The most significant event in my lifestream over the past week has been the twitter post relating to my choice of MOOC:  Futurlearn’s  EXPLORE FILMMAKING: FROM SCRIPT TO SCREEN NATIONAL FILM AND TELEVISION SCHOOL . After reviewing a number of MOOC’s I settled on this particular one as it has a nice fit in terms of a micro ethnographic analysis, with the experience of our own film festival on EDC  in terms of its focus on film across different genres, with notions of existence in mind, at a first glance . It also nicely  includes the short film format as well as features. This MOOC although accommodating film enthusiasts has an instructional focus on the film making process itself, a process which I use in my own professional situation within an educational context. I obviously have yet to see how this is all going to pan out, but so far there is a feeling of community in the sense of the active contributions which people seem to be making. There is also  a lot of content here.

I’ve also carried out an overall review of the core reading, all invaluable, from different perspectives. From a point of view of ‘What exactly is it that I’ve  joined in terms of a MOOC?’ Stewart (2013, pp229- 30) provides a distinct set of categories differentiating the c MOOC and the x MOOC. Although the NFTS is an elite institution as a third party partner to Futurelearn (which is incidentally a non- profit organization, unlike other MOOC facilitators, e.g. Coursera), this would put it in Stewart’s (2013) x MOOC category, however it does seem to consist of the kind of ‘participatory exploration’ of the connectivist c MOOC (2013). This is perhaps just as Stewart notes  the fairly recent (Winter 2013) University of Edinburgh E Learning and Digital Cultures MOOC (Coursera) similarly emhphasized ‘peer networking and student sense making contributions’ (2013).

Kozinets (2010) has a nice contribution to make here in the summing up of this very initial foray into the constellation of different MOOC types, in the observation that (2010, p28):

‘Regardless of medium or exact pathway to participation, the theory suggests that, over time and with frequently increasing communications, the sharing of communications, the sharing of personal identity information…-that social and cultural information permeates every exchange, effecting a kind of gravitational pull that causes every exchange to become coloured with emotional, affiliative, and meaning rich elements.’

I can’t help but reflect on the way in which this point relates to an observation regarding literacies Stewart makes, in citing Gee (cited 2013, p232; (1996)), in identifying literacies as social practices; putting it in its briefest form:  we should align these multiple literacies required for ‘effective participation in in digital social environments’ (2013), with ‘the communicative practices perspective on learning’ (2013).

Finally one other area I’ve been focused on, as a precursor to my micro ethnography is the ethical dimension. The Samsung Smart TV Tweet seemed like a nice metaphor here and a conversation is currently going on around this issue. I have looked at Fournier (2014) who notes ‘ informed consent is problematic if it is not clear what the participant is consenting to, and where participation begins or ends’ ( cited in Fournier, 2014,p3; Miller and Bell, (2002, p53)).

To be continued, with film and image included. IFTTT will create a favourite Vimeo post in my blog, but without the url, however!