Andy's E-learning and Digital Cultures Blog

Part of the MSc in E-learning at the University of Edinburgh

Posts Tagged digital culture

Andy’s Week 11 Review

Dec 7

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This should be my last weekly review of the Digital Culture course, before I submit my final review of the Lifestream. As I type, I am conscious that much of my activity involves review and preparation for relevant to my digital essay. My essay will be a presentation of the merits of producing a digital assignment instead of a traditional essay. Already I appear to be making distinctions because I have just felt the ne
ed to go back over the last two sentences I typed and bold two words I typed before appreciating their significance. In researching my assignment I am gathering data instead of information. As I am planning an essay that compares and contrasts two formats, I would previously have described such an activity as writing a discussion. But now I appear to be making a presentation. The production of a digital assignment may be a different format but I am now sitting here curious to analyse to what this extent this alters my thinking and understanding. Am I communicating differently – or do I now think differently?

Like the last 4 weeks, there are not as many lifestream entries as there were in the earlier part of the course. This is a reflexion merely of the number of web sources I tag, and not the amount of studying I am doing. The bulk of academic work over the last few weeks has been reading. However this analysis causes pause for thought over the lifestream as a whole. Over the first 6 weeks, I felt compelled to show activity almost daily. Having read the study guide for the unit, and noticed the lifestream was an integral component of assessment, I wanted to demonstrate I was regularly engaging with the course. Now I am maturing within digital culture, and developing familiarity with lifestreaming, I believe I consider quality of entries over quantity.

If I did want to illustrate learning activity on my lifestream I would need to tag my lifestream itself. I am evaluating lifestreaming and reviewing prior activity for the essay. Therefore the website I am visiting the most at present is the lifestream itself. Metaphorically, the lifestream symbolises a living flow of my learning. If I was to turn my thoughts inwards and evaluate my own activities and thoughts, would I be creating a whilpool? I don’y think so. Without evaluating my learning path, I cannot measure my understanding. Maybe over the final week of the lifestream, I will tag lifestream entries to demonstrate my point.

In the meantime, here is a blog from the 2nd week of the course, I find relevant to my preparations for the essay. I find it interesting to read and contrast my knoledge now – having subsequently carried out the ethnographic study and researched cyborg culture – to how I felt in the early stages of the course.

Am I a Cyberpunk as well as an Immigrant now?

Bell refers to cyberpunk as providing ‘a cognitive map of human-computer interaction’. For me, this reference adds weight to the stereotypical image of digital culture being populated by personalities more confident in cyber society than mainstream f2f interaction: the geeks, teckies, sci-fi buffs, etc. Watching Week 2’s Film Festival took me out my comfort zone. I admire all the special effects and do feel genuinely challenged by the symbolic messages – but I don’t feel any sense of identity and belonging. I’m a social animal who prefers eye contact.

However because of the significance of both the different behaviours and cultural identity, I do respect the value and relevance to including clips like The Matrix. I confess to being enthused and extra motivated to participate in this course – more so than any other course. Thanks to the wonders of the Dongle, I’m typing on the train right now, capturing my immediate thoughts – and posting them.

But am I any different to the real me? Are other passengers looking at me – Twittering, surfing and blogging – as a real computer nerd? I don’t feel different. I know why I’m here. I know what I’m doing.

The key point of this blog is I may not know what territory digital culture is going to take me, what I am going to learn, or exactly how I’m going to behave. But provided I retain site of who I am – ie. an e-learning student and developer – I believe I can apply my cyber interaction to the real world. I am not a cyberpunk – I am a learner.

http://digitalculture-ed.net/andym/2009/09/ Sept 29

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Final Assignment – proposal

Dec 3

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Copy of my proposed final assignment synopsis and feedback from Jen.

Title: The merits of the digital essay.

