Neil's E-learning and Digital Cultures Blog

As Carol observed in her blog, after the ethnography I felt like I could take some time to reflect on all that had taken place and the work that had been done. I worked hard on the ethnography because I loved the process and felt that I had achieved something. I also wanted to do it again as I could see where it could be better. This was especially so after seeing some of the brilliant work posted by others!

Isolation. Weeks 8 & 9 have highlighted the isolation of being an online learner. I attended a panel discussion last week on the topic of Online Learning in the UAE and this was a recurring theme. Though I fought the inclination to agree, I realised that it is true. Posthuman and Cyborg are big concepts and the readings take a lot of time to digest and understand but we have no sync time together. Wallwisher just isn’t doing it for me as it’s too much like sticking a PostIt on a wall and walking away. Twitter helps (I say this as someone who hated using Twitter in IDEL!) but the sole consolation has been reading other blogs and postings. Up till now, I’ve shied away from doing that too much and tend to wait until after a block is over before “visiting”. I don’t want to be overly influenced and I don’t want to feel I’ve walked away with others’ ideas.

Ivory Tower? Splendid isolation?

But, every now and again one needs a howf; a place to go where you’ll bump into people you know and be able to talk over the pressing events of the day.

A shelter or meeting place

Week 8 was a local holiday here as we celebrated Eid Al Adha. This made me realise also how non-posthuman we are. There are no “e-holidays” and even in the real world, there are very few occasions, if any, when every country celebrates the same holiday at the same time. Even Christmas is a moveable feast and, when I lived in Saudi Arabia, was totally forbidden. So, no matter how much we may invest in an online presence, our reality is affected by such things as real life holidays! For example, this course follows a semester determined by Western climate and religion. If I’d gone with an Australian university, I’d be on a completely different timescale and a different one again if “located” in India. So, I was on holiday but the course was not. When the course goes on holiday, I won’t. It’s interesting to note how this has an impact on my relationship with my online world. I had the choice of spending time in the desert but with drastically limited internet access or spending time in the city in all its broadband, 3G facilitated glory. I chose the former, enjoying the chance to mull over ideas and read up on the topics. But time goes and I returned to a denuded LifeStream and the realisation that there is not much time to mull things over and no sync session to look forward to.

Distribution of sweets to children to celebrate Eid.

So, my LifeStream this week represents the results of plunder as I’ve raided the Tweets for ideas and links. I also owe a lot to my course colleagues for their thoughts and words as they have helped me more than anything else to get to grips with these new concepts.