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Final blog summary

Lifestream analytics

Twelve weeks of being open and connecting in a network of learning “located in the connections and interactions between learners, teachers and resources” (J. Knox)

I started my EDC journey on the 5th of January with a tweet, since then my lifestream blog has seen 179 posts from a variety of tools with twitter being the easiest to incorporate into IFTTT and Media Hopper which was impossible to incorporate. During these 12 weeks, my lifestream blog has acted as a “proxy” for my learning experience to show my development in the topics of…

Culture – block 1

I grappled with trans and post-humanism, and I wouldn’t say I overcame but rather the learning continues, I did however really enjoy delving into the aspects of cyborg and the dystopian themes of sci-fi cultures. One of the learning lightbulbs for me in this block came about thanks to a catch up for those of us who missed the together tube film fun, we held out own catch up and one of my classmates commented on all the fear we were seeing in the films and how it was the opposite of how she felt about technology. My artefact on the duality of tech culture was born out of this fear versus promise moment. Unfortunately, the low light of this block for me was finally getting to see Blade Runner. It didn’t live up to the hype .

Community – block 2

We switched from culture to delve deeper into the community, the heart of culture. I found it really interesting to turn the reading of Kozinets and Lister onto my own experiences of being part of the blogging and youtube community and to put this learning into practise in both the netnography we were asked to complete and in my own netnography for fun where I looked a the youtube community I am part of.

Algorithms – block 3

Proved a meaty opportunity to jump into learning analytics and have fun with stats. WordPress, twitter and youtube were all examined and toyed with as I got my head around the big questions of use of analytics, both for good and with the possibility of misuse. The chaos of the tweetorial was fun, and even let me get my work colleagues involved in trying to help me keep up with the conversations in real time. Learning analytics is something I will take away with me and intend to study further.

In reviewing my lifestream for the last 12 weeks, I am happy to see my progress from the very tentative, shy steps of week one, to the exciting blog posts of week 10 and 11 where I am seeing things through different eyes. I stopped fighting IFTTT and let my blog happen organically, although it went against my very blogging soul, but even in that, I have learned. I learned about the use of a lifestream blog to track learning and in itself become a sort of learning analytic, a tool to show progress.  I eventually learned that the objective of this exercise was not to produce a blog as such but to provide a record.

 

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Weekly round up – week 9

Let’s get rid of the elephant first, this week I did a lot of tidying up as the tweetorial took over my blog. Twitter dominated and it was messy, I can’t have disorder or mess. You can now read all the tweets in one nice, neat post.

Adventuring through classmates’ blogs this week also gave me a couple of smiles, Claire and I have a TV show in common and Renee found a brilliant infographic which I stole. I also enjoyed some recommended readings which tied into an article I shared from my pocket.

Youtube fun was to be had with a video talking about algorithms in the financial sector and how they are causing physical changes to our world and there was excitement as I had a play with IFTTT to try to show the potential pitfalls of humans interpreting algorithmic data. Then disappointment as it didn’t work but still a valuable thought. I pinned a great picture of a digital footprint to talk about the information we harvest from students here at Edinburgh and how we might be using it and I joined Helen in celebrating our real lecture, like “proper” students 😉  which served nicely as a chance to challenge course design for all and not the assumption of a student.

This week has felt balanced and productive and  I feel I have progressed with some of my digital choices, learning their benefits, was that the point of making me use IFTTT perhaps and I had space to contemplate and to share thoughts. A successful week.