Synopsis: For the course Digital Culture, candidates are required to submit some form of digital essay for the final assignment. For me, this represents a first. It is an opportunity for me, not only to experiment with digital applications, but also express myself via  different media. I am conscious of my enthusiasm and how my motivation compares to researching notes to compile a traditional, text essay. This leads me to ask questions that relate to various aspects of the Digital Culture course. What does digital media offer education? What is media  literacy? Is there any difference to the information being conveyed in my essay that would be any different in text format? Finally, in assessing the essay, who am I?  Is this a genuine product of my understanding and knowledge of digital culture? Am I still quintessentially Andy Murray the postgraduate student of education, or is this the work of my new posthuman self, a student who functions only with digital facilities?

My aim is to structure my arguments around the text v. digital discussions covered in Block 1 and the Cyborg Manifesto of Block 3. Having played around with Prezi last week for a work presentation, I’d like to produce my assignment on that. I’d like to develop the essay upon text slides, quotes, video excerts and personal video commentary.

Reply from Jenny

Hi Andy,

Thanks for this – you’re proposing quite a complex idea – a reflexive account of your own process of creating an assignment, drawing on multimodal, cyborg and posthuman theory. I can see that it could work, and I think you should go for it using Prezi as you suggest.

Are you thinking of a structure whereby you run the semi-traditional academic discourse in parallel with your own reflexive account? So, for example, a few paragraphs of text (or video, images, etc) drawing on the literature and making an argument, sitting next to a video commentary of your own experience? And so on through the piece? Or would you be looking to integrate these two aspects more closely? Either could work, but the former might ensure that you definitely hit all the core criteria for the assignment (see the course guide for more information – but an outline is here – http://digitalculture-ed.net/?page_id=233).  Also, keep in mind the 2000 word guideline for the assignment – obviously how you construe ‘words’ will depend on what you’re doing, but it should give you some idea of the approximate size of the thing so you don’t take on too much.

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The Fog Clears

Nov 27

Posted by andym in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

YouTube Preview Image

Thanks to Sian’s paper – Academetron, automaton, phantom: uncanny digital pedagogies (2009) – I offer the course another metaphor – the fog is clearing. Having read this, I now feel more able to get my head around the last two weeks’s analysis of cyborgs and digital culture. Let me answer this question:

“The posthuman subject is an amalgam, a collection of heterogeneous components, a material-informational entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction.” (Hayles 1999, 3) One of the structuring principles of this course – the lifestream and the learning environment itself – is about disaggregation and reaggregation – taking things apart, scattering them across the network, and then having them put back together by the machine. What other connections might there be between cyborg theory and the pragmatics of online pedagogy and course design?

For me, Sian cleared the fog by discussing digital pedagogy in terms of its uncanny nature. In developing new learning environments, both learners and teachers are lifted out of the comfort zones of familiar territory. The cyborg metaphors linked to virtual environments further exacerbate the state of anomie by being such liberating entities, they offer the potential for society to re-write the script on what constitutes cultural norms. So, for example, taking the question of lifestreaming – disaggregation and reaggregation – the problem for academia, may not so much be a lifestream constitute”a collection of heterogeneous components, a material-informational entity” but instead simply represent a new form of representing learning that challenges traditional concepts of pedagogy.

Asking students to submit lifestreams as assessed elements of a programme is an attempt provisionally to capture something of the ‘spectrality’ of their digital existences. As an assessment strategy, it works with the idea of the learning process as volatile, disorienting and invigorating, and it also stretches conventional assessment frameworks to their limits. In defamiliarising the familiar through creative pedagogical appropriation of the digital, teaching becomes newly, and productively, strange.

Bayne (2009) p8

This paper has helped me formulate some clear thoughts, not only on the value of lifestreaming, but on the whole discussion of cyborg culture over the last three weeks. I see an evolution in my understanding. By beginning with Haraway, I feel the course deliberately took us to the far end of digital cultural spectrum – a dystopic image of mankind and technology merging as one, to create a neo-spacies, a posthuman. It is only by placing my disturbed emotions to one side, and forgetting about apocalyptic cyborg culture, I am able to identify how technology is enabling me to learn within new, digital environments. The problem with lifestreaming may be less to do with consigning my learning activities to a digital crumb-trail, but to familiarising myself with the capabilities and potential lifestreaming offers. A few weeks ago, I refered to my lifestream as my digital memory – a classic cyborg state. However, now I see it as simply a chronological catalogue of my online research. The production of the lifestream is not the focal point of my studies – it is what is now inside my head, my thoughts, ideas and knowledge. It is through digital mediums, I feel I have learned. The big challenge has been coming to terms with the new environment.

