Lifestream Evaluation

As part of the e-learning and digital cultures module I and my fellow course mates were given the task of maintaining a lifestream. So, what is a lifestream? It is an aggregation of multiple digital sources relating to pre-determined topic areas we have engaged with during the entirety of the course. When setting up my lifestream I took into consideration those applications over the web I would normally use on a day to day basis. I did not want to sign myself up to use each and every feed available as I did not feel this would be a true representation of me online. I chose to use twitter, you tube, library thing and delicious. These posts were all dynamic elements to my lifestream whereas my weekly and sometimes more regular blog postings were static.

On reflection, initially I was some what dubious of the merits of a lifestream, and found myself constantly concerned about feeding things into my Lifestream to keep it going, it was not a natural process for me in the beginning. As each of the weeks went by and we began to explore different topics I found the lifestream an invaluable space to store all useful links and information I found over the web which I wanted to share with my colleagues, or take a look at myself at a later date. Adding metadata to the links was also a productive task as I could review each bit of information quickly and effectively to see what it contained. While constructing my lifestream I was always concerned about how the content would be perceived by my course mates. I am aware that some content in applications such as blogs can be seen as mundane and some what self indulgent and didn’t want to bore anyone with the content I chose. I attempted to combat this by including only course related information, this is one of the reasons I chose not to include facebook feeds in my lifestream. As mentioned previously I chose to use tumblr and delicious to feed links such as websites, quotes and journal articles in to my lifestream, I used you tube and library thing to display videos and books relating to the course themes and used blog postings for my weekly summaries, more in-depth course reflections and to exhibit my artefact and ethnography.
When considering my learning process I approached the task with caution, finding out more information about lifestreaming, observing what my peers were doing and then putting my findings into practice. The diagram below by Hughes (1992) et al is a good representation of my interaction.

(Hughes, C. Toohey, S. & Hatherley, S. 1992)

My lifestream certainly became more purposeful to me as the weeks progressed. I became more focused in what I was feeding into it. The real clarity came for me in week ten, with Sian Bayne’s core reading, “Academetron, automaton, phantom: uncanny digital pedagogies”. I embrace the concept of having a physical presence, and the notion of leaving a virtual footprint. I felt that Sian’s comment,
“In more visual environments, our avatars-represent a re-embodiment within the terms of the digital, we scatter our bodies across the web where they gain a kind of independence as nodes for commentary, connection and appropriation by others into new networks and new configurations”
summed up the reasoning behind our lifestreaming perfectly. I hope that I will continue to maintain my lifestream after this course as I can now certainly identify with its educational benefits.

Bibliography

Hughes, C. Toohey, S. & Hatherley, S. (1992) “Developing Learning Centred Trainers & Tutors”. Studies in continuing education. Vol 14, no.1, pp. 14-27

Bayne, S. “Academetron, automaton, phantom: uncanny digital pedagogies”. London Review of Education.

Looking at the activity this week on my lifestream I have again been focusing upon assignment preperation and looking back at themes covered in previous weeks to see how I can fit these into my assignment. I had a chance this week to go over Sians paper again which was one of the core reading texts. I found it not only insightful but it gave me confirmation and reason as to why we were doing the lifestream on a daily basis. I went on to look at bit more into the uncanny and some of the themes covered by Sian in an attempt to understand them more.

I have decided to look at what impace transliteracy is having upon education and pedagogy. I am still not 100% sure but guess I just have to crack on with it now! Hope evryone else is a little clearer than I ma! Good luck !

Reflecting on the last ten weeks I have found some of the topics incredibly engaging and others some what of a challenge, particularly Haraway and our cyborg week! I intend to revisit many of the core and secondary readings in order to pull together our topics from the last ten weeks and feed them into my assignment. I am still very undecided about my method of presentation but am trying to think more about the content at the moment.

I have started to consider my essay topic and methods of presentation. At the moment I am considering exploring transliteracy and how offline methods of communication, teaching and learning have been developed and translated into online forms. The concept of Lifeworlds also interests me. I am going to revisit Sue Thomas’ core reading and delve a little further in week ten.

Refelecting on my ethnography I have received some positive feedback on my project which I am very pleased and grateful for! I have been amazed at the variety and standard of the other ethnographies and am working my way through them.

After reading Hayles and Haraway and doing a bit of research over the internet I would go with the idea that a cyborg is an organism that has both aftificial and natural systems. We see this in everyday life, as Haraway suggests,

” Modern medicine is also full of cyborgs, of couplings between organism and machine” (Haraway)

Many people now have artificial limbs, for example,

“Jesse Sullivan has now become the worlds first bionoic man, a real life cyborg. Surgeons have attached the most sophisticated artificial arms ever to be designed. He can operate these artificial arms using brain signals. His brain sends signals to the artificial arms to perform a task, the signals are immediatley picked and performed” (http://homepages.uel.ac.uk/u0503234/html/nonfiction/html)  

But does this make them a cyborg? For me, whan I think of a cyborg I instantly think of a character in Dr Who, a machine i human form totally devoid of any of the natural emaotions we possess. Can a cyborg exist and function without the aid of a human? The answer to this is no. As Hayles comments,

“Functionality is a term used by virtual reality technologists to describe the communication modes that are active in a computer-human interface” (Hayles)

Humans can evolve into cyborgs by using new technologies to enhance and control part of themselves, but the cyborg can not live by itself as it is the human developing new technologies and controlling it.

