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

A Flickr Ethnography

This text gives a good illustration of what a virtual ethnography can be like:

There are some comments on how you could structure it:

“Broadly speaking, an ethnographic approach involves providing a description, an analysis and an interpretation of a culture-sharing group” (p.4)

The research centres around six questions (p.4):

“1. Is this a good place to study given the overall cultural themes we are tackling?

2. Can the individuals we see interacting here be described as a culture-sharing group?

3. What might be the main themes emerging from the investigation of this group and how does one go about identifying them?

4. What level of involvement is to be justifiably expected of the researcher? How will the participants’ perspective be given an appropriate voice? What are the ethical issues at stake?

5. How does the personal experience of the researcher come to bear on the analysis and the proposed interpretation?

6. How transferable to different sites is an approach which might work here?”

In the abstract provided Clari only offers answers to the first 3 questions.

1.She describes the flickr site and its differences to a real site. She compares it to a theatre setting. She describes it as a complex “deep” site worth investigating.

2. Clari offers a definition of community (p.7)

“In his Introduction to Virtual Communities Research and Cybersociology Magazine Issue Two, Hamman (1997) defines the sociological term ‘community’ as:

a. A group of people

b. who share social interaction

c. and some common ties between themselves and other members of the group

d. and share an area for at least some of the time.”

In this sense the individuals can be defined as a group.

3.In this section Clari focuses on the user-generated texts.

She comments on

-         their signature and their use of icons (p.10):  “The use of icons complements the text as a powerful tool in establishing one’s character, one’s identity on this stage: the theme of identity performance, how it unfolds and what affects it, begins to emerge here and will remain important throughout this discussion.”

-          the user-contributed tags which tend to “democratize” the picture and share it with a wider audience.

-         the user-contributed notes which interact with the actual photo

-         the comments of the participants: She distinguishes 3 groupsof comment: comments about the digital object as an artifact – comments about the ongoing interaction – comments on the actual subject of the photograph; all these groups interact with each other and construct meaning around the original object.
Clari defines the following themes which emerge from the interactions (p.25):
“the overarching themes of identity building and performance, of ownership and of power continue to stand out”

My thoughts: You feel quite voyeuristic when reading this ethnography! Maybe this is the nature of ethnographies though, you are “listening in” to what people are saying. I thought this was a very clear example of how you can construct a virtual ethnography. I liked the way she included the use of icons for the participants to construct their identity. This refers back to the text by Kress that we had been reading and the power of pictorial representation vs representation through speech. However, the identities here are made up of a mix of both (particularly as by clicking on the user names you can access their photo collections and view the identity they have created for themselves through these pictures).

The whole notion of having discussions around picture shows once again the power of this form of representation and how open it is to interpretation.

Clari, M (unpublished, 2009) A Flickr ethnography.

The Virtual Objects of Ethnography

This reading gives an introduction to virtual ethnography.  As a definition of Ethnography, the text cites Hammersley and Atkinson:

“…it involves the ethnographer participating, overtly or covertly in people’s daily lives for an exended period of time [...]collecting whatever data are available to throw light on the issues that are the focus of the research”

This view, however relies on a realist interpretation of reality. Constructivism is challenging this view by denying that there is an objective reality.

This text looks at alternative approaches for the ethnographic study of the internet. It focuses on three areas:

1. Ethnography and the face-to-face

Previously, travel was important as a means of engaging with a different culture. Through participation and experience the ethnographer opened herself up to learning.  For an ethnography of the internet this displacement will be experiential rather than physical. Authenticity of participants cannot be proved, but should only be a problem if it arises as a problem through interaction with other participants.

2. Text, technology and reflexivity

Communication on the internet can be seen as interaction or as text (”as a temporally shifted and packaged form of interaction”, p.50). Texts can also be used as ethnographic material “in the ways in which they present and shape reality and are embedded in practice”. The text becomes “meaningful once we have cultural context(s)  in which to situate it”. (p.52) It might be of interest to follow the construction of a website or to see how contributions in a newsgroup are justified and rendered authoritative. An ethnographic researcher of the internet herself becomes a user of the internet and the account will always have elements of reflexivity. This construction of knowledge however can be challenged as not being a truthful representation of reality. 3 strategies can deal with this paradox:
- Including the member understandings of culture alongside the ethnographer’s account
- Focussing on the ethnographer, reflecting on this particular perpective, history and standpoint
- Embracing the paradox and making clear how the accounts are a constructed act

3. The making of ethnographic objects

Previously, ethnography focussed on physical space. This has come into question by a new concept of mobility. Recently, researchers have been more aware of the partiality and selectivity of their descriptions.

