It’s been quite a journey, these past twelve weeks. I’ve been exposed to new ideas, concepts and applications.  I entered into Sian’s ‘uncanny’ space.

When applying for this course and reading the blurb, my first question was, “What is lifestreaming?” I hadn’t encountered it before so I came to it with no preconceived ideas, only with the information offered in the course guide. Likening it to ‘commonplacing‘ was very appealing.  Basically I’d be keeping an online scrapbook, a  record of places I’d visited, text and images I found interesting, giving a taste of my online activity at that moment. A snapshot of my life as an #ededc student.

I was ambivalent when I first began setting up feeds, it was both exciting and daunting. I felt unsure exactly what was required of me and apprehensive that anything I wrote was open to public viewing. Visiting the sites of my colleagues‘ unnerved me.  Theirs looked fantastic, showing creativity and experience, in comparison mine looked dull.  The practical side of organising feeds was problematic and much time was spent tweaking the feeds; or waiting while images were uploaded; or until Twitter became available; or indeed if Internet access became available. However, the content in my lifestream shows progress has been made. I admit to only feeling comfortable with lifestreaming towards the end of the course.

I did ponder on the purpose of the Lifestream. Would keeping a record of my online activities enable me to become a better learner? And if so, in what way?  Edwards (2010) says, “to learn, humans have to gather and experiment.”  An initial glance of my Lifestream shows an eclectic collection. Like a Magpie, I would gather and store anything interesting.  It may have been related to earlier, present, even future course content so it wasn’t always done in a linear way.  The RSS feed set up for the Female Science Professor feed led me to do my ethnography on science bloggers although this wasn‘t part of my thinking at the time. How the collection was used has been a surprising feature of lifestream.

Feedback has been an important part of my learning. Comments from tutors and colleagues have been regular and invaluable in helping my understanding, as have the blogs.  The different interpretations given to our visual artefact task was amazing. The lifestream has been helpful in engaging in, and understanding, the course but I agree with Carol’s view that our lifestreams are only to be made sense of in retrospect.

On reflection, if I had to do this over again how would I do it?  I would make notes about why I selected each piece and my feelings at the time. An injection of  humour to my ‘online presence’. is needed, I don’t recognise much of the ‘real’ me. My entries don’t show how much fun this course has been.    Creating ‘presence’ as a distance learner is difficult.  Ania mentioned that she’d like to see some pics of my location, and Jeremy commented on “how our ‘virtual’ experiences are always permeated by, and enmeshed with, the ‘real’ world around us.” With this in mind I tried to upload pics of my journey to work. The road I take cuts through the desert, with sand dunes as as high as hills.

Other vehicles are few so it feels like it’s just me, sand dunes, date farms and camels. Remote. Solitary.  Isolated. Not unlike my experience of online learning. Access problems just add to my ghostly presence, “the ontological blurring of being and not-being, presence and absence online.” (Bayne)

Whilst writing this I am exhibiting signs of being posthuman.  I’m listening to iTunes and uploading images; there’s a couple of tabs open on my browser so I can quickly check things out; I am constantly flicking between this document, my Lifestream, and pdf files; and I’m downloading a video. My Mac has become an appendage, it is part of me. Technology is a big part of my life.

Edwards states the need for learning to challenge us and this experience is definitely challenging;  #ededc staff and students have taken the ‘road less travelled’.

References

Bayne, S. (forthcoming, March 2010). Academetron, automaton, phantom: uncanny digital pedagogies. London Review of Education.

Edwards, R. (2010). The end of lifelong learning: A post-human condition? Studies in the Education of Adults, vol 42, no 1, 5-17.

The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost

This is the penultimate week of the course. Time to reflect on my Lifestream and choosea topic for the final assignment.  There are also a few loose ends that need to be tied before wrapping up my Lifestream.  There are still a few responses I need to make to comments made by colleagues. AndI never did respond to points Jeremy raised in his comments to my blog on “Is scholarly blogging an oxymoron?”  and it’s been pricking my conscience.  One question in particular, “So do you see the blog as a direct challenge to the scholarly publishing?” made me stop and think. I reflected on my views;  thought more about multimodality, the advantages and disadvantages of academic blogging, and re-read Kress and Thomas. Still I didn’t get round to replying.  Work commitments,  keeping up with the course reading and other tasks took their toll so I still didn’t get round to replying.  But I’d find myself at odd moments re-thinking my views.  I actually considered whether or not this would be a good topic for final assignment                                                   .

