This week has just zoomed by. I’ve been trying to get a grip on what is meant by cyborg pedagogy. I think this means taking into account the fact that we are inextricably bound to technology and using this to our and the students’ advantage when we teach.  Various texts from this week have been considering cyborg pedagogy:

Usher and Edwards have described how the internet has led to increased peer review of research. Authorship is problematised, universities lose their status as sole producers of knowledge. The WWW has created “networks, communities and identites that both locate and dislocate learners” (p.3). The cyborg as a hybrid creature calls for a restructuring of oppositions, such as “formal/ informal, teacher/ student, classroom/ home, print text/ electronic text.” Teaching and learning are now seen in terms of ‘links’ and ‘networks’. this calls for a learner-centred pedagogy, where the teacher helps to make the learning process explicit and transparent. While cyberspace is usually thought of as being democratic, “any democratising impulse will remain unrealised if learners are not stimulated to think critically about the impact on their learning of different technologies and the mediating processes that come with them” (p.5).

Bayne’s text considers an uncanny digital pedagogy which uses the uncertainty caused by displacement of place, body, and time and by the breaking up of the conventional text. These uncertainties are meant to lead to more creativity and rigour in lerning.

Angus et al. show that we create new ways of learning by investigating the ways we are all linked and networked. This can lead to a realisation of the fact that there are no boundaries and we are living in a world of connections, as described by Haraway. Again this leads to a new sense of collaboration and learning which is very distant from traditional forms of isolated knowledge.

McWilliam and Palmer also call for a pedeagogy which takes into account the fact that the teacher is no longer the body of knowledge and the student no longer has the role of being a body which is being filled with knowledge.  In contrast, the new ideal of pedagogy is to bridge the gaps between information which is available to everyone in the internet and to find new ways of teaching and learning making use of the human / technology interface/

Angus, T, Cook, I, Evans, J et al (2001) A Manifesto for Cyborg Pedagogy? International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, vol 10, no 2, pp.195-201.

Bayne, S. (forthcoming, March 2010). Academetron, automaton, phantom: uncanny digital pedagogies. London Review of Education. [revised version uploaded 10 November 09]

McWilliam, E and Palmer, P. (1995). Teaching tech(no)bodies: open learning and postgraduate pedagogy. Australian Universities’ Review, 2.

Usher, R. and Edwards, R. (1998). Lost and found: ‘cyberspace’ and the (dis)location of teaching, learning and research. SCUTREA 1998, Exeter.

All of these texts are very enthusiastic about how cyberspace can be used to revolutionalise learning.  I’m still thinking about how to apply some of these ideas into my final essay.

My ideas for the final essay have shifted a bit since the last entry. Instead of building my own Beginners lesson I’d like to critically research online language courses which are already out there and find out how they fit in to ideas from this course, specifically the cyborg pedagogy, and multimodality.   This would be of professional interest to me, as students can be referred to these courses as an extention to their face to face sessions with greater confidence if I conclude that the courses are built well. However, I’d probably need to ensure that I don’t concentrate too much on the language side (even though I’d be very interested in this) and more on the broad pedagogical and digital issues that we have been working with in this course.

The two courses I’m thinking of working on are:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/german/lj/

The course from Deutsche Welle.

However, the second online course is password protected, so I’m not sure how linking this will work. I might have to work with screen shots in the actual essay.

I’ve been reading Sian’s manifesto on uncanny digital pedagogies.  I think it is really well structured and shows up very well which areas are affected and challenged by digital culture. She describes how being put into strange environments, being estranged from yourself through a disonance of body and soul, and having to re-think authenticity puts students into a position of awquardness and uncertainty. This will then lead the student to be more reflexive, radical and creative in thought and practice.

I was reading this text from the point of view of a language teacher and I was astonished how compatible a lot of the ideas are with the experience of learning a new language. Students can be put off the learning experience by this sense of awquardness they experience when being confronted with a new language. There are several strategies for teaching beginners in a foreign language, but the one that is considered most appropriate (well, not by everyone, but certainly by me), is total immersion.  This does challenge students to blank out a lot of what is essential to them. They can’t express themselves as they are used to and are forced to go back to a very primitive type of communication.

For me this works well in a face to face session as students can be encouraged a lot by smiles and body language and the teacher can also ensure that there is no distraction. In a digital envitoment for beginners you would need to put in plenty of visual cues, combine them with audios and make the whole thing quite authentic, so that they are experiencing a strange environment which challenges them and at the same time fascinates them and gives them the feeling they are successfully stepping into a new role (the role of the language speaker).

I wonder whether it might be possible to build a beginners’ lesson and combine it with footnotes that relate to the ideas we have been discussing in this course.

Bayne, S. (forthcoming, March 2010). Academetron, automaton, phantom: uncanny digital pedagogies. London Review of Education. [revised version uploaded 10 November 09]

This week I’ve been discovering a few new ideas for myself:

1. I’ve still been looking at some of the ethnographies. The great variety of these seem to show up some facts about the internet that we had been dealing with from the start: The virtual communities have utopian elements (such as bringing people together who share the same interestes; or for being sites of communication for action groups or groups with the same hobbies; for being a place to share your problems; for sharing and developing knowledge). But they also have dystopian elements (friendship or community might be offered under false pretensions such as trying to lure you somewhere or for trying to get  commercial information; identities might be false and messages invented; people might disinterested in one another). All these elements would also exist in real life communities but the virtual world does make it easier to form wider networks.

