{"id":1292,"date":"2013-01-30T23:23:48","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T07:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/?p=1292"},"modified":"2013-11-03T15:30:38","modified_gmt":"2013-11-03T23:30:38","slug":"week-1-e-learning-and-digital-cultures-edcmooc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/week-1-e-learning-and-digital-cultures-edcmooc\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 1: E-learning and Digital Cultures #edcmooc"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading Time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span><p><strong>I&#8217;m currently attending this MOOC: <a href=\"https:\/\/class.coursera.org\/edc-001\/class\/index\">E-learning and Digital Cultures<\/a>, offered through Coursera.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>Activity for Week 1<\/h2>\n<p>Themes explored this week included technological utopianism and dystopianism, and the idea of technological determinism.<\/p>\n<p>I watched these videos:<\/p>\n<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xiXOigfDb0U?rel=0&amp;fs=1' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This animation showed symbolically how cultures elevate and then scrap technologies, hoisting them to a high level of dominance, only to turf them in favour of the next big thing. The animation design style mimicked Javanese paper cutout shadow puppets, which was a very compelling choice, and lent a sense of tribal, primitiveness and other-worldliness to the characters.<\/p>\n<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/75wNgCo-BQM?rel=0&amp;fs=1' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This live-action comedy-drama uses the metaphor of magic paper bags and sticky notes to illustrate behaviours, interactions and expectations in social media (Facebook, primarily).<\/p>\n<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HQ1z0Zzqg5U?rel=0&amp;fs=1' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Thursday&#8221; is a charming animation showing the tension and inter-relation between human modern electronic culture, and the natural world that continues around (and in spite of) it.<\/p>\n<p>The design style of the animation evokes video games in its pixely appearance and representation of space (isometric projection and side-scroller&#8221; look and feel).<\/p>\n<p>Thursday seems to be saying that we live in a vastly technological society, but the natural world is vaster still, and more persistent. The little mother blackbird adapts her song to the tunes she overhears in people&#8217;s cellphones and alarm clocks, steals a bit of wire to build her nest, and shelters her chicks in a satellite dish. Nature adapts.<\/p>\n<p>Mankind borrows echoes from nature, putting little bird-like chirps into its mechanical tools &#8211; as an ancient comfort perhaps? Generally, it&#8217;s man who seems to be living with blinders on, surrounding himself with mechanical proxies for nature, and cloistering himself away from it in his dark, hive-like internal cubicle farms. Not until our human protagonist sees &#8220;the big picture&#8221; from space (and later when he contemplates the little crashed bird on his windowsill) does he seem to reconnect to his natural world.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, the theme I saw here was freedom and survival of the natural world, alongside the structure and abstractions of the human digital culture. I think the true main protagonist of this little film are the birds.<\/p>\n<p>#edcmooc<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading Time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span>I&#8217;m currently attending this MOOC: E-learning and Digital Cultures, offered through Coursera. Activity for Week 1 Themes explored this week included technological utopianism and dystopianism, and the idea of technological determinism. I watched these&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9,18,17,14],"tags":[48,39,62,42,45],"class_list":["post-1292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-learning","category-media","category-process","category-teaching","tag-edcmooc","tag-culture","tag-design","tag-education","tag-mooc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1292"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1301,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions\/1301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}