For virtual ethnography a multi-dimensional approach might be intersting (including online and offline relationships).
A different approach might be using “connectivity” as an organising principle. This could be “a multi-sited ethnography, conceived of as an experiential, interactive and engaged exploration of connectivity” (p.61) The new question is “not what is the Internet, but when, where and how is the Internet” (p.62) – the researcher could follow hypertextual links, follow the borrowing of material and images from other sites and other media, follow the authorship and readership of sites, the portrayal of the Internet in other media… The researcher can concentrate on flow and connectivity.

The article ends with 10 principles of virtual ethnography.

My thoughts:

While the idea of following the flow of the internet is interesting, I wonder how doable this is. As the author points out there are no boundaries, the researcher would have to set this out herself. You might be able to unravel the flow of a text from backwards, but never forwards. For instance if someone emailed you an extract from an article you could follow this up, read the article, see whether this was original or taken from somewhere else, etc. This might give you some insight on how we deal with knowledge.

Hine, C (2000) The virtual objects of ethnography, chapter 3 of Virtual ethnography. London: Sage. pp41-66

Wow, this was quite an intense week. I have to admit I found the visual artefact task really challenging!  I think this was a) because I don’t feel I’m a very creative person and b) I don’t feel very technologically able (which is why I find this whole MSc very daunting sometimes). I think the lifestream reflects how I was searching for tools and pictures and this was very random at first. I was looking at storybook, slideshare,  photostory, prezzi, etc. Photoshop particularly was a real revelation. I’d heard about it, but never used it so far. Then the first artefacts were finished and I really enjoyed them all and thought they were incredibly well done. The comments and peer review have also been extremely interesting to read. Ifeel I’ve learnt loads through this exercise and it’s really given me confidence to try out more tools and applications. It’s surprising how easy it is to use them. On the other hand it’s not only about using them, it’s also about wanting to say something with them.

There is a downside to all this, however, which was described very well in the reading “Mind the Gap”. Are we creating an exclusive society where some people become increasingly confident with technology while others are left increasingly insecure. (I can empathise really well with this. As I’ve described above I don’t feel naturally drawn towards technology, and I’m lucky to have the time and the money to embark on a programme like this MSc, otherwise I’d be one of the people left out in the rain.) I’m investigating e-readiness in my dissertation and am becoming increasingly aware that the digital divide is not only a world-wide problem of access and money (even though this is a huge problem). But also within our society you really need to keep up with the rapidly changing technology and a lot of people don’t have the resources to do this. The stunning visual artefacts that have been created really bring to life what is possible if you have the skills and the tools.

On another note I really liked the reading by Rose. I felt this was very relevant to all interpretation of visual materials whether digital or not. I liked the idea of meaning being created at various levels. The artefacts showed this, particularly the ones that weren’t immediately obvious. It was interesting to see how we (the audience) were interpreting them. But it was also interesting to hear what the authors had wanted to create.  The artefacts were also very much an indication of our times and of what is possible to create in this digital era.

A very thought provoking week! I feel quite exhausted!

Merchant, G (2007) Mind the gap(s): discourses and discontinuity in digital literacies, E-learning, 4 (3), 241-255.

Rose, Gillian (2007) Researching visual materials: towards a critical visual methodology, chapter 1 of Visual methodologies: an introduction to the interpretation of visual materials. London: Sage. pp.1-27.

