Final Lifestream Blog Post Summary
Introduction
I consider myself as a ‘maker;’ as a reasonably creative and artistic person who enjoys the process of creating more than the end results. In my EDC lifestream blog, my record of learning is reflected in various ways and through various types of media:
- Twitter takes top spot as it was the platform that I participated in the most #mscedc;
- other social media such as Skype, Hangouts, WhatsApp and direct messaging via Twitter have provided me with great support and have allowed me to stay connected with my peers; and
- YouTube holds great value to me as I used it to publish my video artefact creations.
Emergent Themes
Themes that emerged from my lifestream blog are as follows:
- Memory, being human, the mixture and relationship of human and machine, and transhumanism (Bayne 2014);
- community in digital spaces and networks, my experience in what I feel was a cMOOC (Knox 2014), and the power and influence of algorithms as non-human agents (Knox 2015); and
- personal explorations of my interests in figure skating and the Holocaust in relation to our course themes.
Strengths and Weaknesses
As a result of obtaining a new job at the beginning of this course (in addition to my regular job of teaching figure skating), I struggled to find the time and energy to keep up with daily blog postings. During the first block, I made an adequate start and was proud of my final production of work: my visual artefact. Weeks 4, 5 and 6 were pretty dismal because my new job became quite demanding and I was unable to produce a large quantity of postings.
Reflecting on my blogging experience in past courses, I tend to hesitate posting material for fear of it not being ‘good enough.’ This happened again in EDC and I ended up posting a bulk of material after-the-fact from Google docs where I store all of my work.
Week 7 and onward, I feel like I gained momentum and bounced back with my micro-ethnography here and here (comments on both posts). I continued to improve my blog during weeks 8-11 as we moved from block 2 to block 3. If my lifestream blog was subjected to data mining, I’m sure the numbers would not be truly reflective of my learning as meaning, connections and relationships are more difficult to measure (Eynon 2013).
In my view, here are some of my:
Top/Most Creative Posts
Honourable Mentions
- Tweetorial Analysis
- More on Tweetorial Analysis
- Students as ‘customers’ in higher education
- Exploring Algorithms, Part 1
- Exploring Algorithms, Part 2
- New Dimensions in Testimony
- Going Beyond the MOOC Community
Rotten Tomatoes
I’ve ranked my most creative posts as ‘top’ as they were central to my learning in this course because they required a long process of researching, thinking through the material and creating an end result artefact. I feel it’s important and meaningful to also point out our ‘failures’ (or rotten tomatoes) as it is these times when we usually learn the most.
Conclusion
Although I struggled at times, I thoroughly enjoyed the process of creating this lifestream blog. I have included a post on media I connected via IFTTT, a ‘blog-crawl’ assessment guide and a weekly summaries category. I view my lifestream blog as a living thing, as something I can modify, adapt and grow.
Thank you to Jeremy and James and to my peers for being so supportive and inspirational.
References
Eynon, R. (2013) The rise of Big Data: what does it mean for education, technology, and media research? Learning, Media and Technology. 237-240.
Knox, J. K. (2014). Active algorithms: sociomaterial spaces in the E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC. Campus Virtuales, 3(1): 42-55.
Knox, J. 2015. Algorithmic Cultures. Excerpt from Critical Education and Digital Cultures. In Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. M. A. Peters (ed.). DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_124-1
