I did not know how to encapsulate all I wanted to say about the lifestream in the final post of 500 words. So I thought I would write some:

Tips for Lifestreamers

1, Be aware of how your audiences can affect you. This is a public blog, so you are not only writing for an academic community, [...]]]>

I did not know how to encapsulate all I wanted to say about the lifestream in the final post of 500 words. So I thought I would write some:

Tips for Lifestreamers

1, Be aware of how your audiences can affect you. This is a public blog, so you are not only writing for an academic community, but also for a myriad of ears and eyes from a variety of backgrounds and with a variety of expectations. I found that envisaging these audiences affected my writing and my choice of links. Sometimes I write in academic formality (see Multiple/Dynamic Identities) and at other times I use the more informal, a more blogging style (see A Cynical Take on my Lifestream). This multivocality may make you feel a little fragmented as a writer/producer of a lifestream. However, you will come to find, when you read Hayles (1999, 2006) that this is part of the posthuman condition, which is in part established with the resources of digital technology,  and nothing to be afraid of.

2, Lifestreaming is learning by doing. Although the need to feed the stream (see Summary Week 9) might seem like hoop jumping at times, it has its benefits. Foraging for feeds makes you go out into the internet and interact with that which constitutes what you are studying: digital cultures. Hine (1999) says that by interacting with the online we become familiar with it, and that is what will happen to you.

3, If you are not transliterate (Thomas, et al, 2007) now, you will be. As foraging for feeds entails interaction with the genres and discourses that abound within digital cultures, you will develop your ability to consume and produce digital media artefacts.

4, It’s all in the links. On face value, your lifestream may look like a series of links to a variety of websites and media. With all of these links I was afraid that my lifestream lacked cohesion (see Week 1 Summary). However, this is a characteristic of the genre you are contributing to. The affordances of digital technologies allow such links and although you are producing the lifestream as an academic text, it is still a digital artefact. You are crossing boundaries here – the academic and the blogger. By doing so you can give voice to your multiple subjectivities: you are being posthuman.

5, It is a process: And by looking over  your lifestream as a whole, you will see your learning process. I can now see that ideas that I posited in earlier weeks, ssss, have been taken up again in later posts. The lifestream as a whole is the product of learning; however, with its reflective element, it also captures the process of learning (see  Week 10 Summary).

6, Comment.  The affordance of interaction allows people to interact with your content and when this happens, the lifestream becomes both an artefact of an online community (Bell, 2001; Rheingold, 2000) and a facilitator of this community. Comments remind you that you are learning about digital cultures while you are engaged in digital cultures – forming digital cultures. If the driving force of the internet is links, so is the communication made viable by these links. By commenting you are linking your lifestream with those of others. By commenting and posting you are becoming what you are studying.

This is a little belated, but nonetheless sincere.

The last week of the reading was focused on cyborg pedagogy (Angus, Cook, Evans et al, 2001; McWilliam and Palmer, 1995). Cyborg pedagogy with its three cornerstones of border pedagogy, cyborg ontology and situated knowledge takes us further down the line, across the continuum, of [...]]]>

Producer and Process

This is a little belated, but nonetheless sincere.

The last week of the reading was focused on cyborg pedagogy (Angus, Cook, Evans et al, 2001; McWilliam and Palmer, 1995). Cyborg pedagogy with its three cornerstones of border pedagogy, cyborg ontology and situated knowledge takes us further down the line, across the continuum, of resituating the pseudo-binaries of  learning – teaching and learner – teacher positions. What I mean to say is that it seems to be a further weakening of the student as ‘empty vessel’ and teacher as ’sage on the stage’ models.

It appears to me that learner centred pedagogies and the affordances of digital technologies, not to mention the influences of post modernism and posthumanism, have come together in cyborg pedagogy. This is because this new pedagogy gives us the tools to further shift our views and to change our outlooks on what teaching and learning are about. It encourages a real focus on the way knowledge can be formed, acquired and reckoned with once it has been made ‘public’.

And this is where this course, this learning experience,  leaves me. This lifestream is a, I would suggest, a cyborg pedagogic  artefact. It is a product of learning, but also a process of learning and acquisition. When I started out, the lifestream seemed something akin to a noticeboard onto which I could pin my ideas (and wait for someone else to pin theirs). However, having gone back into the lifestream and read over my posts, it is clear that rather than being a platform or a product  (a display of learning and acquisition) it is the representation of the process of that learning. The lifestream is a textual, audio and visual representation of my own learning process and progress.

Once put on ‘display’ there is the responsibility one has to take for one’s views – for the knowledge that one has formed and chosen to publish. The lifestream can form a conversation with a reader, but it is a conversation that remains open over time (as long as it remains hosted online). As a result, something that I may have posted yesterday and which I may stand by today, I may find that I no longer stand by  sometime in the future,  should a reader take me to task or choose to engage with me on that topic. Having posted, therefore, one has to be ready to either defend or concede and change points should the need arise in the future. The writer has to take responsibility for whatever they believed at any one time once that belief or knowledge, challenge or suggestion, has been unleashed.

I found this video – Visual Ethnography. It is a brief overview of using film as a way to construct and present ethnographies. About 3.30 minutes in, there is a film of an interview with a documentary maker, Jean Rouch, talking about how he decided to avoid using music [...]]]>

Click here to view the embedded video.

I found this video – Visual Ethnography. It is a brief overview of using film as a way to construct and present ethnographies. About 3.30 minutes in, there is a film of an interview with a documentary maker, Jean Rouch, talking about how he decided to avoid using music in his films. This has made me think about the different tools visual ethnographers can use to manipulate the message of their products -  zoom, use of web cams, editing, use of music, and voiceover, and how this might affect the messages that we are receiving and how we might ’encounter’ them.    The availability of such tools makes me ponder the validity of digital media as a way of presenting ethnographies. However, different tools which nevertheless have the save manipulative capacities are also available to the writer; I am referring to such tools as the use of hedging, selection of area to investigate, selection of quote to use, selection of source to validate a view or with which to construct a view, ordering of ideas.  All of these can be and are used as persuaders – as ways to persuade the reader to adopt the line of argument.

This line of thinking has led me to seeing the ‘author’ of an ethnography, especially if that ethnography is produced with the use of film and visuals, as  writer, producer, editor and director all at the same time. All of these labels, excepting the last in the list, can be used to describe text based and visual products, but, depending on the product, the definition will vary. It is a case of wearing several hats and once, or making a quick switch between performances. It is also a case of the viewer/reader/consumer -a  person encountering the ethnography – being aware that all of these hats are available to the person making the ethnography and that at any one time, they are being used as ways to persuade the viewer. The result may be that it makes not only producting such artefacts but also critically encountering them a rather complex endeavour.

At 4.45 minutes, we have Dr. M. Wesch giving a lecture in which he refers to a Moldovan pop song the ‘Nu Nu’ song and how it spread like a virus around the world via YouTube.  Apart from being very engaging to watch, this part of the video shows how social networking has affected his lecturing style. As we might anticipate, as he is lecturing on new media, he includes YouTube videos in his talk. However, I was struck by the fact that at one point he segues his own talk into the voice of one of the people on a YouTube video. More DJ than academic, but it works, for me, at least and it shows how new media can influence that place so called ‘RL’.