Grace's E-learning and Digital Cultures Blog

Virtual communities is the theme of this block and our task is to build an ethnography,  something I haven’t attempted before.  In order to get an understanding I read and re-read the recommended readings. If I understand Hine (2000) correctly, an ethnography is an anthropological approach to studying cultures and should ‘share a a fundamental commitment to developing a deep understanding through participation and observation’.  I don’t think this ethnography will offer ‘the promise of getting closer to understandingthe ways in which people interpret the world and oranise their lives.’ (Hine 42) At best it will offer a ‘snapshot’ of a particular moment in time with a particular group of people.

I spent a good deal of time trying to find a suitable ‘community’. For Bell (2001) “…community arises from shared interests’. Flickr has numerous groups that share a common interest so I tried looking there. Unfortunately, this site is blocked.  Such group’s wouldn’t qualify as a community by Sardar’s interpretation, quoted in Hine;  ‘Belonging and posting to a Usenet group, or logging on to a bulletin board community, confirms no more an identity than belonging to a stamp collecting club…’  So how will I be able to recognise which is a ‘group’ and which a ‘community’?  Kozinets (2010) states that ‘the ways in which group norms develop and the importance of group identity are very similar in online and off-line groups.’ Hmm, so it’s not going to be so easy then.  After searching through various groups I settled on Food.com and posted my idea to the Holyrood Park discussion forum. It wasn’t that interesting to me but I felt my choice was limited.

When Jen said that this task wasn’t being assessed and should be fun it made a huge difference to my approach.  I have the FemaleScienceProfessor as an RSS feed to my lifestream.  I enjoy reading her blogs and the comments made by other science bloggers.  I now plan to do my ethnography on Science Bloggers.  I find this group more interesting and will it will be fun finding out whether or not they can be classed as a ‘community’.  To do this I shall follow the form suggested by Hammersley and Atkinson’s (quoted in Hine 41) by “ …participating, overtly or covertly in people’s daily lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said “.

I had hoped to store images in my Flickr account but that still isn’t working. I don’t think it has anything to do with censorship because it linked with my lifestream at the beginning. I have a Picasa account but haven’t tried it out yet.

Bookmarking is also proving problematic.  Again, at the beginning my link with Delicious was working. As I couldn’t fix the problem I resurrected my Diigo account but  it doesn’t appear to be working either.

I know that my YouTube link is working.  After looking at the Rheingold video and checking out the WELL site, I had a search and found another Rheingold video that I added to my favourites. That has appeared in my lifestream.

I notice that my colleagues are busy tweeting and I haven’t contributed as much as I’d like.  Either Twitter is extremely popular or my Internet can’t handle the traffic, but I receive this sign quite often.

I was actually enjoying working on this task before my frustrations with technology set in.  The theme I initially chose was Good and Bad and even had a piece of music I thought would slot in nicely (Biffy Clyro’s ‘God and Satan’ ).   I’ll never know though because I’ve had to abandon this idea.

I received this message from Youtube, “Sorry for the interruption. We have been receiving a large volume of requests from your network. To continue with your YouTube experience, please enter the verification code below.”  Which I did but because of my IP address I’d be taken to an Arabic page.  I tried using Google Translate to find the ‘English’ link but wasn’t successful.  For anyone interested ‘English’ in Arabic is:

أنجل

After numerous attempts I gave up!  I then set to work using Tumblr but ran into difficulties there too.  This from my browser; “Safari can’t open the page “http://www.tumblr.com/help” because the server where this page is located isn’t responding.”  It was either that or, “The connection has timed out.”

My new theme is “Interconnectedness”.  I think it only fair to explain a few of my images.  The pic of the ‘tree of life’ and the ‘wheel of existence’ mandala are from my travels and are included as metaphors.   The Cyborg is from Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto:…   http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html

I would love to be able to spend more time on this but it just isn’t possible.  The link to my visual artefact is here:

http://gfe8.tumblr.com/post/11468171594/interconnections

Work demands has made it difficult for me to fully engage with Week 3.  None of my schools have Internet access at the moment so my evenings are spent playing catch-up.  I did some of the readings and I had every intention of taking part in the Skype session but I just couldn’t stay awake; 20.00 UK time is 23.00 UAE time  Part of the problem is that I find the discussions so stimulating and need an hour to wind down afterwards.  Every morning I am awoken by the call to prayer, it is so loud that I feel the Muazzin is calling me directly each morning, which at the moment is at 04.54.  I haven’t yet been able to tune-out and nor can I get back to sleep.

In Neil’s latest blog he said that he hadn’t yet found his blog-voice. My problem is my perception of blogging.  To me blogs are informative and entertaining. When reading them it feels like you’re relaxing with a cup of tea, having a conversation, an exchange of ideas, with a friend.  I know that part of the reason I find it difficult taking blogs seriously is the multimodal aspect of it.   This aspect may make blogging easier to read and digest, more enjoyable,  a little like ‘tabloid journalism’ as Austin puts it.  I feel it also leads to it’s content being taken less seriously, giving it less credibility

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Academic papers,  on the other hand, are of a more serious business. It is conducted by ‘experts’ who can back up their research with evidence.  In an academic paper the images I expect to see will mostly be in the form of graphs or charts.  I know that before the paper is published by journals or academic press it will have been reviewed by other specialists in the field. My search for academic discourses would take me to scholarly articles, not to blogs.  Jen’s quote, taken from the Skype transcript that ”sometimes the disciplinarity of language makes things differently accessible to different people” is apt and probably applies to me.

