To me the tumblog experience was also about the creation of an online blogging identity through the weeks, and understanding the digital and eLearning community, by being immersed in the culture.  There has been constant reassessment and negotiation of the boundaries, and defining the relationship of digital culture and elearning culture (Edwards, 2010).

I have experimented with multimodal, transliteracy elements, and considered how my tumblog content may exclude or include readers, and how visual digital literacy is enacted in different publications, and considered how or what people present or project as themselves online.  There were also the constant considerations for what might an academic discourse and essay look like if text was not the dominant medium.  My creation of several digital artefacts such as the virtual ethnography are examples of images taking precedence over text.

I have felt like I am both a virtual ethnographer and a futuristic archaeologist, trying to come to terms and make sense of the rich cultural life of the elearning and digital world, which although I am part of, I have only been on the periphery of this world.  The study of posthumanism and narratives of dystopia and utopia have really forced me to think about what digital culture really means in a variety of context and locations.

The tumblog also reflected the rhizomatic development of links and ideas where I have digressed to non-digital cultures a few times, to enable me to look at the topic afresh.  Some examples of this were in the automobile Prezi in Week 5, and also the posts related to fashion or hair design.  One of the more pertinent fragments drawn from the internet was the paper from Heidegger on Ontological Education which gives the background for where posthuman ideas evolved from.

I rather prefer Heidegger’s idea of deconstruction which is “not to destroy our traditional Western educational institutions but to ‘loosen up’ this ‘hardened tradition and dissolve the concealments it has engendered’ (Thompson, 2001). In contrast, the posthuman idea of man and nonhuman existing in the same continuum is continually presented as a novel condition for humanity, for which no previous educational approaches suitable. However, I found that the authors never explained why previous technology did not divorce humanity from itself. I argue these technologies have made us more human than less, which I will develop in my final essay.

Finally, reflecting on the selected imagery that captured my thoughts and emotions by Kasey Mccahon, called Connected in Week1,  I can compare this with the Portrait of a Posthuman by Eva Rorandelli, which sums up some of the Posthuman elements in human identity, posted in Week 12.  My vision of digital culture, derived from the mash-up of different sources from the web, through reflection, discussion, will now be consolidated in my final assignment.

Reference:

Edwards, R. (2010). The end of lifelong learning: A post-human condition? Studies in the Education of Adults, vol 42, no 1, 5-17.

Thompson, I (2001) Heidegger on Ontological Education, or: How We Become What We Are in Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy Volume 44, Issue 3, 2001 Accessed 03/04/2013

I started by googling for issues of posthuman identity and found the portrait of a posthuman by a visual artist.  The description of her work is useful as a starting point for reference to identity, where the human is seeking a comfortable position for herself in the world she inhabits.  I thought the selection of fabrics to reflect identity was also an important one. It led me to think about the identity of an educator, which is discussed in the essay on Heidegger.

The second and third posts are focused on pedagogical approaches.   This time I tried searching using the words: ontology, identity, becoming, design.   A Phantasmal Media Approach to Empowerment, Identity and Computation was an interesting find, and it gives me more to consider about the idea of identity in the virtual world. I thought the dynamic construction of social categories identities (body language, discourse, metaphorical thought, gesture, fashion) as an addition to the normally used categories such as class,  gender, sex, race and ethnicity was realistic and I can see that for the younger generation the other categorisation is more prevalent.

The final link was a paper on Heidegger about Ontological Education, or: How We Become What We Are (Iain Thomas).  This will be an important reference for my final assignment.  I will compare Heidegger’ with the language used in the cyborg pedagogy.  There is correlation between the two.

My final post for this week contains some preliminary thoughts on my final assignment. The narrative is written down to allow for the flow of ideas to begin.

I have spent some time responding to final posts by colleagues, especially those that touch on their final assignment.

In Penderson (2010) Is posthuman educable?, I looked at the reference to humanist traditions and the different strands of interpretation of the posthuman adoption of the past. In my second post, a link to a blog discussion on connectivism as posthuman pedagogy which questions the absence of epistemology in the theory.  In my third post, I decided to collect a few more links for reference to what is being done already on posthuman pedagogy or its interpretation for education.  And my last post this week, I attempted to reflect how I could embrace the language of posthumanism in my post, and also focused on Gough’s rhizomANTic paper which illustrated an example of anthromorphism or reflexivity, and finally in Angus et al (2001), I raised some questions on the interpretation of connections used by posthumanist writers.

On reflection, I am slowly  beginning to think beyond the binaries of  promise/threat and dystopia/utopia.   I am able to proceed to the second process of scattering the ideas on my blog this coming week.

Reference:

Angus, T, Cook, I, Evans, J et al (2001) A Manifesto for Cyborg Pedagogy? International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, vol 10, no 2, pp.195-201.

