Saw "Plurality", a film directed by Dennis Liu and written by Ryan Condal
It was uploaded to youtube on October 1st 2012, and released by Traffik Filmworks.
"Plurality" depicts a highly developed surveillance system that has caused the crime rate of 2023 New York to drop "below that of Cheyenne, Wyoming". and is faultless within a margin of 0.001%. "I think anyone would sacrifice a little bit of privacy for that kind of personal safety", is the well known argument from the protagonists of more police powers. Benjamin Franklin's quote comes to mind: 'They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.'.
In today's social and educational practice people seem to worry a lot about privacy and the dangers of 'Big Brother is watching you'. Advocacy groups such as Bits of Freedom (Netherlands or the European Digital Rights Initiative keep a close watch on developments in legislation and jurisdiction.
In education we need to keep a close watch on developments, but large scale breaches of student privacy have not been reported to my knowledge. Checks and balances should be in place, and the larger MOOC's and platforms like Coursera become, the more vulnerable they will become, to identity theft, viruses and breach of privacy. Teaching the value of privacy and digital safety in general, starting in elementary school, seems to be the best safeguard against runaway surveillance societies.
Further reading might be: Davis, K. & James, C. (2013). Tweens' conception of privacy online: implications for educators. Learning, Media & technology, 38(1), 4-25.
zondag 10 februari 2013
maandag 4 februari 2013
Diploma Mills vs Natives & Immigrants
From the learning resources of week 1 of #EDCMOOC
https://class.coursera.org/edc-001/wiki/view?page=DeterminingThePast
I read "Digital natives, digital immigrants" by Marc Prensky (2001) and "Digital diploma mills: the automation of higher education" by David Noble (1998). These two authors take a standpoint almost opposite of eachother. Prensky's utopian view of students whose brains are altered by the ubiquitous environment of internet contrasts quite starkly with the warnings of Noble who warns us for "driving this headlong rush to implement technology" and "risk of student and faculty alienation". Privatization of public education will turn universities in "patent holding companies' and rising tuition fees must 'subsidize the commercial infrastructure'. Already in 1998 Noble notes Lehman Brothers, an investment firm that was at the center of the 2008 banking crisis(1), as stating that:"investment opportunity in education has never been better". Universities were rapidly being taken over by commercialization, forged ahead by 'ubiquitous technozealots who simply view computers as the panacea for everything.' The darkest vision here is described in a quote from Educom president Robert Heterich: "the potential to remove the human mediation in some areas and replace it with automation - smart, computer-based, network-based systems - is tremendous, it's gonna happen.'
The origin of this quotes is difficult to find, I found a scholarly reference in Weaver, 1999 in Libri Journal(2) which gives Noble 1997(3) as a source.
Prensky's article also lacks references. His argument uses the metaphor of immigrant and natives to illustrate the difference between tech-savvy students and internet-deprived older folk 'who print their e-mail'. Prensky's enthousiams can work inspiring, to try out new things, and try multitasking 'at higher speed'. But his assumption that 'their brains may already be different' remains unreferenced. His part 2 article is reported to present evidence(4).
upper Marc Prensky - theage.com.au and under: David F. Noble cla.umn.edu
(1) Baba, N.& Packer, F. (2009) From turmoil to crisis: dislocations in the FX swap market before and after the failure of Lehman Brothers; Journal of International Money and Finance.
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/wbs/subjects/finance/confpapers09/baba_packer_paper.pdf.
(2) http://www.librijournal.org/pdf/1999-3pp142-149.pdf.
(3) Noble, David F. 1997. “Digital Diploma Mills” (October) [article on-line]; URL: http://www.hronline.
com/forums/labour/9711/0271.html; accessed October 6, 1998 [not online anymore, feb 2013].
(4) Digital natives, digital immigrants Part 2: Do they really think differently?
M Prensky - On the horizon, 2001 - emeraldinsight
dinsdag 29 januari 2013
4 films illustrating Utopian / Dystopian views on technology
After watching these 4 films:
- Bendito Machine III - Zumbakamera 2009.
- Inbox - Madonne Ashwin, 2012
- Thursday - Matthias Hoegg, 2010
- New Media - Julian Cooke, Sebastian Dias, 2012
As mentioned in the resources for #edcmooc week one, I thought about the films, how they were made, if they portray a Utopian or Dystopian narrative, and if they shed any light on the way we might look at learning and technology. The first three titles seem to have a friendly undertone, that would make them suitable for children too. The fourth film , "New media" has quite a dark and surrealistic atmosphere, and reminded me of 'War of the Worlds'.
Bendito Machine III shows a tribe that worships artifacts of technology that comes from above, from the clouds. After the objects of worship malfunction, they are discarded and a new piece of technology is raised on the socle. The three pieces seem to get bigger one after the other, but it looks like they do the same: they make noises and show images. In one way this film might be regarded as Dystopian (portraying fictional society with frightening aspects) because of the primitive superstition with which the tribes folk regard the objects of their worship. On the positive side, life seems to go on regardless of the cycle of new technological god figures.
On a more romantic basis, "Inbox" and "Thursday" show a couple and their reaction to technological possibilities (Inbox) or profound mechanization of society (Thursday). The first seems to be on the Utopian side, the second more weighing on a Dystopian narrative. The bird in Thursday may symbolize nature, or could be an "agent" on its own. Is it coincidental the bird bites the electrical wires, thereby bringing the Machine to a standstill?