The focus this week has been on the Posthuman Pedagogy task. I struggled finding a suitable idea for this task. I had a look at those submitted by students from previous years.  Interestingly, I saw that someone had presented their task on “Learning to swim” so I checked with Jeremy whether I could do mine on learning a new language.  When I came across an article about iPad games for cats, I had to tweet it to Austin (his theme was ‘think like a robot (octopus, skynet)’.  As there are still tweets flying about cyborgs I tweeted about a bike that will change gear when the rider ‘thinks‘ the command. Also saved the video to YouTube. Vimeo isn’t working so it will have to be deleted.

Spent time reading and responding to the posts by my colleagues.  Comments I make to colleagues’ posts are not showing up in my Lifestream.  I did mention this in a previous post.  I have no idea how to resolve this so just hope I don’t get penalised for it.   In trying to get ideas for the final assessment I had a look through my blogs and trawled through the 2009 and 2010 assessments trying to get ideas for my final assessment but no luck so far.

To find a suitable course I searched on the Internet and also asked friends.   I finally chose the Complete Hungarian by Zsuzsa Pontifexwhich was recommended by a friend who had done a lot of research before making the choice so I benefitted from that. I actually bought the book and CDs when in Budapest but the author does run online courses. Zsuzsa is a native Hungarian who taught for a time  in Britain so has a very good understanding of the difficulties Hungarian poses for English speakers.    I like the way the lessons the lessons are set up; how the chapters are broken down; exercises given; words and phrases reinforced; and conversations given at normal speed (which is way too fast for me at present). I have to do a lot of travelling to and from schools this year so listening to the CDs is a great way to use the time.

There is also a BBC site that I use to help reinforce phrases which I have the opportunity to download onto mp3,  so I can listen on my iPod should I so wish.  I also like that this site displays soundwaves as I find it helps with pronunciation.

A native Hungarian recommended that I also watch videos by an Australian who speaks Hungarian.  He is known as Ausztrál Tom and is very popular in Hungary partly because he introduces slang terms as well as a little Australian culture. He doesn’t appear to have produced any new videos recently, these are a year old. I find it helpful listening to a non-native speaker and he’s entertaining.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of course there is so much more I can do to enhance my learning experience. To really get into the feel for the country I can take a virtual tour.  Budapest is a beautiful city, lots of history, culture, and wonderful architecture. I can book flights, check out train and shuttle times, find maps and information to other cities, all online.  And to find out what’s going on before visiting the city, this site will inform what’s happening locally: http://www.pestiside.hu

It’s great having these technologies at my disposal to use when, where and how I decide.  Learning Hungarian is enjoyable (mostly) and it’s a challenge I have set myself although in order to progress I will rely on friends and native Hungarian speakers to encourage and correct my usage.

The good news is that the majority of my feeds are working well.  One that has worked from the very beginning is my Female Science Professor RSS feed. I see that the articles I posted in Reddit are showing up in my Lifestream, so pleased about that.  My information gathering on humans/posthumans took me back to the film festival and I added another couple of YouTube videos to my favourites.  However, it looks like I may have messed up on one bookmarking attempt with Delicious.  I’m a little hesitant to remove it in case I end up deleting all my entries, especially as I’ll be submitting my Lifestream soon.

I attempted to save a video to Vimeo but don’t think it has worked.  It can take several hours for it to show through on my feed.  I would assume that all feeds should be necessary and workable.  If Vimeo doesn’t work at my next attempt I shall have to delete it from my feeds.

I am still unable to get the full benefit of Twitter.  I have been able to tweet but I’m rarely able to open the links my colleagues tweet as my Internet connection is so slow.From the standard of blogs and comments made by my colleagues I know that these links will be very interesting. It’s so frustrating not being able to follow through and I get heartily sick of seeing these signs.

I have spent some time thinking about my assignment and how I should present it.  With this in mind I had a look at Weebly.  Jeremy emailed the link to the assignments of last year’s cohorts and I see one of them used it.  I need to play around with it before making my decision.

