part of the MSc in E-learning at the University of Edinburgh

Author Archive

Geraldine May Jones

I'm elearning officer for the faculty of humanities at the University of Bath. I am fascinated by how learning takes place with or without formal intervention and how it is influenced by the digital environments we inhabit. My other passion is rowing, a sport which I am certainly not built for, but just can't resist especially on those sparklingly bright crisp mornings.

Feenberg on the Ten Paradoxes of Technology

I have just watched a recording of Ten Paradoxes of Technology. He seems to be espousing a posthumanist perspective of technology and uses these ten paradoxes to illustrate how we are often blinded to the interdependance of the human and the technological. Here are his paradoxes and a few notes about the connection with posthumanism. [...]

Posted by Geraldine May Jones on November 27th, 2011 at 5:46 pm | Comments & Trackbacks (1) | Permalink


Mini ethnography – the virtual choir

Oops forgot to say where to leave comments…. http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/the-virtual-choir Against this post would be great – thanks in anticipation

Posted by Geraldine May Jones on November 7th, 2011 at 11:13 pm | Comments & Trackbacks (4) | Permalink


LifeStream Reflections Week 7 – Singers adopt YouTube

This week my lifestream has been centred on further exploring the phenomenom of the virtual choir. I have visited the VC FaceBook group and browsed testimonies of individual participants. One member Songuine sums up what she has gained form being a VC participant: Through social media, I’ve been able to converse with a music professional [...]

Posted by Geraldine May Jones on November 6th, 2011 at 10:00 pm | Comments & Trackbacks (15) | Permalink


LifeStream Reflections Week 6 – It is a community, is it networked learning, is it a GME?

This week, through the artefacts encountered in my life stream I have been thinking about the extent to which the Virtual Choir constitutes a community. Engagement with the choir centres around a single online event or performance on YouTube. The ‘community’ is for the most part located on YouTube but participant interactions are very different [...]

Posted by Geraldine May Jones on November 3rd, 2011 at 8:00 pm | Comments & Trackbacks (2) | Permalink


LifeStream Reflections Week 5 – Community, Crowds and Networks of Individuals

This week I started out by trying to get to grips with the concept of community and at the end of the week I’m not sure I’m much further on. I began with empathising with Rheingold’s vision of the lost local community regained in the virtual environment I visited The Well where it seemed that [...]

Posted by Geraldine May Jones on October 26th, 2011 at 10:28 am | Comments & Trackbacks (1) | Permalink


Uncanny pedagogy: Fear or fascination in digital learning environments

Here’ a link to my visual artefact. http://www.flickr.com/photos/68574450@N03/6238623494/ Looking forward to your comments!

Posted by Geraldine May Jones on October 13th, 2011 at 12:47 pm | Comments & Trackbacks (420) | Permalink


Words and things that go bump in the night

Kress* contends that words are empty and have to be filled with meaning. The language Sian** uses in her article e.g. uncanny, phantoms, spectres, haunting and ghostliness is a good example, in my view, of words being far from empty. For me these words are full of associations with horror fiction and convey a distinctly [...]

Posted by Geraldine May Jones on October 12th, 2011 at 11:07 am | Comments & Trackbacks (0) | Permalink


How exactly is the ‘world told’ different to the ‘world shown’?

  The world told The world shown Makes explicit types of relation – causality, agency and power are explicit. Makes explicit position in a framed space – relations of entities made explicit. Objects are vaguely specified Objects are fully specified Fixed order of ‘reading’ determined by the author Open order of ‘reading’ established by the [...]

Posted by Geraldine May Jones on October 12th, 2011 at 11:04 am | Comments & Trackbacks (0) | Permalink


Week 2 – Virtually real

World builder neatly illustrated how the digital brings new dimensions to virtuality, specifically the possibility to construct, interact with and change an illusionary reality rather than merely passively experience it. At the outset of the film clip the distinction between what is virtual and what is real is clear cut. The unrendered ‘prims’ are unquestionably [...]

Posted by Geraldine May Jones on October 4th, 2011 at 8:42 pm | Comments & Trackbacks (0) | Permalink


Before leaving Hand …..

I really enjoyed the style of the Hand article so much so that I wanted to capture some of my favourite phrases before moving on. These might also provide sparks my visual artefact. About the all embracing boundaryless network….. “Interoperable, interconnected infrastructures and the perpetual interfacing of the screened world.” An interesting definition of culture… [...]

Posted by Geraldine May Jones on October 4th, 2011 at 6:30 pm | Comments & Trackbacks (66) | Permalink