As a learner in higher education, the student:is in a process in which she is, in a sense, being estranged from herself… The student is asked to submit to the strangeness of new worlds opening before her. If they were not strange worlds, there would be question marks over whether we were in the presence of higher education.  

Barnet (2007) quoted in Sian (2009) p6-7

Thanks Sian.

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Andy’s Week 9 Review

Nov 22

Posted by andym in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Do I have to talk to you through that thing?” 

This rather profound question was directed at me by my wife this weekend, whilst I was compiling notes for my blog. The “thing” she refers to is my laptop, a technological object that nowadays forms part of my “embodiment”. To fill you in on the domestic scene, it was Saturday morning, mid November. My wife commutes to work five days a week whilst I now work from home. Since I use my laptop for both work and study, it has become an object that is very attached to me daily. My wife hates technology and holds a very functional standpoint to its application. But now it was the weekend and we were sat in the same room together, here was a perfect situation for a domestic chat. She saw an ideal opportunity to discuss Christmas and a family party. However, what now appears to be my natural state of embodiment, she found me with my head already buried in my laptop.

The relevance to digital culture continued to develop with the conversation. When challenged to make a contribution to my ideas of menus, wine, activities, etc. I did have brief discussion with my wine – but then proceeded to surf the web for 20 minutes looking at food and wine sites. Conclusion – is all my knowledge now situated in online environments? Can I no longer function in life without referring to digital sources of information? Or worse, would my poor wife find it easier to Twitter me or respond to my blog???

This quote seems to help explain my situation –

“If embodiment is an existential condition in which the body is the subjective source or intersubjective ground of experience, then studies under the rubric of embodiment are not ‘about’ the body per se. Instead they are about culture and experience insofar as these can be understood from the standpoint of bodily being-in-the-world.”

Thomas Csordas in Perspectives on Embodiment
by Weiss, G. and Haber, H., (eds.). Routledge; March, 1999 p. 143

This little domestic scene of mine occurred whilst I tried to summarise my understanding of situated knowledge, embodiment and cyborg metaphors. Haraway and Hayes can only be absorbed within my own situation. I can identify situated knowledge as knowledge specific to a particular situation. Some methods of generating knowledge, such as trial and error, or experiential learning tend to create highly situational knowledge. The knowledge prior to any experience means that there are certain “assumptions” that one takes for granted. In most realistic cases, it is not possible to have a comprehensive understanding, therefore we have to accept the fact that our knowledge is always incomplete and partial. Most real problems have to be solved by taking advantage of a partial understanding of the problem context and problem data.

 

Situated knowledge can be a challenege to the truth claims of disembodied, detached observation, and instead, advocate a more located, partial and embodied understanding. For Haraway this view rejects a masterful, all-seeing gaze from a distant vantage point, blind to its own specificity and location in its claims for objective, all-seeing authority. Situated knowledge depends on its dislocation and distance not only from what is being observed, but also from where such observation is located. By recognizing that all knowledge is partial and located, attempts to situate knowledge makes partiality and location an explicit and critical focus for both researchers and the subjects of their research. Situated knowledge seeks to disrupt the authority and impartiality that is empowered, in part, by denying its own situation. It does so by locating, and often embodying, the production of knowledge in terms of proximity rather than distance and reflexivity rather than detachment.

 

I found the two core texts by Hayles and Shields more accessible to read than Week 8 readings (although I can see the course needed to challenge us to discover Haraway for ourselves before offering us an analysis of her.) Block 3’s study of Cyborg metaphors has certainly offered some thought provoking analysis of the present and the future. It has taken me sometime to identify the relevance of Haraway and Hayles to e-learning, but now I believe I have learned rather than take everything literally, I analyse the relevance to human interaction with technology. So here, in Week 9 of the course, I find myself pausing to evaluate my own domestic social and mechanical behaviour. Have I morphed into a cyborg, with the ‘informatics of domination’ shaping how my own body – especially my mind – is being modified with technology? I can relate my personal situation – and the contrasting position of my wife – to Hayles’ text.

