#edcMOOC Blogging Survey: Please join in!

This is a call to all edcMOOC bloggers! We have a short survey and we'd love you to take it. We're also interested to hear the experience of those who quadblogged as well, so if you are a "quaddie" please fill it out.

edcMOOC Blogging Survey

My artefact for edcmooc is a thinglink

http://www.thinglink.com/scene/360982057624535042#tlsite

Stuff from all over the place: #edcMOOC Artefacts

What edcMOOC represented to me, before the course began

Videoscribe: What edcMOOC looked like to me

My intro video for etMOOC

Tweetchat Survey

#edcmchat Survey by angelatowndrow on GoAnimate

Animation Software - Powered by GoAnimate.

Always On: What is lost. Week 2

Digital Storytelling: Wow, We've Been Glassed

Spimal tap: harnessing blogjects of the future to save the world! #edcmooc

Much as "spime" and "blogject" sound like pretty out there notions, I think it is more a matter of application of technology to some already established concepts where objects transmit data in real time via social media or other platforms where data is broadcast to a wider audience, sometimes in another digital form. Some of us created a list of blogjects to add to the smogged out choking pigeons. We found tweeting plants, texting and tweeting house plants, tweeting flies, tweeting birds. 

I'm fascinated by the idea of blogjects. I can think of some really apocalyptic visions where blogjects sing about our demise as it happens. (I don't think the world will come quite to this)

One really interesting project is "Time and Tide Bells" a permanent installation of 12 bells positioned at strategic locations around the UK, from urban centres to open stretches of coastline. "The rise of the water at high tide moves the clapper to strike the bell. Played by the movement of the waves, the bell creates a varying, gentle, musical pattern. As the effect of global warming increases and sea levels rise, the periods of bell strikes will become more and more frequent, and as the bell becomes submerged in the rising water the pitch will vary."

One of the bells is in Aberdyfi, Wales. This is partly to commemorate the legend of the Bells of Aberdyfi which tells of the submerged kingdom of Cantre'r Gwaelod. It is said that the bells of this lost kingdom can sometimes be heard ringing from beneath the estuary waters on still nights.

This is where art, science, mythology and environmentalism intersect. I think the bells would make great blogjects. I can think of some interesting ways the music could be broadcast online by the bells themselves, they could tweet and I'm sure they could post images and mp3 files to fb sites to their own facebook site.

edcMOOC is really reinforcing the idea that technology must serve a useful purpose in all aspects of life, especially education. For me, it's about the getting of wisdom and using the tools to that end.

WOW! They've glassed us! #edcmooc

A Day Made of Glass is a horrific vision for the future in my opinion. Corning's dystopic fantasy puts us in a glass prison, for profit. Screened off and distanced from real world experiences and genuine issues like biodiversity loss, deforestation, resource depletion and climate change, the take home message is WOW!

"Saving the Rainforest" was a slideshow I made for my friend Denis who is a passionate lover of nature and a dedicated wildlife warrior. When my little boy saw a movie about orangutans, he was obsessed with swinging on a monkey vine in a rainforest and when I asked Denis where one could be found, he directed us to the 5 acre remnant rainforest in Robertson NSW. It was the only patch of the huge rainforest not cut down by  European settlers in the early days of British colonisation of Australia. We found our vines, and with strict instructions from Denis to be very careful with them, we returned with best buddy George and the two boys spent hours swinging like monkeys. After our visits, Jonny, with no prompting by me, wrote a story about saving the trees and animals of the rainforest from woodcutters. WOW!

In my developing notion of digital storytelling, here are my tales of two forests, four children. 

This was my original version for Denis who says that in all his years as an environmental activist, this was his greatest achievement. It is my favourite digital story: the photos were taken on the many trips we have made to the forest. And I love the music.

And Corning's promo, for the record.

Thanks Denis, we need mentors.

Sync or Sink? A digital tale about syncing with my fraingers and other MOOCers #edcmooc

The latest etMOOC adventure is digital storytelling. I tried 6 photos instead of 6 words. It actually only needs that  last image, the rest are pretty dull, but they are part of the story. The final one really says it all, I took it this week while exploring some of the issues I am encountering with connectivism. Have to sort out those png files with blogspot, they don't want to be transparent, gadget needs repaired. Don't you hate that?

