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Welcome to the E-Learning and Digital Cultures MOOC.
I'm Jeremy Knox.
I'm a PhD student here at the University of Edinburgh.
And I'm also a tutor on the Masters in Digital Education,
a course, which we as a team, are all involved in teaching.
This short video is a chance for us to show our faces as the course
academic team and to say a bit about who we are and where we're coming from.
We're recording all of the videos of this MOOC in different
parts of the University of Edinburgh, partly as a way of
sharing with you some of the interesting and quirky corners of
our campus, and partly as a way of making some link.
Between the virtual spaces of the MOOC and the real estate of the university.
For us it's a way of asking, what is the university in this era of online teaching?
Where is it located?
And how can we understand it as a space
in an age of distributed, distance and digitally mediated education?
>> Hello. I'm Sian Bayne.
I'm Senior Lecturer in Digital Education here at the University of Edinburgh.
We're filming this from a room called the Balcony
Room here in the School of Education in Edinburgh.
This building was originally constructed in 1618.
And it's one of the few remaining
old aristocratic houses in the Edinburgh old town.
The vaulted and plastered ceilings you can see here actually date
back to the original building and we really like the way
they link to some of the themes of the EDC MOOC.
The eutopic immersion of these human or humanesque figures in
a pre technological, natural profusion of flowers, fruits, grapes, and greenery.
We'll see this link between the human and the natural, as opposed to
the technological, coming through quite strongly during
the first two weeks of the course.
The promise of disembodied contact is there too, and
we see this played out in many of our discussions of online communication.
And finally, the blurring of the boundary between species.
Boundaries we've always taken for granted,
represented in mythical characters like the Griffin,
which has the wings of an eagle and the body of a lion.
If some of these things seem obscure to you as you begin the course, we hope
that by the end, they'll be beginning
to make some more sense and have some resonance
with the ways in which we think about digital culture and digital education.
Education.
>> HI. I'm Jen Ross.
And I'm a lecturer here in the School of Education
and the Program Director of our Masters in Digital Education.
This is the first of a series of short films that you'll find
here in the EDC MOOC course, one for each week of the course.
>> These videos are meant as starting points, not for delivering course content.
They aren't lectures, they're offered as a way of orienting
you to the week's themes, and they suggest how you might
start to make sense of the ideas, films, readings, and
discussions that are taking place during the period of the course.
The main activities you'll find in EDC MOOC are not about consuming lectures.
They are about reading, watching the videos, writing
up blog postings, discussion board postings, and tweets.
Creating your visual and digital artifacts, and
building your personal network of peers and collaborators.
>> Hi there, I'm Christine Sinclair, I'm
a lecturer in digital education here at Edinburgh.
I'm also a graduate of the MSc in Digital Education.
So I know what it's like to be an online student.
This way of learning might not suit everyone, or you
might find it takes a while to get comfortable with
it, and that's okay.
This is all part of the process of learning what
it's like to be a learner at such massive scale.
One thing that EDC MOOC participants sometimes find is that there is
so much stuff going on in the MOOC, that it all feels overwhelming.
So if this happens to you, don't worry about it.
You're not alone.
One part of your task is to work out what you want to pay
attention to in the MOOC. And that can be quite challenging.
But it's also very rewarding.
>> Hi. My name's Hamish Macleod.
I'm a senior lecturor in the School of Education here.
I'm a twice graduate of the University.
First in biological sciences and then in psychology.
And I have spent my entire career teaching in the University.
Psychology first of all and then in the School of Education.
As a teacher, I've always been interested
in the possibilities of technology to support learning,
so it's great to continue to be involved with new things like, like the MOOC here.
So, this is the team from the University of
Edinburgh who'll be sharing this particular journey with you.
You might not always see us but we'll be
in there blogging, tweeting, commenting and generally in the course,
whatever that might mean for, for us and for you.
We hope you're going to enjoy this learning along with us.
you'll be meeting challenging new ideas, lots
of interesting people I'm really pleased that you're
going to be with us on the course and I look forward to meeting you.