I’ve had a look around this site but cannot see any sign of comments I’ve made on my colleagues’ sites. Hoping that it is something that can be easily resolved.

Considering that there is so much diversity in the human race, the first thing to do was search for was commonality.  For starters, we are all born and we all die. To survive we need sleep, we must eat and we must drink. We age and become frail as we grow older; we are prone to diseases and we feel pain.  But these statements are also true of animals.  So what makes us ‘human’?

Humans are sociable and help work towards the common good (well some of the time). And there is a strong tendency towards a sense of belonging, be it to a group, tribe or community, as our ethnographies proved.  I can’t posit this as a reason for being human though as research shows animals too have these attributes.  Ah, but where  we differ is that we have the ability to laugh, cry, be compassionate, give gratitude and empathise. This must surely distinguish us. I wonder, are we inherently sceptical of those who lack emotion and could this be why we mistrust, even fear, cyborgs and posthumans?  Wasn’t there just the teeniest bit of doubt about the emotion of the cyborgs in Blade Runner?

Hayles states that “the human has ..been associated with rationality, free will, autonomy and a celebration of consciousness”.  So being human is more than just attributes, it’s also about our capacity to use our brain;  our ability to reason;  our belief that life has meaning; our need to improve ourselves and shape our world.  This took me back to the film festival at the beginning of this unit: Bendito Machine (Episode 3 Obey His Commands) and eXistenZ: the restaurant sequence. These films showed how humans react and interact with technologies.

An experience I had earlier in the week made me realise my own interaction with technologies. My Mac stopped charging and I only noticed when there was 30 minutes of battery time left. The nearest Apple Store was a couple of hours drive away and anyhow it wouldn’t have been possible for me to go there until the weekend.  What a disaster! I hadn’t backed-up my files and all my personal stuff, such as music, photos, phone numbers and coursework is stored on my Mac.  I was beside myself trying to think of how I was going to remedy this. I was so relived when the problem turned out to be a dodgy outlet.  Once I saw that the battery was recharging, I reflected on my initial reaction. I knew this wasn’t a life or death situation but that didn’t stop me from feeling quite devastated when it happened. Is this an example of me being posthuman?  Hayles states, “the world we understand is also the world we make, in both literal and figurative senses.”

“I think that questioning humanism-posthumanism itself – begins to build ways for being different in the future. “We” have nothing to lose but “our”selves.”  (Badminton, 2003, p23)  Now this makes sense to me so may be I’m closer to understanding the difference between human and posthuman than I thought.

References

Badmington, Neil, “Theorizing Posthumanism” Source: Cultural Critique, No. 53, Posthumanism (Winter, 2003), pp. 10-27 Published by: University of Minnesota PressBibliography

Hayles, N. Katherine, (1999) “Towards embodied virtuality” from Hayles, N. Katherine, we became posthuman : virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics pp.1-25,293-297, Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press

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

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201101/can-animals-work-the-common-good

I’m not a great fan of Twitter.  Tweets tend to consist of links which aren’t easy for me to follow because of problems with the Internet.  I tweeted to Neil re connection problems.    I hadn’t heard of Diaspora until reading Daniel’s ethnography so had to tweet him when the I heard the news of the co-founder.

I’m still trying to sort out my thoughts on the human/posthuman issue and found some interesting articles which I bookmarked.  I found myself nodding my head in agreement at some of the comments made in colleagues’ blogs.  I had planned on completing and posting one myself but I seem to be running behind. I also found a cyborg video and saved it to Vimeo.  It hasn’t shown up in my Lifestream though so I need to have a look at that feed.

When commenting on Kevin’s ethnography I suddenly wondered if comments I make on colleagues’ sites show up on my Lifestream. I don’t believe they do.  Maybe they’re not supposed to or may be I’m just not looking in the right place.