I regard the posthuman, like the ‘human’, as a historically specific and contingent term rather than a stable ontology. Whereas the ‘human’ has since the Enlightenment been associated with rationality, free will, autonomy and a celebration of consciousness as the seat of identity, the posthuman in its more nefarious forms is construed as an informational pattern that happens to be instantiated in a biological substrate.

Hayles 2006, p160

We propose that there are two-way or reciprocal relationships between neural events and conscious activity. An attractive feature of this proposal is that it allows consciousness to be a causally efficacious participant in the cycles of operation constituting the agent’s life…… We also propose that the processes crucial for

consciousness cut across the brain–body–world divisions rather than being located simply in the head.

To sum up these complex interactions between means and metaphor, I offer in My Mother Was a Computer (2005) the following formulation, which has become central for me in understanding the contemporary situation as well as historical precedents: ‘What we make and what (we think) we are co-evolve together.’

Hayles 2006, p164

What I find more disturbing and confusing is this Haraway quote from the Shields text.

Women-headed households, serial monogamy . . . home-based business

reinforced (simulated nuclear family, intense domestic violence). (Haraway,

1990: 170) 

Quoteed in Shields 2006, p212

As I see it, the evolution of society has created masculine and feminine positions. The relevance of Haraway is to utilise our understanding of these positions to analyse how society evolves with technology. It is not the gender perspectives that will necessary be eroded through time, but the roles and functions of gender may change. In my opinion, technology will enable greater gender equality and a decline in sexual division of labour. However, I feel I am only able to make such a proclamation through my personal situated learning – how I perceive life, my situation and the changes that are occurring around me.

My gender may be less relevant, but am I posthuman now? Am I a PC?

YouTube Preview Image“

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Andy’s Week 7 review

Nov 7

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For a variety of reasons, this appears to have been my most inactive week on the course. I certainly have made few contributions to my lifestream. The reality is -

  • I have expereinced personal upheaval within my career.
  • It has been a period of little communication within the class, with everyone focussing on their ethnographic projects.
  • Most of my study time has been take up compiling data for my micro study and developing an effective means of presenting it.

I am composing this post immediately after posting my ethnographic study on You Tube. It is my intention to view and comment on other students’ projects over next 2 days. I hope then to have gained a clearer understanding of ethnographic research.

For now, I shall reflect upon my own study. With hindsight, I am glad I chose to analyse Steelmen Online, as oposed to joining a new community. Not only was I able to study a familiar community, as a forum member for 3-4 years, I was also able to reflect upon my own online behaviour. This helped enormously with regards issues of ethics. I originally felt wary of reviewing Steelmen Online because I was so engaged with it. I was wary of my bias. However, my web research of ethnographic research assured me that, rather than being wary of biasness, familiarity of the community is good -

Theoretical Propositions of Media Ecology (from Lum 2006: 32-33)

1. “communication media are not neutral, transparent, or value-free conduits for carrying data or information … media’s intrinsic physical structure and symbolic form plays a defining role in shaping what and how information is to be encoded and transmitted and therefore how it is to be decoded.”

2. all media are “biased” From Nystrom we know the following biases:

  • intellectual and emotional biases based on symoblic forms
  • spatial, temporal, and sensory biases based on physical structure
  • political biases based on accessibility of symbolic forms
  • social biases based on different types of social situations created by physical form
  • metaphysical biases due to the way they organize time and space
  • content biases based on symbolic and physical forms
  • all of this adds up to different epistemological biases


3. These biases can “facilitate various psychic or perceptual, social, economic, political, and cultural consequences.”

http://ksudigg.wetpaint.com/page/Guiding+Insights?zone=addthis

More on bias -

For the ethnographer, Dicks et al. (2005: 128) caution that the internet should never be read as a ‘neutral’ observation space as it always remains a fieldwork setting and, as such, a researcher’s data selection and analyses are always biased by agendas, personal histories, and social norms. That being said, the role of observer can still sometimes be considered ‘passive’ in the eyes of
bloggers and chat room users if the researcher is not overtly interacting with them.

