All the EDC blog posts » distributed consciousness http://edc11.education.ed.ac.uk/allposts all posts from course participants are gathered here. Click a title to visit that post and comments! Mon, 01 Oct 2012 11:07:16 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 Summary: Week 11 http://edc11.education.ed.ac.uk/danielg/2011/12/04/summary-week-11/ http://edc11.education.ed.ac.uk/danielg/2011/12/04/summary-week-11/#comments Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:53:14 +0000 Daniel Griffin http://14.9047 Continue reading →]]> We’re nearing the end of the taught part of the course and the beginning of the assignment section so my time has been used this week to refine my lifestream, correcting any errors and employing a consistent style for any references in the weekly summaries.  More on this subject in my final summary, but for now my other main focus has been on beginning the final assignment.

I am still very much interested in the themes of post humans and distributed consciousness and I have spent some time considering these ideas in greater detail this week (lifestream 27.11.2011 #1 and 01.12.2011 #7, #9, #11, #12).  I’ve also spent a little time revisiting the ideas of Artificial Intelligence and human computer interaction (lifestream 03.12.2011 #2, #3) and this has lead me to think about how humans and groups of humans interact with computer systems (lifestream 03.12.2011 #1).  It’s fascinating to think about how groups might become empowered beyond the now well recognised notion of emergent collective group intelligence, through interaction with computer systems (lifestream 04.12.2011 #3 to #10).  If groups can be extended and enhanced through the use of artificially intelligent agents and expert systems, then this must of course have profound consequences for teaching and learning.

So having finally selected a topic for the assignment, it’s time to settle down properly into a single research area.  My lifesteam is already beginning to reflect this, with the range of topics and ideas narrowing daily and moving I hope, towards a focal point.  It must be interesting to watch this process from the outside and to see how I have refined my ideas as I progress.  I now see clearly what a perfect lens the lifestream is to document this journey.

]]> http://edc11.education.ed.ac.uk/danielg/2011/12/04/summary-week-11/feed/ 0 Summary: Week 10 http://edc11.education.ed.ac.uk/danielg/2011/11/25/summary-week-10/ http://edc11.education.ed.ac.uk/danielg/2011/11/25/summary-week-10/#comments Fri, 25 Nov 2011 21:54:43 +0000 Daniel Griffin http://14.7914 Continue reading →]]> A quick review of my lifestream will show that this has been somewhat of a disjointed week, due mostly to my inability to settle on a topic for the Posthuman Pedagogy assignment.  I began the week confident in my decision that I wanted to focus on the idea of distributed consciousness (lifestream: 22:11.2011 #1, #2, #3 and #4) which first arose in the previous week.  However as I dug deeper into this concept, it became clear to me that it would be difficult to single out a concrete learning task, given the fact that we could argue humans have always had a distributed consciousness, i.e. our tools shape our thought process and we have always been posthuman (lifestream: 19.11.2011 #1). I also spent a little time thinking about brain augmentation (lifestream: 21.11.2011 #6) and artificial minds (lifestream: 21.11.2011 #5), before finally settling on the idea of Augmented Reality (AR) as a perfect example (lifestream: 24.11.2011 #5, #6 and #7).  AR has really come of age and it’s interesting to see how many popular applications are emerging (lifestream: 25.11.2011 #1).  I’ve discovered two other great finds during the week; thanks firstly to a reminder from Jeremy (since I must have failed to follow up on reference to his work in earlier prescribed readings), of Steve Fuller.  It’s proven difficult to find much of Fuller’s writing, but I have found some fascinating videos (lifestream: 25.11.11 #2), which have echoed deeply with my own thoughts .  And secondly, the mind blowing and borderline psychedelic writing and artwork of Robert Pepperell which has influenced my thoughts on personalised realities in my Posthuman Pedagogy post.

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