Key definitions in this text:

Genre: These are defined by their purpose, their rhetorical actions (what they do and how they are used) rather than by what they are. (p.141)

Activity system: Any ongoing, object-directed, historically conditioned, dialectically structured, tool-mediated human interaction. (p.141)

Electronic environment: The interface , point and medium, or environment of interaction between users and systems, it offers limtless generic opportunities. (p. 143)

This text explores how the discourses and literacy practices of popular culture intersect and interact with academic discourses and literacy practices in electronic environments (p. 140)

What is new? Electronic genres are social in that they increase the possiblities for participation and interactive collaboration. They allow rapid change of literacy practice and blur the distinction between home and school literacies. Features of effective electronic texts shape the academic literacy in electronic environments. Therefore the question should not be:Do electronic genres meet the criteria of academic literacy? The question is how academic literacy is shaped by the electronic environment acting as a point of interface between academic and popular literacies. The electronic interface acts as a point of conjuncture where users encounter similar composing strategies and skills in different activity systems.  Students often bring a lot of skills with them that are shaped by their engagement with popular literacies in an electronic environment. They need to build on these skills and develop crtical awareness of boundaries, genres and literacy practices.

My thoughts:

This text takes it for granted that modern students are highly skilled users of electronic environments. I wonder whether this is true of all students.

Carpenter, R (2009) Boundary negotiations: electronic environments as interface. Computers and Composition. 26, 138-148.

Some thoughts on the first week of this module:

The course: I found this week quite a tough one. I’m trying to come to grips with all the different parts of this course.  The fact that all the information is spread out means having to check in various places. The tweetdeck, the readings, the films, people’s blogs, the discussion board, as well as various sites recommended by others make this a module that seems very spread out. But I can see the thinking behind it – this is really giving us a sense of the “web”, and we are trying to integrate many various threads in order to find our own learning identity with the “lifestream” reflecting our learning progress. Some questions which are arising for me are:
We are tweeting away, but are we really communicating? Are the tweets not too short and unsorted to really express meaning? Can  they be put into some sort of order, which makes a dialogue possible? How do we construct order?
We have many chances to visit each others blogs, lifestreams, tweets, but is this “too much information”? Are we really getting a sense of each other? Does the provision of the blogs AND the tweetboard AND the discussion board not mean that we simply don’t know where to really find the class? Will people become more isolated or will they feel a sense of community with all sorts of different meeting forums? Once more – will this all come together in the end to construct a community?

My ideas on : Hand, M (2008) Hardware to everywhere: narratives of promise and threat, chapter 1 of Making digital cultures: access, interactivity and authenticity.  – This text correlates very well to my feelings on the first week of this module. Basically, the text describes different approaches to, or “stories” about digital culture, some seeing the promises behind this phenomenon, some emphasizing the underlying threat. At the core of “promise” stories is the theme of empowerment (if the relationship between person and technology is interactive, if the user is smart, if the software is seen as “friendly”). The “threat” stories convey a sense of disempowerment, with the user being seen as dumb, passive and insecure constantly in need of upgrades with consumerism replacing authentic experiences. Access to computers and software, computer skills and degrees of interaction with in the net are increasingly dividing society.

The films from the film festival illustrate these mixed feelings towards digitalisation:
“Bendito machine” portrays the worship of new technology which is always short-lived and ends in disappointment as soon as a newer form of technology follows. This shows technology as consumerism
“Stop Dave” portrays the machine as having feelings. It is powerless, however, when man decides to switch it off. In this case humankind is portrayed as empowered and ultimately stronger than technology.
Internet is for Porn shows the two sides of the digital culture. The female character embodies the empowerment and opportunities shown by the web. “Disempowerment” is embodied by the male character who is a pure consumer with an unauthentic sex life.
“The computer virus” shows the detachment of people in the digital culture and the potential destructiveness of this.

Two visual inputs into my lifestream illustrate disempowerment: The youtube film “Texting while driving” shows a girl who is addicted to her mobile phone cannot function in the real world anymore. The photo with the caption “New computer. I like the interaction” shows a group of girls on their computers sitting together but communicating only virtually. Reminds me of the film “computer virus”.

Just to link some of these keywords to e-learning and my professional practice: We are hoping to introduce more e-learning technologies into language courses for adults. Will this empower students to learn more effectively, have more instant resources and more information at their fingertips? – Or will it divide students into those who have access and skills and those who don’t? Will the provision of e-technology become inevitable anyway, as it will increasingly be expected by the students? Will the concentration on technology leave less time for lesson preparation and ultimately disempower the teachers who might be struggling with new technology?

Hand, M (2008) Hardware to everywhere: narratives of promise and threat, chapter 1 of Making digital cultures: access, interactivity and authenticity. Aldershot: Ashgate. pp 15-42.