are still present and doing the same thing but are being replicated through a different medium

Kress, G (2005) Gains and losses: new forms of texts, knowledge and learning. Computers and Composition. 22(1), 5-22.

Thomas, S et al (2007) Transliteracy: crossing divides. First Monday. 12(12). [web site]

Kress (2005) referred to this as the ” Notion of order” and discusses how this has changed over time from one entry point to many

Its like the video in the film festival – Frightened Rabbit “I feel better” We have different starting points and choices and paths we need to follow if we take a step in one direction the future path and the next choice will change and that will be different for each individual taking the course

Click here to view the embedded video.

” Notion of order” Kress 2005