What is a poasthuman?

“The transition from human to posthuman can be defined physically or memetically. Physically, we will have become posthuman only when we have made such fundamental and sweeping modifications to our inherited genetics, physiology, neurophysiology and neurochemistry that we can no longer be classified with homo-sapiens” (More, 1994) 

We seek to become posthuman to go beyond our own human limits. The difference between a cyborg and a posthuman is that a posthuman has, at some point been a human being. The posthuman is a more evolved version of a human being.

I have enjoyed this blocks core and secondary readings and have found them less hard going than some of the previous ones.  Bell (2001) and Hine (2000) were particularly interesting and useful for the ethnography project. Bells take on Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft communities was insightful and I was able to relate this to my field of study- Bankeyfields. While a very close knit community is evident issues of crime and deviance threaten this way of life- as explored in the forum post I concentrated on “Beware- trick or treat threat”.

I look forward to exploring everyone elses ethnographies and hope that I went down the right path with mine.

“Where I knew just my neighbours before, I now know and chat to most most people in my street and streets away. I wouldnt say its the heart of our community, thats the people, but it has done a fantastic job in bringing us together”.

I think this says a great deal about how virtual communities can be used for the good. This is a very positive example of how cyberculture has bridged the divide between physical and virtual.

References.

Bell, D (2001) Community and Cyberculture, chapters of An Introduction to Cyberculture. Abingdon: Roultedge. pp92-112

Clari, M, A Flickr Ethnography, Unpublished.

Hine, C (2000) The Virtual Objects of Ethnography. From Hine, C. Virtual Ethnography. pp41-66, London: Sage

Rheingold, H (1993) Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, Reading MA: Addison Wesley

Sorry about the delay, it’s been a work week from hell. Any way, the easy things first. Signed up users: 195 Unique users a day on average:

 Day, Date, Page Loads, Unique Visitors, First Time Visitors, Returning Visitors

Wednesday, 4th November 2009, 342, 203, 148, 55

Tuesday, 3rd November 2009, 299, 152, 106, 46

Monday, 2nd November 2009, 300, 172, 126, 46

Sunday, 1st November 2009, 306, 133, 99, 34

Saturday, 31st October 2009, 345, 153, 114, 39

Friday, 30th October 2009, 232, 144, 115, 29

Thursday, 29th October 2009, 273, 127, 87, 40

Why the site was formed-  Originally the was formed primarily as a tool for a previous Neighbourhood Watch Tool who had the foresight to start a very basic static html website, which they posted there nesltters as pdfs. They then added a free hosted forum. As I have a web design/developer background it was a perfect opportunity for me to build something new and fresh, that would bring together the elements of a Neighbourhood Watch group, such as easily posting updates and news letters, and merged it into the fledgling community that had started to grow on the old forum (It had a bout 10 users). From the off set I wanted a site that had everything we’d need in one place, without having to have one website for forums, one for documents. I also thought it was important that users should have just one user name and password. I also wanted to make it easy for the NHW members to easily be able to post their newsletters to the site, and post updates when every they happened rather than at quarterly intervals (kind of misses the point if break ins are happening) So, using a open source content management software called drupal I set about building a system with these aims in mind. 1. Unified account system (one username/password) 2. Users can post blogs 3. Users can chat on a forum, which will be divided into areas based on activities and regions 4. Users can upload images to the gallery 5. Users can communicate with each other behind the scenes using the private messages 6. Users can post local events onto the site 7. Users can promote local businesses The whole thing took about 1 month to build, and as it happened the NHW group disbanded the week it was launched. At the time this was a major set back because I was pinning all of my hopes with populating the site, and keeping it up to date with NHW news. I’m a developer, and not much of a writer so I had my work cut out for me. Luckily I had Mark on board, the chap who built the first basic site, and some of the 10 members of the old fourm on board, and we started to slowly to build up content. Chat about local things, post stories about our hobbies, local events, national events. Because our estates are fairly new, roundabout 7 years old, and we don’t have a local community point such as a pub, this site has helped this community to join it’s self together. Where I knew just my neighbours before, I now know and chat to most people in my street, and streets away. I wouldn’t say it’s the heart of our community, that’s the people, but it has done a fantastic job in bringing us together. Over the one and a half years the site has been running it’s stand out moments have been. Reformed a Neighbourhood Watch (NHW) group, and made the website the core of the group, organising, placing alerts, involving everyone basically (which was my aim for the site from the outset). Fought crime, by communicating and letting people be on guard when needed. Heavily using the site we’ve fought and won a battle with the council over a dangerous roundabout, which they refused to do anything about. (Having once worked at the Sentinel helped to by getting my mugshot in the paper every couple of months promoting our campaign). With the help of Tunstall police too, we’ve finally had something done about it. What normally takes people years to achieve, has taken us 10 months, which I’m very proud of . A community has united to take something on, and we did it, mostly using the web. OK, enough rambling, I hope it’s a starting point for your project, you’ll have to excuse my grammar and spelling though. Is this the sort of thing you were after? Matt