Our focus this block is on posthumanities.  Although I had read Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ a while back, it definitely demanded more than a skim read.   I found a couple of videos of lectures by Haraway that helped give me a better understanding and saved the videos to my YouTube account.  I liked a few quotes and saved them to Tumblr.  One in particular struck me, “To be feminized means to be made extremely vulnerable.” The reason this struck a chord is because there is a drive over here at present to ‘feminize‘ the Cycle 1 schools.  It is hoped that eventually all teaching posts will be filled by locals, at present they are filled mostly by expats.  Unfortunately, the teaching profession is not seen as desirable by males.  However, this being a patriarchal society, it is they who have the power to give or withdraw consent to female workers.  I think this is a topic that can be further explored in a blog.

I am still a little perplexed with the form my Lifestream has taken and wonder if an ‘onlooker’ can make sense of it.  Should I be matching the content with the weekly topics, giving a brief explanation?  Should I be trying out more applications? I have yet to try out my Vimeo account, it was opened when I was having problems with YouTube.  And if I had to do a Lifestream again, how differently would I do it? Thoughts to ponder.

This week has been busy with putting together the data gathered for my ethnography on science bloggers. I spent a number of hours trying to organise the information to make it easier to understand but the zoom-in/zoom out tool of Prezi thoroughly confused me and I kept losing pieces I had placed earlier. Or maybe it was more to do with the fact that they were either too small to be read and I had placed another image on top of them.  Whichever it was, I had the job of replacing the work but felt restrained by time and Internet access. The deadline for ethnography submission coincided with a trip to Malaysia and although the hotel brochure stated it offered wi-fi, past experience has found this not always to be the case.  Thankfully there was indeed Internet access, albeit only in the foyer, which allowed me to post my submission on time and also to comment on the ethnographies of a few of my colleagues.

My Lifestream feeds are still not operating smoothly.  Although I can bookmark using my new Delicious account it’s just not feeding into my Lifestream.  I also tried making a link to my Prezi account but was unsuccessful.  Looks like Flickr is working fine though.   I thought that by this stage I would be happier with the shape Lifestream is taking but I’m not and I assumed that I would be using more applications than I currently am.  Time is marching on and I

feel I need to fix things and quickly if I am to cut muster.

This story starts with the reason I have chosen the science bloggers group for this ethnography. I am not a joiner of groups, in fact the only membership I have is with TES, so I did some searching and head-scratching to find one.  It was on reading Jen’s comments on the Holyrood Hub that this task should be enjoyable that I finally made my decision.  I enjoy reading science blogs and have an RSS feed from the Female Science Professor to my Lifestream. When reading the FSPs blog I would see interesting links to bloggers she follows. This in turn would lead me to follow links to bloggers they follow and so on.

The ethnography will be formed from observation and exploring ‘…the social spaces of the Internet’ (Hine 2000);  participating ‘covertly in people’s daily lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions’ (Hammersley and Atkinson quoted in Hine).  Data has been collected from various blogs over a short period of time so at best the results will give a snapshot of life in the science bloggers’ community.  The information used in this research is available publicly from bloggers sites; there has been no violation of trust. Each blogger gives a brief description of themselves and their field of work, though not in any great detail.  The fields range from physiology, pharmacology, biomedical research, neurosciences and teaching to science journalism.  This is by no means a comprehensive list.

Could science bloggers be said to belong to an online community?  Shared interest may seem a tenuous connection to base this ethnography, bearing in mind the diverse fields of science.

Study Questions

My study questions are:

• Are Science Bloggers a community?
• Do users support each other?
• How do users relate to each other?

Are Science Bloggers a community?

No membership is required to join this group. Participants are world-wide and either work in a science related field or have a general interest in science.  One blogger actually asked readers to say who they are, if they have a background in science and what draws them to the blog.  At last count, there were 47 responses.  There are no written rules, participants tend to follow the social code of good manners.  No ‘one’ person is in charge but the voice of reason tends to rein in transgressors. For example,  a blog about attending meetings whilst on maternity leave  resulted in a few ‘husband bashing’ responses which were quelled by postings pointing out that this was not helpful. The group discuss various topics, newsworthy articles and critique work. Bell (2011) states “communities are imagined and held together by shared cultural practice”.  In this respect then Science Bloggers can be termed a community.

Do users support each other?