2. Two different strands of looking at our new relationship to technology seem to be emerging. On the one hand we have Haraway’s theory of a new cyborg being, a new variant of humankind striving towards disembodiment. On the other hand Gies is saying that cyberselves merely offer a new layer to our identities. Hayles seems to be somewhere in the middle as she argues that we are still embodied but our cognition has changed and is now far more networked.

3. I think it doesn’t really matter which perception we have – whether we totally identify with technology and feel like a cyborg, or whether we are just using technology to supplement our life. The question is really how to use technology in a way that gives us fulfilment and helps us to live and learn. Shields text “Flanerie for Cyborgs” identifies this need to bridge the different levels of technology and real life. As far as I understand, this text is highlighting the position of the Cyborg between the two states.

4. As teachers and students we are constantly juggling between real life and technology. We are constantly entwined between the two and we need to make use of both. For me as a teacher I want to reach my students on as many levels as possible and this means to acknowledge their digital worlds and needs as well as their real life worlds and needs. In the end we are always dealing with embodied people and we use technology to reach them better. Are we offering them the right balance, or too much technology or too little? How much technology actually helps them to learn, and how much of a distraction is it? Do they easily get distracted when learning on the computer? These are also things worth investigating.

Gies, L. (2008). How material are cyberbodies? Broadband Internet and embodied subjectivity. Crime Media Culture 4/3.

Haraway, D. (2000). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century. in D Bell and A Kennedy, The Cybercultures Reader. Routledge.

Hayles, N.K. (1999). Toward embodied virtuality, chapter 1 of How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. pp1-25

Hayles, N.K. (2006). Unfinished Work: From Cyborg to Cognisphere. Theory Culture Society, 23/7-8.

Shields, R. (2006). Flânerie for Cyborgs. Theory Culture Society, 23/7-8.

Muri’s central argument against the idea of disembodiment seems to be that there is too much literal shit being produced for anyone to seriously think we are being disembodied. Obviously, she is right. We’re still here and there are more and more of us all the time. She is also touching on environmental issues with so many actual bodies being around.

It was quite a fun text to read as she does dismantle a lot of research as just being recyled stuff which has been around since Ancient Greek philosophy about the seperation of bodies and mind. I guess the logical consequence of this text is to stop producing texts which are saying the same old things and instead to address more pressing problems around the actual bodies, such as tackling environmental issues and issues of inequality.

I think again this leads to the old argument whether you view the connective qualities of technology as utopian in being a good medium to tackle these pressing problems which will be a matter of survival for humankind, or whether you think the internet is a dystopian vision where people are hiding from the real problems of humankind. Disembodiment in its most positive view would be a temporary act of joining forces, maybe through the internet, to tackle global problems, but also to increase communication.

Muri, A. (2003). Of Shit and the Soul: Tropes of Cybernetic Disembodiment in Contemporary Culture. Body & Society, 9/3.

My favourite quote of the day from Gies: “How material are cyberbodies? Broadband internet and embodied subjectivity”

“It is important to stress, however, that rather than taking us into entirely new directions, our ‘cyber selves’ (Aas, 2007) constitute merely an additional layer to already densely structured social identities.”

This seems to be in total contrast to the cyborg idea that creates a whole new vision of humankind.  Will need to think about this…

Gies, L. (2008). How material are cyberbodies? Broadband Internet and embodied subjectivity. Crime Media Culture 4/3.

This text is an argument for a view of the posthuman which is more networked. In this sense it continues the development from Hayles text “Toward embodied virtuality” where she was arguing for a collective sense of identity. Embodiment was a key issue of this earlier text and “a recognition that agency is always relational and distributed” and she viewed “cognition as embodied throughout human flesh and extended into the social and technological environment”

This text is a continuation of the previous text:

“At issue now (and in the past) are distributed cultural cognitions embodied both in people and their technologies.” (p.160).

She is introducing a fourth stage in her history of cybernetics which she calls “the Regime of Computation”. Central to this age is the global phenomenon of the “cognisphere”: “the globally interconnected cognitive systems in which humans are increasingly embedded” (p. 161)

Positive effects of the cognisphere:

- increased communication
- access to databases around the world
- communal knowledge-building through wikipedias and other data collection projects
- networking

Changes in subjectivity through the cognisphere:

- movement from deep attention to hyperattention
- dustributed cognitive systems that include human and non-human actors
- a dispersed sense of self
- artificial coginitive systems help to preserve and extend human awareness

Humans, animals and intelligent machines are more tightly bound together than ever.

Hayles believe that by using metaphors, such as “The regime of computation” we are influencing the evolution of ideas and technology: “What we make and what (we think) we are co-evolve together”. (p164).

