Tag Archives: learning

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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The end is approaching…

December 13, 2009

Well, it’s coming to the end of my journey on digital culture.  Before I submit my final summary of my lifestream, I would like to just have another blog to express my journey through the course.

I have enjoyed the course but I must admit it was not an easy journey for me.  I found it difficult to divide my time between the “anologue” culture and the digital culture.  I have not managed to contribute daily towards my lifestream (as suggested by the course) as I just haven’t got the luxury called time.  My daily activities are divided among being a mother, wife and career person plus a student.  Another barrier is the poor wifi coverage, even at digital library forum!!!  It’s not just happened once but on four occasions where I had to attend or facilitate courses.  It reminded me of the dystopia theme where machine rules and how human are afraid that they might lose control.  Hence they feel the need to control how other human access and using the technology – restrict access to wifi and Mas cannot use her iPod Touch!!!

If digital lifestream is about pulling your social websites together what about my other digital activities such as accessing e-mail and using Google search to find information?  These are my digital activities to help me learning, especially using the search engines looking for information or accessing college electronic resources.

I struggled to use Flickr to reflect my learning as I just could not or haven’t got the time to produce an image to be uploaded onto the site which could reflect the learning for the course.  I might be able to produce the images but to upload them – time and sometimes the technology are not on my side.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say here is even though you are up for the digital challenge but sometimes it go against you and it is all down to human who just doesn’t like to see other human enjoying, liking and benefits from it.

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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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