Murthy p840 http://octavioislas.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/digital-etnography-sociology-sept-2008.pdf

Once I had chosen my subject, and study aims, I realised I was analysing a culture that I was a part of. The behaviour, opinions, values and attitudes of the Steelmen Online community were part shaped by me. It was not me, as a social scientist influencing my subject(s) – I was part of the subject in the first place.

Once I realised this phenomenon, I found myself relax more into my research. My study focused on the capacity of the community as a whole, to filter objectivity and subjectivity. On numerous occasions, I have found myself at odds with forum members. I have criticised and argued on discussion threads before. But this does not matter. I am one voice on the forum. The significance of the study was how the majority of participants interacted, and reacted to news and comments from others.

Having completed the study, I now look forward to returning to regular interaction with my fellow students. I anticipate regular contributions to my lifestream next week.

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Visions of The Future – Michio Kaku

Oct 16

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YouTube Preview Image

This programme was on BBC4 this week. Here is Part 5 – the climax. This is the same week I have enjoyed both producing my own visual artefact and wandering around the virtual gallery that is the collection of presentations from the class. However, nothing from our artefacts, Film Festivals, course texts or Lifestreams has had such an impact upon me as this 8 minutes of video.

“One day we could have a memory chip, a visual chip, a thinking chip.” Michio Kaku

“As you get to the 2040s, machine portion of intelligence will be vastly more powerful than the biological portion.” Ray Kurweil

“Over next 50 years we shall see robots with more biological components and people with more technological components… Where are the people and robots going to be…. it’s an interesting question.” Rodney Brooks MIT

I’m so taken aback by these statements, I’ve had to commit them to text. I suppose this represents where I am in my own cognitive evolution.

I don’t have any personal words to express the impact of this film – so here’s a visual of where I’ve gone in my head….

My Buddha

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Andy’s Visual Artefact

Oct 15

Posted by andym in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

YouTube Preview Image

To a large extent, my video is self explanatory. Although utilising a journey metaphor clearly conveys a shift from A to B, I felt some text commentary complimented the production. The crucial element here is change. Over the last four weeks, I have altered my knowledge, understanding and confidence in different environments – both real and virtual.

The inspiration for my film came one morning on my way to the office – my new workplace. Before starting, I had spent some time researching and planning my route and timetables. I have three connections each way now. Yet after only one week, I suddenly realised I was doing the journey without thinking. My cognitive processes had computed my new journey to auto pilot. My thoughts were now totally absorbed with digital culture and visual artefacts. Having learned a new commuting journey, I now wondered how quickly I could acquire new skills in use of digital media.

The video represents my early experiments with Windows Movie Maker, Prism Converter and Moyea Downloader. The artefact is simply a combination of primitive video production and enthusiasm at having the freedom to express my imagination. The actual thread of thought may be a bit ropey in places but I ended up having a lot of fun making it. I’ve shrugged my shoulders at copyright – everything I borrowed was on You Tube in the first place.

Enjoy

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Lectures broadcast on You Tube

Oct 13

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I have recently added a number of recordings of live lectures on my Lifestream. I have been particularly taken by Patrick Dixon, and his energetic presentation on visions of the future. 

YouTube Preview Image

Having identified video recordings of lectures as a useful source of materials in digital culture in my weekly review, Jenny madea critical comment.

Re the existence of lectures on youtube – is there a distinction to be made here between material that *happens* to be on youtube and material that is created *for* youtube? I think the idea of something being ‘born digital’ is useful here. Just because something is on a computer/ in a web 2.0 application does not mean it is making good use of the possibilities of the medium.

In considering a replyto this comment, I find it is worthy of a blog post on its own. To some extent, I accept Jenny’s challenge in that it is hardly a different learning medium to simply download and watch a recording of a live presentation. The actual lecture is f2f. However, I do identify a number of points that make such presentations worthy of recognition in digital culture.

