Week 7 Summary
The ethnography task has been interesting. I would until now have consider myself quite distance to the virtual world. However, the varied contributions from the class have been an eye opener to the fact that many communities that I consider common place in ‘my world’ are in fact virtual communities. This slowly developed realisation is perhaps representative of the fact they are so integrated with the real world…and how little appreciation I had for the fact that ‘my world’ was actually so involved in the virtual world.
Always looking for a new challenge I decided to use Prezi to present my ethnography. I had seen it used my previous students and was attracted to the slick linking between ideas – perfect for snap shots of a community. However, the challenges related to ethics (already identified in week6) became even more apparent when building the ethnography and it the intricacies of Prezi proved to be very time consuming. Despite this, it was worth the effort as I felt my ethnography turned out well for a first attempt and the feedback I received would indicate that posting it supported within a blog enabled me to convey the ethical challenges I encountered.
Looking at my lifestream I see that I have not been adding very varied feeds over the last few weeks so I have gone back to trying to use delicious some more. It takes practice to integrate using sites as a new way to support my learning, thus I realise I must practice some more.