Yet here I am, taking part in the MSc E-Learning course where our work is done online and  I’m having trouble coming to terms with the different academic medium used.  If the uncanny has to do a with strangeness of framing and borders (quoted by Royle in Bayne 2010) then am I experiencing the uncanny?  I’m finding it difficult slotting the two images together – ‘academic’ blogging and scholarly articles.  A quick search showed that I am not alone.  I found these websites interesting: http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/religion-blogosphere/religion-blogosphere-2/ and http://learnerosity.com/2011/02/22/what-kinds-of-academic-blogs-are-out-there/ .

I didn’t find ‘Academetron, automaton, phantom: uncanny digital pedagogies’ an easy read.  Like Steph, I found myself doing a lot of googling.  And I’m not sure I agree with Kress’ ideas about the forms of representation, still reflecting on that.  I’m also pondering how much I gain from  Twitter, Synchtube and Skype sessions.   Maybe it’s a question of upping my transliteracy skills and making the “unfamiliar familiar”

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My day has been spent finding my way around Prezi. This application came highly recommended to me so I abandoned my attempts with Tumblr and began exploring Prezi. My plan was to look through the Synchtube session notes from the Twittorial on Thursday 29th October, and present our thoughts/views using this application.

For quickness and ease of use I decided to use one of the templates on offer. I have spent 6 hours so far working on this. It’s amazing how much time it takes. I feel I’m now one with my chair, desk and laptop. And now I’ve hit a problem. I seem unable to link the presentation to my Lifestream. At the moment,  I feel I take two steps forward and four back in any coursework I attempt to do. Progress is slow.  There are a number of things I still need to do, such as add tags, and change appearance.  I do have YouTube working and I may need to have another stab at Tumbr. I look in awe at the work my colleagues have done, and are doing;  they seem to be such experts.  I was reassured by Ania when she said she also faced problems at the beginning.

I’m adding the link to my World builder presentation in the hope that it’ll work in the blog’s published form. Just in case it doesn’t I’ll insert a screenshot to give a flavour of how the presentation looks. It’s by no means comprehensive, I’m still experimenting.  In the meantime I shall continue to play around with it. I may even be able to resolve my problem.

I definitely needed the answer to “What is a lifestream?”  This is all very new to me, I’ve had  an extremely slow start and have basically resorted to just adding the suggested feeds. I shall continue to experiment and hope that it wont take me too long to get to grips with it. I am so impressed with the lifestreams of my colleagues.  They have been so busy and their sites look fab whilst mine is uninteresting and looks like I’ve done very little work.

I’ve felt quite clumsy trying to set things up and it has been very time consuming.  I had a problem with Twitter but opening a new account resolved that.  It did mean, however, that I didn’t participate in tweeting about the film festival. There have been some feeds that I haven’t been able to successfully set up, such as Tumblr and YouTube.  I saw a couple of interesting articles whilst surfing and bookmarked them so I know that my delicious link works.

At the moment I don’t really have a clear idea of the shape my lifestream should take.  And knowing that this is open to public viewing makes me feel somewhat hesitant about what should and shouldn’t be shared.    I had misgivings about some of the content in my previous blog.  It probably isn’t very wise to be so candid about some situations.

Hand’s article relating to “Narratives of Promise and Threat’ certainly struck a chord with what is happening in the UAE at present. To ensure the sustainability of their society, great investment is being made in education.   A completely new Western curriculum is being introduced with English, Science and Maths classes being taught in English.  The promise of producing citizens with the necessary skills to  compete in an international marketplace also has the threat of ‘eroding national identities’.   “As educational development progresses, we will learn to embrace new ideas and develop new skills, but we will also remember that preserving and celebrating our culture and heritage are a vital and integral component to our future success.” ( Dr Mugheer Khamis Al Khaili)   Heritage and Culture is now included in the curriculum.

To move the curriculum forward licensed teachers have been recruited, the majority of whom are from America. Most fast-food restaurants are American and American movies are popular. There is an ambivalent attitude towards America and Americana.   The influence is noticeable and is of concern.

” [Culture] is so ubiquitous that it, as it were, seeps out of the superstructure and         comes to infiltrate, and then take over, the infrastructure itself. It comes to dominate both the economy and experience in everyday life (Lash and Lury 2007: 4).”

Hand also mentioned problems of control, circulation and exchange of information and states that “policing of digital information circulation is one of the fundamental forms of political influence and power in the modem world.” The free flowing information of the Web has not escaped state control. Censorship in the form of site blocking and content filtering is common. This makes teaching not impossible but more difficult.  Magazines, books and films are also censored. I find this extremely frustrating.  I had problems accessing Edinburgh University’s vle when I first started the MSc E-learning course.  It isn’t blocked now.  Film censorship is also annoying, often leading to the film making little sense to the viewer.

There is a definite divide of ‘digital information haves and have-nots’.  The infrastructure is being put in place so that most will have access to the Internet but the more remote areas will have to wait a little longer.

The film Bendito machine (Episode 3 – Obey His Commnands) had a definite religious link.  It could have been Moses on Mt Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments or it could have been Prophet Muhammad on Mt Hira receiving revelations of the Qu’ran. What it highlighted was a human tendency to adopt (follow/worship) something new and to just as easily discard when something assumed to be ‘better’ comes along. The film made good use of the colours red and black, which  they are known to represent power.  Although the film eXistenZ  was about a gamer I made a creator and creation connection.   What linked the reading and films for me was ‘power and control’.  Humans are afraid of losing power and control.

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