In the closing paragraph of my Week Eleven overview I wrote:

“While there is a temptation to state that week Twelve of the Tumblog will be spent tying loose ends together I actually feel that this is the wrong way for me to view the remaining time.”

In some respects it seems as though I am generating more ends in place of tying up the ones already present.

Preparations abound for the final assignment…reading around my topic ‘The role and reason for the rhizome in e-learning’ will continue in the weeks ahead.

Time over the final week has been spent considering the role and reason of the Tumblog space. Considering community, multimodality and structure  I believe that this environment potentially shapes and impacts both the blog content its presentation.

I have found the use of the spiderweb useful as a metaphor for the intricate inter-weavings that the Tumblog constructs itself upon. Tags created through this week’s posts serve to fortify the interconnection of the space. Learning is on confined to one time or section but is  miscible in form. Due to the consistent topic overlap it does not feel like the ‘end’ of the Tumblog adventure. In fact, it is the submission date for the Tumblog is the marker, the signpost which signals the end of this part of my journey.

In preparation for this I had spent some time this week looking at my early posts and from these, reflection on the various routes that my mind has taken. I noticed that I had likened the embarkation on the Tumblog  to that of a journey. What may have begun with tentative slow moving wheels has gathered momentum to create the high speed, full-on, metal on metal explosive wheel spin of a rollercoaster!

This week my Tumblog hasn’t seen a lot of action principally due to home dynamics [sick children]

Between the bouts of illness I did manage to tend to an area of concern that was niggling at the corners of my mind. I wanted to ‘show’ [myself / anybody] what I meant when talking about the rhizomatic nature of the Tumblog in Gatherings. The image in the original post didn’t sit comfortably with me…it sort of felt inadequate.

What better way to do this then to use the Tumblogs themselves. Collecting all of our Tumblog walls in one artifact meant that although each contributor could recognise their own work it resulted in the gathering of several to form one. My wall rhizome image did end up looking somewhat similar to a scorpion though this was accidental. Perhaps if held upside down or diagonal it will take a different form, varying from one interpretation to the next.

The concept of cyborg remained at the surface of my thoughts this week , asking questions over how technology, such as Google Glass, could add to us becoming cyborg-like. This raised questions of privacy, ownership and social immersion. The cyborg is embedded within the fibres of sci-fi…how exciting to uncover another contemporary real life example.

While there is a temptation to state that week Twelve of the Tumblog will be spent tying loose ends together I actually feel that this is the wrong way for me to view the remaining time. I hope to spend this time giving final nurture to the roots and shoots bursting from the experience of all that is EDC.

Beginning with  21st Century Cyborg? I tried to clarify what ’cyborg’ means outside of the fiction arena, provoking questions on body, soul and conscience – all nudging me forward. A celebration of World Poetry Day encouraged me to step [way] outside my comfort zone and experiment with A Sonnet to a Cyborg. I saw this as an opportunity to push my own personal boundaries and dip my toe in unknown waters.

The pinnacle of this week for me was the lightbulb moment  that generated from reading the Edwards [2010] paper.  Gatherings outlines how the meaning of the Tumblog has morphed to become part of the ‘knowing’ itself.  

”In the post-human, rather than the subject representing the object through sense data of, for instance, observation, we enter into the spatio-temporal practices of gathering and experimentation. Knowing is not seperate from doing but emerges from the very matter-ings in which we engage” (Edwards, 2010) 

The rhizomatic nature of the Tumblog is composed through our connectedness, interactions and distances.  Readings this week allowed me to see earlier readings / activities in a new light. Originally inspired by IDEL the cyberspace topography image, Rhizomatic becomings  shows how connected all of these course components are.The concepts of the past ten weeks are not single isolated dots, but connected together by overlapping lines of the familiar.

Reading time has had a visually obvious knock on effect on my posts. I question myself on being too uncertain to post confidently? Or should I write too unconfident to post with  certainty?

This is something I will have to find my way around…I just have to get my head around using the Tumblog as the soundboard it is.

CAPTCHAvated opened the gateway to the idea of boundaries, lines between human and machine and the function of those divisions. I think that I like the topic in hand even if I do feel a smidgen intimidated by it….

I’ve never done anything like this before. It brought the readings of the section to like by gently nudging questions over the definitions of community and  subculture. What a wonderful opportunity to be able to live the ethnographer’s role from start to finish. Truely an immersive experience!

Time spent this week looking at the studies of my peers only re-emphasised the diversive approaches of the group…no two studies look or feel the same. I found it interesting that although I had used the same platform and ethnographic environment as two of my classmates all of the results differed dramatically. This is something that I find reassuring and refreshing. The MSc has opened my eyes [and mind] to the realm of the multimodal and I found the ethnography gave me another chance to dabble in the unknown, to experiment and explore.

This week my tumblog post has highlighted the role of history/historicism plays in shaping the present and the future. I thought that this was apt given the current activity. This week has felt like a continuation of week six like how sections of a caterpillar link together. In this way considerations of community and culture in the previous week are still very raw in my mind and shape my reflections over these days.