The cognisphere is “multiple, not a split creature but a co-evolving and densely interconnected complex system”. (p.165)

My thoughts:

I’m still grappling with this one a bit. I find it hard to place the individual person / learner in this system. I suppose this is a process which began with the creation of different professions and specialisations. I rely on the knowledge of other people to live my life and can only survive through distribution of knowledge. I wouldn’t have the skills or knowledge to grow food, build a house, etc. But in the age of computation this development is continuing with the sharing of knowledge on the computer? Not sure whether I’m on the right track here…

Hayles, N.K. (1999). Toward embodied virtuality, chapter 1 of How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. pp1-25

This week I was struggling with the two core texts by Haraway and Hayles. I’ve been reading some of the blogs of other people in this course and this has helped me get my head round the ideas and think about what they mean for me.  I did find the texts very tough reading and part of me doesn’t really like the ideas they outline very much. (Part of me… I must be getting post-human).

I’m not sure I really like the metaphor of the cyborg. This is too much machine and too little human for me. Maybe I’m not immersed enough in technology, but I really value everything to do with real life far more than anything virtual. To me machines are there purely to help me do my work, stay in touch with people, learn better, etc. I’ve also never really got into science fiction. I can understand what Haraway is getting at to some extent and I agree that the philosophical idea of crossing boundaries of race and gender can be fascinating. As a “language person” however, I am constantly working with cultural ideas and heritage and I can’t imagine a scenario where this will not be important to people.

However, I am interested in the idea which both Hayles and Haraway have described of having a collective identity (whether you want to call this posthuman or cyborg). I know this is an idea which is very strongly linked to postmodernism (though I’m sure this idea has been around for a lot longer,  but maybe it is becoming more important in this era).  I think what is new in this text is that Hayles is using this concept to explain what happens in virtual environments and she is arguing that virtuality is just one facette of our identity, but still an embodied one. But even without any connection to machines it’s interesting to acknowledge how different we are in various surroundings and roles. Again, as a language teacher this is an important thought as learning a new language is linked to a new role and new outlooks in life. Language itself and the way we teach and learn it is also made up of so many different parts. It can be split up into reading, writing, speaking, listening, grammar, and in some ways it has to come together again, but with a different emphasis for every person and in every act of communication. There is a lot to think about here and I’d quite like to write my final essay on something to do with language and learning in the posthuman era.

Haraway, D. (2000). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century. in D Bell and A Kennedy, The Cybercultures Reader. Routledge.

Hayles, N.K. (1999). Toward embodied virtuality, chapter 1 of How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. pp1-25

This is a very interesting text. First it gives a good definition of what “posthuman” is:

- informational pattern is privileged over material instantiation, so that biological embodiment is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life;

- consciousness is not seen as a central phenomenon, but as a minor sideshow;

- body is seen as a prosthesis which can be extended or replaced;

- there are no boundaries between bodily existence and computer simulation

The text is basically concerned with the concept of embodiment. The author is arguing that disembodiment is not necessarily a consequence of the posthuman. In fact her “dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival”. (p.5)

She argues that the concept of disembodiment is not a new one and was described in humanism as well when cognition was emphasized rather than embodiment.

She sees herself as a posthuman collectivity, a “we” of autonomous agents operating together to make a self.

Virtuality is defined as “the cultural perception that material objects are interpenetrated by information patterns”

In 1948 Shannon defined information “as a probablility function with no dimensions, no materialility, and no necessary connection with meaning. It is a pattern not a prescence” (p. 18). This leads to theories of disembodiment. However, the author explains that there have always been critics of this view and that this was a theory driven by the atmosphere of the time. The author would like to recover ” a sense of the virtual that fully recognizes the importance of the embodied processes constituting the lifeworld of human beings”. The book she is introducing describes various narratives through an interplay of science and literature. She would like to see disembodiment as just one narrative amongst others. She uses literature to illustrate “embodied” theories. Literature itself shows that we use embodiment (information is not portrayed as patterns but is embedded in a story).

What do I think of this text?

I’m really pleased that Hayles is arguing for an embodied version of the posthuman. I have never liked the concept of disembodiment. I also agree that the existence of virtuality and virtual worlds is not an argument for disembodiment of information. Virtual worlds are games where you use your imagination and the imagination will always be part of you.

What I don’t quite understand is how she is reacting to the definition of “posthuman” she gives in the beginning. She undermines part of the definition in the text by emphasizing the importance of embodiment. To her the splitting up of the persona seems to be more important as a definition. However, she doesn’t really outline her own definition of what “posthuman” is.

Hayles, N.K. (1999). Toward embodied virtuality, chapter 1 of How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. pp1-25

If I’m reading this text right then Haraway rejects the view that had been prominent through Marx and Freud of there being an innate desire for a wholeness that we lost along the way somewhere. Instead she embraces the breaking up, the differences, the barriers to communication, the transgressions of boundaries as this gives every individual the right to “write their own story”.

Even though she quotes the “women of colour” as a new ideology and this seems to refer to some sort of community I’m wondering whether her portrayal of the cyborg isn’t by definition an extremely isolated and lonely creature? Is this really a positive development?

Haraway, D. (2000). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century. in D Bell and A Kennedy, The Cybercultures Reader. Routledge.