Tag Archives: #ededc

My lifestream summary

December 13, 2009
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I have chosen these web applications to demonstrate my digital activities throughout the course as part of my learning process:

  • Facebook
    Twitter
    YouTube
    Flickr
    Delicious
    My Blog

Although I have setup 6 applications but my digital activities through out the course are mainly using Facebook as shown in my lifestream feeds. There are 226 entries on Facebook compared to 3 on Flickr.

I mainly used Facebook because I am familiar with this application. I feel more comfortable to reflect my reading on Facebook as it is does not have word count restrictions compared to Twitter with 140 characters. Also as it is popular with the online community and I am connected with many of my friends via Facebook. I was hoping that I will get more comments for my status, friends helping me with questions or answers. I did get few comments but not as many as I would have liked. Also by extracting a sentence or quote from my reading helped my understanding of, and provoked thinking about the blocks’ readings.

Twitter is new to me, I registered to this because it was a requirement for the course, where there was a Twitter activity in the first block. I used Twitter in the first block of the course mainly to post my thoughts about the ‘Film Festival’ week we had and links to any useful video which I found on YouTube.

I used YouTube to find clips of the blocks’ topic that could help me to understand the readings and also to understand the course – digital culture. In the first weeks of the course, where we watched clips from films to demonstrate topics such as Matrix and AI, I have used YouTube to find similar clips which demonstrated the theme – dystopia, worlds and being human.

I have heard of Flickr but not actually signed-up to the service until this course. Throughout these 12 weeks I have only managed to have three activities on it – added two photos of my 17-month old sitting in front of the computer which I believe demonstrated that the new generation start the digital culture at a very young age. I have also used Flickr to upload my digital artefact.

I have used Delicious to bookmark any articles and websites which I found useful and related not just to the course but the e-learning community.

Last but not least were my occasional blogging entries which I have used to reflect in detail where I can on the readings. I found blogging a very useful tool to reflect my learning process digitally. Unfortunately I did not manage to do it as often as I would like to due to circumstances.

I am surprised that I am able to use various social web applications to demonstrate my digital learning activities. Many believe that students are unable to separate the social and education activities when it comes to using the applications as found from the JISC research on the relationship between social networking sites and education.

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Week 2 – The end of film festival

October 5, 2009

Watching the clips to end the film festival week in Digital Culture was really upsetting.  Can it really happen – where human and machine live in the same world?  Do we have to add more/amend policies to include/accommodate machines in our world and become politically correct – Diversity, Equal Opportunity to name a few?

I was really sad watching AI – it really touched my motherly emotion.  To see David’s emotion – how he was scarred by the actions of the human boys and being left alone in the wood by his human ‘mother’, wandering alone in the woods and meeting strangers, chased by human to be captured and destroyed in a show.  And to see how determine he is to search for the blue fairy to make his wish/dream come true.  I don’t think that I can separate my feelings towards machine if one day they will be living in the same world and contribute to the population.  I am emotional enough to be apart from my mobile or have to be departed with my old car or laptop.  I think we human do get attached to machine easily, it is part of our lives.

The first thing I did when I reached a laptop is to check my e-mail.  To me this is a very useful part of information revolution as described by Castells cited in Hand.  It brings my family and friends closer to me.  One good example was at the weekend, my sister and I used Yahoo! Messenger and webcam to call our family.   Later we used Skype to call mum on her mobile – we no longer have to worry about expensive phone bills and making schedule when to call to ensure they’re in at the other end and go for the cheap rate time.  Its just brilliant!!!  Using Facebook to keep up-to-date with family and friends back home.  Not just able to know what they’re doing through their status update but also what they’ve been upto with the photos posted.  For some reasons, I found that people share their photos more easily using the social website rather than when asked to send via e-mail.

One thing though that I do wish for is that the education institutions will think outside the box to embrace the digital culture among the digital native students.  And staff are not skeptical about the technology and applications available out there that could help learning in a more exciting and engaging way.

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Where do I start…

September 28, 2009

How has week 1 been so far?  Well… I am still adjusting myself with the new applications – WordPress Blog, my Lifestream, Tweeting, …  I thought I can get away with Tweeting, Flickr, YouTube as I just haven’t got the time.   The only reason I’m being online apart from accessing this course is to check my e-mail and Facebook as wasy for me to keep in touch with my friends and family.  As stated by Hand that the Internet has bring the world closer, I no longer have to wait 2 weeks to hear from my family, no longer have a massive phone bill as Skype gives me the cheaper option.  These are as far as me being in a digital culture as it comes naturally to me.  Even at work first thing I do is to power up my laptop and access my inbox instead of saying hello to my colleagues – bit sad, I know. 

It has been a mind blowing last week for me – learning new technologies for this course.  Not easy – keyword here is familiarisation and for this time is required which is a struggle for me at the moment.  I can’t power up my laptop without my 17 month old boy interfering – beebies, beebies (CBeebies) and pressing the keypad at the same time, his busy tiny little fingers pressing the swtich on/off button.  Is he the true digital culture?  Brings back memory on my previous course IDEL – Prensky Digital native, where being online is so natural to him.  I am not giving up…I am still learning.  Bear with me people…

I also wonder how people divide their time between being online and offline?  I have asked this to my husband tonite – his answer was – they are teenagers, 20 year old living with parents, those who works just to pay for their phone bills, games.

Adrian in front of Grandad's pc

Adrian in front of Grandad's pc

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