Henry's E-learning and Digital Cultures Blog

20 Comments

#1 by sian on September 15th, 2009

Thanks Henry, and welcome to the course, great to see you again.
I saw some of the tweets from that ALT-C session – there seems to be a podcast of it available now at: http://elearningstuff.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/e-learning-stuff-podcast-028-the-vle-is-dead/
#2 by Sian on September 21st, 2009

A little, Henry, most of the format this time is new and experimental for us too. Sorry to hear you’ve had a clunky time with the DB – once you’ve done the initial logging in via webct, it should be a *lot* easier – no need to go near webct again until assessment submission : ) Let me know if you have a problem.

btw, I see the ‘official launch’ as being rather low key, as the tweets on the film festival gradually build over the week…
#3 by tracy on September 22nd, 2009

Hi Henry.
#4 by Sian on September 22nd, 2009

Any chance of Kamara coming up to Edinburgh sometime Henry? : )
#5 by tracy on October 4th, 2009

I think I agree. I tweeted regularly but felt frustrated that only (what seemed to me) a small percentage of my tweets were responded to and then not in the depth that I had hoped for – mainly in that too few people seemed to be tweeting at my time. For me the chronological aspect of twitter made it hard. I am in Thailand, and 7 hours ahead of the Brits on the team. Twitter seems to straddle synchronous/asynchronous communication. Like skype and unlike a DB the tweets seem to have a sell by date.
I also found that the convos that did happen were forced to remain shallow. People tried very hard to circumvent that by condensing their point, but what may have been a very sound and interesting point was rendered glib to almost ridiculous by the 140 keystroke limit. Interesting, glad I did it – but nope… discussion boards for me please. Or blogs and comments.
#6 by sian on October 5th, 2009

I agree, the twitter tutorials were interesting and there was a lot of rich stuff in there, but it was a frustration not to be able to get complex points across. Thanks for posting to the db on this – I hope we might get more discussion and reflection there.
#7 by sian on October 5th, 2009

Henry – you asked for clarification, which I was going to give in the db, but it seems to make more sense here. I love the idea of a series of Robotic Art images as a way of exploring this aspect of popular cyberculture. I’m really interested in theories of the ‘uncanny’ at the moment, and I think an exploration of robot mimicry could be fascinating. Are you familiar with the notion of the ‘uncanny valley’ in robotics? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

This is exactly the kind of thing the visual artefact should be doing!
#8 by Henry on October 14th, 2009

Jen,

mainly it has to do with the fact that the direct access from WordPress into WebCT was working; the EASE login was failing I think only once so not a main issue.

Rgds.,

H.
#9 by Sarah Payne on October 14th, 2009

Very professional looking result Henry! I know what you mean about the fear factor in using the new technology. It was harder to decide on a medium to use for my artefact than it was to master photoshop (which I managed with the help of some truely excellent online tutorials).
I am glad that I watched the video before reading the notes because I think it may have detracted from the visual message if I had done it the other way around.
#10 by tracy on October 15th, 2009

Cool video Henry. The part I enjoyed most was the toy robots and the kids (or childlike) pictures. I think we still haven’t managed to capture that potential of our childlike imaginations in a real robot yet. But then I actually just want Optimus Prime to be real – I want big kick-ass robots that can tranform into cool vehicles, oh yes.
#11 by sian on October 15th, 2009

Henry I really enjoyed this, I thought the first section captured the poignancy of the robot that came up during the film festival really well. I thought the attempt to come up with a loose taxonomy for robots was interesting too, though I wonder whether you needed to spell this out textually at the beginning – another approach might have been to let the images and (terrific) soundtrack do it themselves. BTW, anyone watching this hang on for the bit after the credits – the ‘land of hope and glory’ robot is the best of all!
#12 by silvanad on October 16th, 2009

Hi Henry, I like your attempt at classifying different types of robots. I wasn’t aware of the range of robots besides the scary or funny types. And I agree, the violin playing robot was the best!
#13 by Henry on October 16th, 2009

Jen,

I think I knwo whet is the reason of my login difficulties.
It’s a browser thing, fine in IE8, not working in Ff 3.0.
Just a pity I used Ff more than IE.
#14 by sian on October 27th, 2009

Henry it sounds like disappointing outcome from an imaginative exercise – a pity. I wonder if a more comparative approach might’ve worked – ie getting them to find two media artefacts (one from the ‘conventional’ media sphere – newspapers, news magazines; one from the social media sphere) and critically compare the content? Just a thought.
#15 by jen on October 28th, 2009

and hey – you can have funny and informative at the same time… I reckon that’s the best kind. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT2Wg7lVYAs
#16 by sian on November 2nd, 2009

No need for apologies Henry, in advance or otherwise. If it would help to brainstorm ideas privately, please drop me an email?
#17 by silvanad on November 8th, 2009

Hi Henry,

A very nice explanation of your two Ning online communities. I think you are right that professional communities are more instrumental and less likely to develop close bonds although I thought there might have been a bit of that in your smaller Ning community. I agree with you that there seems to be quite a range of types of virtual communities (I refer to your blog post after this one).
#18 by Sarah Payne on November 23rd, 2009

Hi Henry

I agree with you on both fronts:
1) Haraway is too hard to read and I felt deviated from the concept of the course. Her take on cyborgs struck me as too politicized to really be relevant to this module. I found Hayles much more interesting.
2) I too am struggling to find an essay topic. A couple of thoughts have sprung to the surface, only to find themselves lost and too insubstantial.
Good luck with your continuing quest!
#19 by Sian on November 23rd, 2009

Henry, further to my email earlier today, please bear in mind that your essay doesn’t have to be focused on the conceptually difficult material we’ve covered in the last two weeks. If there are ideas from earlier in the course that connect better with your own concerns and ways of thinking then please follow up on these for your final assignment.

I’ll make a blog posting now clarifying expectations for this.
#20 by Sian on December 7th, 2009

Henry, have you had any more thoughts on the ‘digitalness’ of this? It’s fine to do it in Wordpress as you suggested – it can be a simple thing – the general idea is to use the assignment as a way of thinking about what digital presentation can offer a formal piece of academic work like this. Happy to discuss ideas further via email.