  1. The video enabled me an opportunity to experience the lecture. I would love to have flown to Belgium to be there. The video made it possible.
  2. I came across Patrick Dixon whilst looking for something else. I stumbled upon it whilst searching for examples of effective practice in education.
  3. The video lasts 55 minutes. As yet, I have not watched all of it yet. I can dip in and out of it at my convenience.
  4. If I wish, I can download  the video and edit it for my own use. In other words, I can alter the presentation.
  5. Technology is not there yet, but I have read in other blog posts that search engines will eventually be able to search audio data. This means that eventually, by identifying “future” as my search criteria, Mr Dixon will pop up on my screen.

I conclude that recordings of f2f presentations are not digital culture, but their accessibility, usability and editability is.

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Andy’s Week 3 Review

Oct 10

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To date, the E-learning and Digital Culture has illustrated one significant feature of learning in Web 2.0 environments – instantaneous. As the learning community establishes itself, and participants gain familiarity with social networking platforms, the dialogue flows freely, and speedily. I’ve now got so used to the pace of Tweetdeck correspondence that if I don’t get a response to a comment within a couple of hours, I get frustrated. “Have I said something dumb or irrelevant?”

It was inevitable that this jet-paced communication would manifest itself within the Skype correspondance. Sure enough, five minutes in, six little pencils could be seen on the screen, scribbling away. For the next hour, there was never less than three people chatting at the same time. Making a contribution was like trying to jump on a moving carousel. I’m not sure if it was a communal eagerness to share views of digital culture or just sheer relief at being able to talk live to someone, but it was like putting a bowl of food down for a pack of hungry puppies, our on-screen pencils wagging feverishly like puppies tails.

The chat may have been fast and furious, but I thought the emerging themes were clear and obvious. I felt my colleagues and I were sharing a combination of enthusiasm and frustration with digital culture. Here were a set of technological tools being offered to students and teachers for free. They offere boundless scope for creativity and imagination. An online presence provides individual learners flexibility and community. The learner has autonomy and freedom. The teacher has a facilitating and guiding role. Its a culture that offers attractive, engaging and motivating learning.

Yet our Skype gathering all shared negative experiences. College staff all spoke about their institutions turning their backs on digital culture. Audio and visual presentations were attractive, blogging and wikis useful – but none of it was of sufficient quality to stand up against text. If material is not in print, it’s not reliable. In many cases, institutions have been so dismissive of Web 2.0, and distrustful of their students, social networking has been banned and locked down. Colleges and universities have made themselves gatekeepers to creativity and motivation.

I recorded my immediate thoughts the morning after the Skype tutorial. I felt the discussion had concluded digital culture may be immensely beneficial to education, but a combination of conservatism, power and control will limit its use. It is noticeable these themes are covered in the texts this week. 

Kress speaks (sorry writes about) the order of text and how it systematically controls the order in which the reader receives and digests the information. This contrasts with digital content like a website, where the user can jump to anywhere in the site at the touch of a button. This is of course a very simplistic comparison since a book reader can easily select particular chapters or pages from the index. However, the text of a book is permanent and wholly controlled by the author and publisher.

Carpenter comments on the quality of the written word in text books, and mediate the interaction between the learning activity. He advocated the existence of a credibility gap between academia and popular culture.

 

Though useful to a certain degree, the bifurcated-world model of academic literacy—with the idealized academic world on one side of the chasm and the down-’n-dirty world of popular culture on the other—remains nonetheless problematic. Scholars have noted, for instance, that the model may be insensitive to students’ home languages and literacies. I maintain that it is also overly simplistic and, as a result, misleading. Whenever I hear or read anything about the proverbial gulf that students must bridge in order to enter the academic community, I find myself wondering about what lies at the bottom of the fissure. (Carpenter 2009, p142)

It is interesting to note the reference to language and literacies as being overly simplistic. Is it only text that communicate a meesage to an appropriate academic level. In researching material for this course, I have now come across several academic lectures on You Tube. I would not regard these as frivolous.

