From January 2015

Digital native, digital immigrant

A term which is become familiar to many in education and other fields.  But just in case you are not familiar then refer to Marc Prensky.

Anyway, I was musing how the term hasn’t really lived up to the hype. There doesn’t appear to be the differences that were hypothesised between the generations.

But, perhaps the term was coined ahead of its time? If bio-technological enhancements do become commonplace how will we teach this new generation of superhuman? Will the unenhanced, older, generation, have anything to offer? Or will we become redundant?

 

My early reflections on the module

I am going to reference a post here from another student, Katherine Firth, because the video came from here: http://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/kfirth/2015/01/19/bayne-2015/.  I did consider posting this as a comment, but it didn’t really follow the ongoing conversation.

Anyway, this was a new video to me, and gave me food for thought. It highlighted, for me, the importance of the social element in learning. How the teacher not only imparts knowledge to their students, but also attempts to “inspire, challenge and excite their student to want to learn.”  And how we learn as a group, not as individuals.

So some observations about how I feel about this module:

I miss having forums in a course.  If I want to say something that is off-topic but related, I can start a new thread, or just reply, and the replies can branch but still be followed.  Not possible here in a linear commenting interaction.  Each conversation is discrete; it’s very hard to link conversations together.

I miss hearing the voice of the tutors. I know they are active in each person’s lifestream but I have to look for them. It’s disjointed, like an unstarted jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces are there but I haven’t worked out how to put them together to see the whole picture.

I don’t feel as connected to the other students and the lecturers as I did in other modules.

On the positive side I am enjoying the lifestreaming; it’s new and I love having the finished blog pages with all of my thoughts and research together in one place.  And I am starting to find new ways to listen to everyone – e.g. following the ‘recent comments’ block on the main course page.  I also need to start using Twitter to hold conversations.

Overall, I like it.  It’s just going to take me a while to get used to the new style of interaction.

Thoughts on Gumdrop and Stop Dave, I’m Afraid

Stop, Dave is a disembodied voice, that gives the impression of being a sentient intelligence. It tries to provoke emotion in it’s human companion by the words it uses, “I feel’, “I assure you”, “I honestly think”, but there is no feeling behind the words, they are uttered in a monotone. It is easy for the human to ignore them.

Gumdrop on the other hand is clearly a robot in appearance yet speaks in a very human like way about her experiences and life. She appears to relate to humans in many ways, and her dream sequences show her interacting with humans as though she were human.  In fact, everything about the interview process shows her being treated as an equal to a human, there is no differentiation.