Gough, N. (2004). RhizomANTically becoming-cyborg: performing posthuman pedagogies. Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol 36, no 3, 253-265

Pedersen, H. (2010). Is the posthuman educable? On the convergence of educational philosophy, animal studies, and posthumanist theory. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, vol 31, no 2, 237-250.

Haraway’s writing was a struggle, and I decided to set it aside and try to look at any descriptions or visuals to help unravel the posthuman concept and I found “A Sum of Parts: Posthuman Humans“  and the Posthuman Future which demystified some of the academic articles.  This is a part of the assembling process, which takes things which are related but in a different modality to help build a picture of a topic you are studying.  The ability to branch out in the comfort of one’s home, and with the aid of google search, is something which I would define part of the enabling provided by technology.

Reading secondary articles of Edwards and Angus et al provided some practical examples of how posthuman pedagogy is applied.  The first reading of the pedagogic applications were rather unsettling particularly the placing of humans and nonhuman on the same continuum.  The language of posthumanism permeates in the literature and I am trying to find a way to conceive in my mind how it would work in an education system or curriculum.

The week ended with investigations on the premise of Haraway’s writing, which surfaced more questions about the validity of the arguments presented. I am inclined to challenge the assumptions and perhaps attempt to redefine what an alternative Cyborg or Posthuman pedagogy could look like which will eventually be part of my final assignment question.

Reference:

Angus, T, Cook, I, Evans, J et al (2001) A Manifesto for Cyborg Pedagogy? International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, vol 10, no 2, pp.195-201.

Edwards, R. (2010). The end of lifelong learning: A post-human condition? Studies in the Education of Adults, vol 42, no 1, 5-17.

Haraway, D. (2000). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century. in D Bell and A Kennedy, The Cybercultures Reader. Routledge.

The varied routes and presentation of the ethnography show how this course has allowed the freedom to explore one single topic.  The study of the internet communities has been an extremely interesting process for me and it is evident from the reviews and post of others, as a group we have found this a very useful methodology to uncover the definition of communities.

The process of which the ethnographer becomes part of the object of study is interesting.  It becomes a journey unique to each person, and the learning process is more meaningful.

Moving on to the reading for week 9 was a challenge.

Reading and rereading of Haraway, starting with Pickering then moved on the Hayles. The posts this week  reflect the frustration.  I have noted some interpretation and questions about the articles which I am hoping will be clarified as I move on to week ten.

The skype chat session clarified for me some questions I still had about posthumanism but not enough.  I have posted a lecture by Haraway, From Cyborgs to Companion Species, which I hoped will help understand her work.

I was also trying to catch up on the group’s post, but have not been able to respond till I have grasped what posthumanism really is.

Reference:

Haraway, D. (2000). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century. in D Bell and A Kennedy, The Cybercultures Reader. Routledge.

Hayles, N.K. (1999). Toward embodied virtuality, chapter 1 of How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. pp1-25

Pickering, A. (2005). Asian eels and global warming: a posthumanist perspective on society and the environment. Ethics and the Environment, 10(2), 29-43.

I have divided the ethnography into three sections: the journey or getting there, being there and finally the implications for eLearning. Each of these sections required a lot of thinking, and I feel really quite pleased that I have tried to make or analyse Kosinets’ ideas on online participation.

At some stage I was beginning to feel weary about the ethnography particularly the issue of ethics on such a sensitive area. I was weighing both ethical questions and the defence that I was part of the community. I resolved this by cutting down more slides, and kept the discussion of the digital culture rather than the content.

By Sunday, I was able to start looking at the published ethnography, and tried to understand each person’s view and framework for their exploration and their chosen media for the final presentation.

I have finally arrived at my ethnography community. But to get there it took trawling through a lot of different sites.  One of the sites I found was those who were involved in vandalism (graffiti).  It was depressing to think about the legality of this act on the one hand and then on the other, the emerging street artists from the same community.  The other was 12ozprophets which is a legacy of the forums from the past, but has blogs by various people where it is just a place to rant or to publicize their work.  There really is no following or clear community activities which I could identify.  The closest I came to was a street artist from Australia who has used all possible venues to publish his work or gain some following for his work.

I was about to give up and just do something different when the Ghost Bike project link appear on pages 3 or 4 of the google search.  In 2003, someone stripped and painted a bicycle white to set up a memorial on the physical site for a cyclist who lost his life. It was also to raise awareness of the rights of cyclist on the roads in a world so overtaken by the automobile culture.  Since then, the ghostbikes project is installed all around the USA, and also many other countries in the world.  From the site you can see links to facebook communities of the different locations.  The one that is most active in the LA page.