Kozinets poses the question, “How deep, long-lasting, meaningful, and intense are those relationships?”  This group are very supportive, give very good advice and follow career paths wit interest.   A blogger asking for advice on writing a CV and tips on questions to ask, or that may be asked, at interviews, received a number of responses. Advice requested is usually met with quick responses. Helping raise funds for schools shows they have a sense of responsibility which transpires the group.   A blog about an exchange between the blogger and a Press Officer who advised, “I think you have all you need for a blog” received a lot of responses and tweets.  Support for the blogger showed a strong sense of loyalty from the community. In fact, the way they dealt with this they could be described as a ‘Bund’ (Bell).  As in any community, some members form closer attachments than others.

How do users relate to each other?

The group takes a personal as well as personal interest in their community.  They share thoughts and ideas;  tell stories about their pets; share stories of trips and concerts;  give cooking tips, menu ideas, cocktail recipes also book recommendations..  They talk about moving house, changing jobs, concerns at work – they share their lives.    There is an obvious sense of friendship, and humour,  as evidenced by the calaveras.  Some blogs and responses are serious and some are tongue in cheek; read Colin’s response to breastfeeding in public.

Conclusion

Knowing the personality of an individual helps to understand the person  and so to it is with understanding of a community.  The culture of the science blogger community can be termed as a ‘barn raising’ community.  This virtual community “ ..chat and argue, engage in intellectual intercourse.. exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans..“ (Rheingold quoted in Hine).

“An online community is a community if participants imagine themselves as a community” (Baym quoted in Bell).  This group definitely see themselves as a community and I do too.

*Please also see Prezi presentation.

Bibliography

Bell, David (2001) Community and cyberculture, chapter 5 of An introduction to cybercultures. Abingdon: Routledge. pp92-112.

Gatson, Sarah N. and Zweerink, Amanda, (2004) Qualitative “Ethnography Online: ‘Natives’ Practising and Inscribing Community” Research 2004; 4; 179

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

Kozinets, Robert V., (2010) “Understanding Culture Online” from Kozinets, Robert V., Netnography : doing ethnographic research online pp.21-40, London: Sage

Some Web addresses

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/network-central/about.php?author=11

http://dr-becca.blogspot.com/2010/12/11th-hour-pre-interview-freak-out.html#comments

http://embargowatch.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/how-to-demonstrate-youre-not-about-transparency-and-piss-off-reporters-as-a-pio/#comment-1527

http://embargowatch.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/update-on-aeron-haworth-and-ed-yong-an-apology-accepted/

http://scientopia.org/blogs/drugmonkey

http://isisthescientist.com/2011/10/26/when-does-breastfeeding-become-offensive/#comments

http://physioprof.wordpress.com/about-physioprof/

http://scientopia.org/blogs/proflikesubstance/

http://www.theenlightenedpio.com/2011/02/outing-poor-press-officer-work/

http://scientopia.org/blogs/bridgeblog/2011/11/02/calaveras-2-0/

http://silent-typewriter.com/

The focus this week has been on data collection, some of which I had hoped to add to my feeds, and to giving some thought to the choice of media I’d like to use to present my ethnography.  My plan was to keep it succinct but the more information I gather the bigger it’s becoming.  At the moment I feel like I’m walking along a corridor that goes on and on.

Like one of my colleagues, I have also had to spend some time doing a little Lifestream ‘troubleshooting’.  I have no idea why some feeds are causing me problems but it’s clear the problems have to be remedied. My Tumblr account seemed to have ‘frozen’ on me and I decided it was easier to open a new one than to work on a resolution.  I have tried and tested the new account out; it appears to be working fine.   Delicious and Flickr are still causing problems.  Clearing the error log is my way of handling it at the moment.  I’ve bookmarked a couple of articles to my Diigo account and they are thankfully showing up in my Lifestream.  As I wasn’t able to use YouTube for the visual artefact task I have opened a Vimeo account.  I just may want to use this media for the ethnography task.

We’re now half way through the course and my Lifestream is starting to take shape, I think.  It’s certainly looking busier.  One of my colleagues commented that this is not a true reflection of how his time is spent online.  I too get carried away checking out links colleagues have tweeted, or finding something interesting in one article that leads me to another, and another.  And I am still wary about what I say and do, knowing that this can be viewed publicly.  I actually ‘googled’ my name to check what does show up.  An on-line diary does appeal to me but with restricted access.