MultiMOOCING

Hanging out

Supersizing the Convos on Forums

Synctubing

Talk talk talk talk 

Don't let the brown eyes fool you. Inbox: more than a love story. #edcmooc

Such a feelgood film to watch, pretty girl, awkward guy, paths cross, a twist of fate, simple, delicious visuals, uplifting music and a happy ending. This film has many layers, and I don't believe there is much about the production and storyline that is accidental. So it's safe to say that inferences can be made about almost every aspect, with the assumption that there is an underlying message embedded.

In Inbox, the utopian ideas are very much about the nature of relationships: that communication between people is complex and that spoken language is only one means by which we can come to know another person.  At the very simplest level, two people who have not met in person engage and connect through "technology" in the form of mysteriously connected red shopping carry bags through which they are able to send notes and small personal items. They grow their relationship by first exchanging personal external manifestations of their identities: the teddy (youth, immaturity, naivety), the makeup (female, sexual)), the underwear (male, mature, sexual). As time progresses, they explore each other's level of interest in short exchanges before participating in friendly, arm's length games and eventually committing to meet one on one.

Technology plays a supporting role in the very human centred interchange, and the visually appealing metaphor of the red bags and the post it notes represent the functional, spacial and temporal aspects of social media. It reminded me of those awkward early teenage relationships before sms and social media, where an intermediary was used to pass on little messages to gauge interest and facilitate that nerve racking first date. In the past, relationships were often "mediated" in written exchanges that preceded an introduction, and even this may have been orchestrated by others so that only "suitable" relationships were pursued. Letters were laced with perfume, adding another sensory layer, something depicted in the film as not necessarily always getting the desired result when the woman reacts badly to the scented objects she receives in her red bag.

In this respect, the film reminds us that in establishing relationships we feel vulnerable and those early exchanges are fraught with danger as we decide which aspects of our persona we will lay bare for another to either accept or reject. This is clearly depicted in the scenes where the man in his comfortable home environment is without clothes, his fundamental self, but puts on his glasses, as if through them he may gain insight of sorts. Into what we don't quite know at that moment. When the time comes when he realises the potential for some sort of relationship with a woman, there is a frenetic moment of dressing, creating a persona that is crafted to impress. In this representation of technology, we sense that "digital dualism", the separation of the"real and the virtual" in online identity plays no more significant a role now than it did in the past, and that contemporary technology may be intrinsically neutral in this regard. 

The dystopian ideas are embodied in the plethora of images of consumerism and financial transactions. The opening scene uses the apparel store as the setting for face to face opportunities for relationship building. This scene is a powerful representation of how consumerism is intertwined with relationships, technology, identity and social interaction. The couple holding hands are shopping together. The men who work in the store are highly attuned to the presence of unaccompanied women and either make unwelcome suggestions, or in the case of our awkward hero (a customer), see his attempts at quietly observing a woman in the store come unstuck as he knocks over the whole display of underpants. Fabulous images of packaged masculinity tumbling like dominoes. And a clear statement of the shortcomings of technology free human interactions. There is a sense that relationships may be purchased, and I am not sure if there is a suggestion of arranged marriage and dowry payment given the cultural context of the film, 

In that scene alone, we hear the sound of the receipt printer (above the music) and are bombarded with consumerist images of advertising, the computer, the printer (which is a repeated zoom image) and the processes of social and financial transactions enmeshed with technology. As the story unfolds, we see that the exchange of objects and messages through the "inbox" are still connected with economy as messages are written on the receipts. Finally, when the technology "fails" and the lines of communication are cut, we are presented with another powerful image of the man returning to the closed apparel store. I interpret this as meaning that technology will only be available when there is money to be made from it. No shop, no technology and dystopically, no relationship.  We are left with the idea that something else, even fate, will serve us better than technology which has one fundamental purpose in being a tool of capitalism.

OK, that sounded very much like Marxist technological determinism, and that's exactly how I see it being depicted in the film.

How does this translate to online learning?

I think that if we agree with the ideas in the film, then technology itself will be neutral in the social interactions required for social constructivist or connectivist pedagogy. The film suggests that the tool is immaterial. However the warning is clear, that technology will be a driver for the most economically beneficial model, which is a gloomy vision for the future. But this I will explore more fully in another post after I have reviewed all the films for this week.