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In terms of accessibility of text, I would like to comment that sometimes, scholars and academics, in attempting to ensure an equilibrium of intellectual propriatory and respect, abandon any tenure to communicate succinctly and thus render the recipient disempowered. Why do some academics write in such impractical, incomrehensible language. I’d comment further, but thanks to the wonders of Web2.o, Damien has covered this issue beautifully in his blog. I loved this.  http://digitalculture-ed.net/damiend/2009/10/09/of-genres-boundaries-and-plain-english/

I conclude my weekly review, in declaring my continued enthusiasm towards the contribution digital culture has to make to education. Rather than simply throwing scorn at the power base of traditional educational culture, I now identify conservatism as a mere obstacle to cross. Provided there exists sufficient pioneers to push the boundaries of teaching and learning practice, I can still perceive an evolution. But that is probably what will happen over the coming years – evolution and not revolution. For now, let me leave you with this – a previous breakthrough for technology in education.

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Andy’s Week 2 Review

Oct 5

Posted by andym in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Exploring digital culture is not the only new challenge I am experiencing at present. Studying this unit is quite refreshing because it co-incides with another significant change in my life. For the first time in 14 years, I have changed jobs. Not only do I have a new remit and employer, I also have an additional daily regime. I have become a train commuter. This change in circumstance has offered me an ideal opportunity to trail flexible, distance learning to the full. E-learning has often claimed to have a capacity to enable participants to engage in education anytime and anywhere. So now I have a perfect opportunity to put this to the test. Can I sit on a train, or my office desk at lunchtime, and slip into digital culture? Two weeks into the trial, the answer would appear to be – yes I can.

I began last week’s review by basing my motivation to study digital culture around an interest in widening participation in e-learning. I find retaining a clear focus on my personal raison d’etre, I am able to gauge my learning and comprehension of what I am doing. This has been particularly relevant this week since the learning activities have found me challenging some of my personal metaphors and stereotypical images of digital culture.

A combination of the Bell article and clips from The Film Festival, have seen me delve into what I have to date, perceived as a geeky, sci-fi world of techno fantasyland. It has not been something I have viewed positively. However, by maintaining my focus on e-learning (and having faith in Sian and Jen who put the course together) I am delighted to see a change in my perspective.

Bell refers to digital culture as being populated by cyberpunks storytelling in cyberspace. Bell talks about the changing format of human interaction; being linked online,  and sharing stories visually via technology. This human/machine interaction creates a new paradigm in cognitive mapping.  In telling the story of the development of the internet, Bell includes the contribution of Barlovian cyberspace. named after cyberspace guru John Perry Barlow (who first used Gibson’s term to describe computermediated communications) represents the mediation of image and reality ‘joining together the visions of cyberpunk to the reality of networks creates a concept of cyberspace as a place that currently exists’.

This reading has enabled me to look at the concept of symbolism in a new light. I now see the potential of digital media to portray the true identity of the author, and illustrate the significance of his/her message. Once again, my lifestream therefore portrays a shift in my stance, and a growing recognition of the relavance of the clips in The Film Festival. Tweets posted earlier last week were dismissive of World Builder and Elephant’s Dream. But now I am drawn to the potential link between digital imagination and reality. To what extent can one’s digital identity, portray who we really are?

YouTube Preview Image“I feel empowered as my character grows stronger and stronger.”

In enabling learners to participate in digital culture, I am now considering the potential this offers adult education. Where e-learning previously simply offered a richer and diverse pedagogy to distance and class-mediated learning, I can now see a new angle to e-learning. I wonder if digital culture could be a valuable resource for promoting self-development, problem solving, working with others and creativity. I realise what positive impact this could have upon motivation. Then suddenly I am aware that this is the first course of my studies where I have engaged in some form of study activity every single day. Digital culture and cyberspace has developed my motivation!

I sit here on the train, lettiing my own imagination run rampant. My phone and dongle modem enables me to access and create almost anything I want. Web 2.0 even allows me to share my thoughts with colleagues straight away. Now I look around the train compartment. About 25% of my fellow passengers have earphones in – wired to some digital technology. Many aren’t just listening. They are engaged in some activity on their iphones. So if I am acyberpunk now, so’s many of these commuters. Geeks, punks, social inadequates – or simply digital citizens.

Over the next week, not only do I envisage continued high activity in digital culture, but I also plan to revisit a place where I have had little but negative experience Second Life. Am I disappearing into another world, or simply discovering my true self. YouTube Preview Image

Keep you posted.

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