After watching the short films I started reading Daniel Chandler - Technological or media determinism. Unfortunately the server was unresponsive halfway in my reading, probably because too much EEDCMOOC-folk were trying to get access. Luckiliy I found and printed a PDF version. Interesting discussions can be seen in this paper, about free will, determinism and the role of technology in evolution. Although I don't consider myself a determinist, or believer of technological autonomy, I do think it is important to treat technology in society and education with caution, as if it were deterministic. I was pleasantly surprised to see the mention of Asimov 1981 - "Asimov on science fiction. New York: Avon. Checking if this is available in a library in the Netherlands,... yes, the Amsterdam Public library has one on loan!
After seeing the four films, and reading Chandler and John Daniel's "Technology is the Answer: What was the Question?", my preliminary conclusion on technology and education would be that education may be helped (specially in view of access and speed) with technology, but learning being a holistic activity, technology can never fully replace face to face contact between teacher and student (just like an orchestra without a physical present conductor seems impossible). For example see: Deka, Tedi S. & McMurry, Patrick (2006): Student Success in Face-To-Face and Distance Teleclass Environments: A matter of contact? in IRR ODL - http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/251/468 (seen Jan. 30th 2013).
- Inbox - Madonne Ashwin, 2012
- Thursday - Matthias Hoegg, 2010
- New Media - Julian Cooke, Sebastian Dias, 2012
As mentioned in the resources for #edcmooc week one, I thought about the films, how they were made, if they portray a Utopian or Dystopian narrative, and if they shed any light on the way we might look at learning and technology. The first three titles seem to have a friendly undertone, that would make them suitable for children too. The fourth film , "New media" has quite a dark and surrealistic atmosphere, and reminded me of 'War of the Worlds'.
Bendito Machine III shows a tribe that worships artifacts of technology that comes from above, from the clouds. After the objects of worship malfunction, they are discarded and a new piece of technology is raised on the socle. The three pieces seem to get bigger one after the other, but it looks like they do the same: they make noises and show images. In one way this film might be regarded as Dystopian (portraying fictional society with frightening aspects) because of the primitive superstition with which the tribes folk regard the objects of their worship. On the positive side, life seems to go on regardless of the cycle of new technological god figures.
On a more romantic basis, "Inbox" and "Thursday" show a couple and their reaction to technological possibilities (Inbox) or profound mechanization of society (Thursday). The first seems to be on the Utopian side, the second more weighing on a Dystopian narrative. The bird in Thursday may symbolize nature, or could be an "agent" on its own. Is it coincidental the bird bites the electrical wires, thereby bringing the Machine to a standstill?
After watching the short films I started reading Daniel Chandler - Technological or media determinism. Unfortunately the server was unresponsive halfway in my reading, probably because too much EEDCMOOC-folk were trying to get access. Luckiliy I found and printed a PDF version. Interesting discussions can be seen in this paper, about free will, determinism and the role of technology in evolution. Although I don't consider myself a determinist, or believer of technological autonomy, I do think it is important to treat technology in society and education with caution, as if it were deterministic. I was pleasantly surprised to see the mention of Asimov 1981 - "Asimov on science fiction. New York: Avon. Checking if this is available in a library in the Netherlands,... yes, the Amsterdam Public library has one on loan!
After seeing the four films, and reading Chandler and John Daniel's "Technology is the Answer: What was the Question?", my preliminary conclusion on technology and education would be that education may be helped (specially in view of access and speed) with technology, but learning being a holistic activity, technology can never fully replace face to face contact between teacher and student (just like an orchestra without a physical present conductor seems impossible). For example see: Deka, Tedi S. & McMurry, Patrick (2006): Student Success in Face-To-Face and Distance Teleclass Environments: A matter of contact? in IRR ODL - http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/251/468 (seen Jan. 30th 2013).
maandag 28 januari 2013
Entering the class room
this morning around 10.30 MET I eneterd the classroom for #EDCMOOC . After watching two short films, I signed up for Synchtube and copied the Room URL Http://synchtube.com/r/Dv2013,
Which on an Ipad is not so straightforward.
going to watch the next two film clips.
woensdag 23 januari 2013
Updated coursera profile
After reading this blog
http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/elearning/reflection-on-the-elearning-and-digital-cultures-mooc-wk-0-edcmooc/
by David Hopkins
I updated my Coursera profile:
https://www.coursera.org/user/i/5e1efc876f817262448e09156281126e
dinsdag 22 januari 2013
Reading tips
Reading tips from Plus Google - Wayne Barry
"I'm reading some interesting posts on here around the notions of "identity" and "learning spaces". There is some interesting work on these by John Paul Gee (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Paul_Gee). He has posted some articles via his blog that may be of interest to the EDCMOOC Community, these are:
"Affinity Spaces: From Age of Mythology to Today's Schools" - http://www.jamespaulgee.com/node/5
"Identity as an Analytic Lens for Research in Education" - http://www.jamespaulgee.com/node/18 "
#EDCMOOC
Enrolled on January 8th 2013 in the #EDCMOOC - course "E-learning and Digital Cultures"
https://www.coursera.org/course/edc
lots of precourse activiy already happening on twitter, facebook and Google Plus:
https://plus.google.com/communities/116967860906905648378/stream/b469d1dd-3918-4a8c-8280-1aec45867e93.
Looking forward experiencing this new phenomenon of MOOC (Massive Open Online Course)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOC.
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