I found the article on the Lemmings vs Kant which had a critique on Facebook Graph Search.  It explained the issues surrounding the commodifying of personal data, and the view that Facebook take of its users.  It was necessary to  understand the criticism on Facebook, a social media platform used by so many, and to consider if Facebook is a good representation of an online community.

I also posted a link to the controversy of Banksy’s street art which is auctioned in the USA, which touches on authorship and public space.  When I did not hear back from the various support groups which I have written to, I gravitated towards the street art community.

The core materials reveal that online ethnography is quite different from the traditional ethnography that I was familiar with.

Hine (2000) on Virtual Objects of Ethnography presented  a reasonable approach to researching the online communities: its emphasis on connective ethnography; how to make the invisible visible without the physical presence of the ethnographer; and the reflexivity methodology providing as much information as looking at the cultural processes rather than the physical space.

Bell (2001) raised interesting issues on what we naturally think of as communities, and how online communities choose to recreate a similar concept, despite the fact that the medium used allows for a creative transformation of communities.  The characteristics of contemporary communities as a result of the disembodying, detraditionalised, globalised and uncertainties could give a new way of finding belonging.  He reintroduces the idea of Bund, an elective grouping, bonded by affective and emotional solidarity, sharing a strong sense of belonging. He describes how the benefits of membership are often described in terms of the member’s quality of life, rather than in the quality of relationship between subjects, and that the internet could be a place of emancipation as well as one of suppression.

I started with trying to find my way to an online community but stopped to comprehend what makes the online community and the views on ethnography which would frame the process of these two weeks’ study.

Reference:

Hine, C (2000) The virtual objects of ethnography, chapter 3 of Virtual ethnography. London: Sage. pp41-66

Bell, David (2001) Community and cyberculture, chapter 5 of An introduction to cybercultures. Abingdon: Routledge. pp92-112 [e-book] [PDF]

I wanted to get to grips with Rose’s article on Researching visual materials and  other reading materials, so I could have a framework for critique of the artefacts created by all in the course.

I also experimented with other tools such as Prezi and Voicethread, and review Pinterest.  I made a response to Amy’s work by creating a voicethread visual and audio artefact.  And I  tried the same with Rose’s article.  I created a Prezi presentation of the automobile culture, with the visuals I have collected from my visit to the Autoworld museum in Brussels. It made me think of how I could define eLearning and digital culture, and consider the differences between the two technologies.

I revisited my coursemate’s EDCMooc response and these are some thoughts reviewing the tools:

a) Phil’s multilayering, reflects the adobe tools.

b) Amy brings home the fact that one can’t quite escape the use of text.  However, manipulating font sizes, and breaking them up in short phrases  is effective.

c) Steph’s thinglink presentation, as she pointed out, it is not a platform that invites discussion as much as we would have like it to be.  The choice of image, and decision on what is linked is critical.

d) Candance made effective use of Prezi,  introducing the brilliance of glass, and surprisingly the sound of glass too.

e) Nikki’s glogster: the title, the image of the frame reminds me of Roses frame for cultural thought, in this case of surveillance.

f) Anabel made good use of the  culmination of nominated songs, and the continued invite to add to the artefact.

g) Gina’s Pinterest board has generated a lot of discussion.  Her response to each comment is key to building up communities based on the visuals on the board.

Reference:

Rose, Gillian (2007) Researching visual materials: towards a critical visual methodology, chapter 1 of Visual methodologies: an introduction to the interpretation of visual materials. London: Sage. pp.1-27

Julier highlights the distinction of Visual Culture and Design Culture. It was interesting to read how the visual culture has developed and changed over time, and what it means to interpret an image.

I found the following interesting:

“Culture is no longer one of pure representation or narrative, where visual culture conveys messages. Instead, culture formulates, formats, channels, circulates, contains, and retrieves information. Design, therefore, is more than just the creation of visual artifacts to be used or “read” It is also about the structuring of systems of encounter within the visual and material world.”
I wondered how my digital artefact will fit into the description above or rather how can I create something which reflects all these?  At the same time I want to try to stay away from my readers being the “passive” spectator, or using John Urry’s conception of the “tourist gaze”.  What would be the embodied engagement for a digital artefact? Would my readers ‘step into the object and make it their own’?

I also reviewed Spalter and Vandam (2008) Digital Visual Literacy.  It highlights the existence of this type of literacy which is something that need to be taught.

Evidently, to do a summary of the edcMooc, it would involve immersing myself into the discussion forums, blogs and twitters.  Like a miner, I went digging for hidden gems.  My encounter with Amy Buvall’s blog was a turning point. Her practical but creative examples led me to try out the thinglink tool.

Reference:

Julier, G (2006) From visual culture to design culture, Design issues, 22 (1), 64-76.

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]

Spalter, A M and van Dam, A (2008) Digital visual literacy, Theory into practice, 47, 93-101.