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.

My blog this week has focused on the idea of community, having been part of some very different communities recently this is very real to me. I have felt very much part of the ededc community and I been part of the edcMooc community – which felt quite soulless at times, to the #edcmooc on twitter which inspired feelings of community through shared activity and response. I have left my own community with friends and family and visited a new community with an entirely different set of rules and cultural references. Then I began to dip my toe into an online community of cyclists obsessed with the weight of bike parts – it has been a strange old week!!!!!

It makes me question what is a community and what makes one belong,
I felt I belonged in my home community, in the ededc community and in the #edcmooc community, I was beginning to become part of the community in Kenya and part of the edcMooc community, I didn’t belong in the Weght Weenies community. When I dissected my feelings of community it appears to be based on not only my engagement but the responses. In my own community with family and friends I give and receive feedback. As part of ededc I commented on others blogs and they on mine and we had chatted in real time through Skype. In twitter I was commenting and gaining responses. The edmooc course and Kenya – I still felt very new and the interactions I had were less engaging, which is quite surprising for Kenya as I was very engaged in many things I took part in but I always felt like a visitor. However I did feel a sense of community with the people I travelled with which was a new group of people to me. I have no sense of community with the Weight Weenies group because as yet, I have not contributed just observed.

So what is actually a community? It has to be more than a collection of people who are doing the same thing?

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.