Although I haven’t had time to put to print I am questioning how I could / should approach my ethnographic study. Although I have pinpointed the group I would like to explore as Grunge related I still need to clarify in my mind exactly how I’m going to approach it. This is a normal process for me before approaching any activity so I’m currently curious but comfortable.

A comment from Jen suggested that I might use my fieldwork to explore an idea that I had been mulling over from one of the posts from the  previous week.

How far can the common interest be stretched to encompass the imagining of online community.

I’m excited about the avenues this ethnographic exploration is going to lead me down…

Life circumstances this week have made getting my thoughts onto the Tumblog a challenge!

Diversity

The high point of this week was the MOOC Hangout. The value of this experience was immense and I came away feeling that I had learned something new [use of Google +] and reinforced something already present [the sense of our class community].

This week was a chance to spend time looking at all of the digital artifacts that we created and it was amazing to note the diversity of presentation forms and user approaches – a little like a digital pic ‘n’ mix! From this collection it is easy to see what each platform showcases in terms of suitability for specific uses. It was reassuring to note that feedback I received showed that what I set out to depict was achieved.  Self – reflection on how I would do things differently next time is an important part of the feedback process though I think that the tight time-frame impacted on the final result. I am very impressed by the other artifacts and will definitely use some, if not all of the platforms in the future.

Areas that I dipped into this week included cultural narratives and the potentially varying ‘human’ capacity of one media over another. The former reminded me of Canadian photographer Jeff Wall’s piece The Storyteller, representing a social setting marginalised through exclusion from cultural technological transformation. The latter area continued reflection on the power of image vs text and how content / circumstance calls for one over the other.

]]> http://edc13.education.ed.ac.uk/nikkib/2013/02/17/overview-week-5/feed/ 0 http://edc13.education.ed.ac.uk/nikkib/2013/02/10/week-four-overview/ http://edc13.education.ed.ac.uk/nikkib/2013/02/10/week-four-overview/#comments Sun, 10 Feb 2013 21:24:38 +0000 Nikki Bourke http://edc13.education.ed.ac.uk/nikkib/?p=230  

This week was challenging and great fun!

The main focus of this week was the creation of a digital artifact. Decisions on which elements of the MOOC to focus upon and how to present the artifact were of primary concern. Choices made… Dystopia on Glogster! This presentation platform was new to me and I found that the visual which I had in my head transferred easily onto the screen. I wanted to move away from text [where I feel most at home] and dabble in sound and image.

What I found really refreshing about this task was the diversity of the artifacts. The eight of us, given the same brief, submitted a varied and exciting range of presentations, each one substantially unique. I view such variance as a byproduct of  the vastness found in both the MOOC and the substantial number of presentation platforms that we have access to.

Interaction with the MOOC over the past two weeks has me feeling more at ease with it. My posts this week have considered how I feel about the MOOC and the potential impact, if any that a shift in the group dynamic has had on shaping these feelings.  Although it is massive in content and participant numbers the solid structure helped me to become more at ease with my navigation through this great online ocean.

So the rollercoaster is gaining momentum…This week it has been a case of holding onto the rails of this fast moving vehicle we call EDC. New topics and subjects of interest present themselves with every turn and I have had to find a balance between an exploration of these capillary routes and staying on the main line. Oftentimes the side routes won out…though reassuringly they always seemed to loop back at some point to the central trajectory.

This week my posts have centred on deciphering how these issues and concepts fit in with one another. Perhaps the most interesting [personal] result of this week’s interactions has been a perspective shift. My understanding of the relationship between the book [medium] and the reading/writing [mode] has altered, has been placed within the landscape of the social, economic and the cultural. The impact of multimodality on media provides an open, limitless platform of which the reader / writer may avail.

The concept of convergence, covered by both Kruss (2005) and Thomas (2007) helped to locate my understanding of transliteracy in contexts that I could relate to.

This week also introduced  the MOOC. This is all new to me but very exciting.

This week has encouraged me to reflect on the value of perspective. That the experience of cyberculture differs depending on whose eyes it is being viewed through. The diner aliens conclusions that humans are meat-based, [They’re made out of meat], the casting director’s considerations of human attributes on an alien form [Gumdrop] and ‘everyday’ life as seen through the eyes of a human immersed in non-human form. [Avatar Days]

Both sections of the film festival ‘other world’ and ‘being human’ resonate what has been described as the recursive (Bell, 2001)nature of the borderlines separating real from unreal, a membrane dividing fact from fiction.

I became interested in the possibility that the employment or absence of colour could influence the viewer’s interpretation of a given environment as utopian / dystopian. I considered the power of colour.

Sterne’s (2006) The Historiography of Cyberculture, made me think a lot about the mammoth power of sound. I revisited the film clips with this in mind saw how the audio shaped the clips. Whether it is the unrelenting rain of Bladerunner or the sweet chirping birds of Worldbuilder…each element contributes to their scene in a specific way. This is an avenue I would like to explore further.

• Bell, D (2001) Storying cyberspace 1: material and symbolic stories, chapter 2 of An introduction to cybercultures. Abingdon: Routledge. pp6-29
• Sterne, J (2006) The historiography of cyberculture, chapter 1 of Critical cyberculture studies. New York University Press. pp.17-28.