Hey Everyone
Here is my reflection for what, in my opinion, has been a really great and different unit.
Use of blogs for learning purposes: Evaluation
I found the the use of blogs really useful for me and from my perspective helped my learning process.
What I liked about it was the idea of the blog was that it provided an extension of tutes. So often you will have just finished are tute, or are just trawling through the interent and see an article or think of something that would be of real benefit to tute discussions, but often it is not practical to bring it up in the next weeks tute. By using the blog, this unit was able to overcome what I see as an issue with tutes, and in that perspective I really liked the blog.
It also gave those who may not feel comfortable talking in tutes a forum for sharing their ideas and also allowed people to elaborate on controversial topics that they may have not had time to completely cover in the tutes.
What I did not like about the blog was in some cases low quality of discussion. For a blog to work and truly be taken seriously, it must have a give and take relationship, people will only post on the blog if they know what they post is going to be read and going to be responded to. In terms of this blog, I would often post material only to have one or two, or in some cases no comments, and, if I didn't enjoy blogging so much, may have been disheartened by such low levels of interation in some cases.
Overall, the blog is really relient on the members of the tute to make it useful, but for me I still found it an important aspect of the learning process.
I think that it is risky to further add requirements to the blog, simply because I don't think you want to make it too much of chore for people to do. Those that enjoy blogging and get something out of it will post when it is not required, and to force people to post, in my opinion, destroys the fluid nature of blogs.
Am I a Cyborg now?
Haraway writes that "We are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs." Without a doubt I would definitely consider myself a cyborg. Thanks to constantly changing and evolving nature of technology and the all encompassing influence on our everyday lives, from my perspective we we have almost evolved into a posthuman stage. Technology use for me is second nature. If the future is being constantly digital connected and in contact with others and having access to limitless amounts of information at a whim, then we are living the future now. Through my iPhone, I can instantly contact anyone, anywhere and any information I want is a simple click of a button away. I am rarely, if ever without some piece of technology, I would arguably have my phone on me, or within hands reach 24/7 and arguably am unsure whether I could/would want to survive without it, so yes I am proudly a cyborg.
What I most liked/disliked about the unit?
What I liked about the unit is the way it was taught. I liked the lectures and how they were used to give more contemporary examples of some of the concepts we covered and I really enjoyed the workshops. The workshops allowed us to put some of the concepts learnt into practice, and also allowed us a chance to mix and to talk with people who were not in our tute groups. The activities in the workshop were fun, engaging and also lead to me learning a lot of things I didn't know for example the ToS for Facebook etc.
My one change for the unit would perhaps be to extend the time allocation for tutes. To have up to 3 people presenting on, in some cases, 3 different readings all in 45 mins with discussion was often a challenge, and I would probably like to see tutes consist of 1.5 hour tutes like they do in upper level English units, or maybe make a better use of the online blogs when it comes to tute presentations. I also think it would be really cool if we could arrange to maybe have a lecture or a workshop within Second Life, as the topic of Second Life came up a lot.
Overall I really enjoyed this unit, and it is nice to see a unit coordinator embracing technology as a learning tool, as opposed to shunning it like so many other coordinators do.
See you in cyberspace,
Luke
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