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Hi everyone. And welcome to week two of EDC MOOC.
Last week, we discussed how e-learning was represented in its early days
and how those representations could be seen as either Utopian or Dystopian.
And as examples of technological determinism.
We watched a number of short films and tried to get a sense of how
the representations of the web and of
digital culture connect with our understandings of e-learning.
We hope that you came away from last week with a sense of just how prevalent
these sorts of utopian and dystopian stories are
in accounts of e-learning and of digital culture.
And also, perhaps, an idea that sometimes,
those utopian and dystopian accounts aren't entirely justifiable.
It's more complex than that.
This week, we're going to turn our attention to the future and explore one
of the hottest topics in online education, the massive open online course, or MOOC.
Just like the e-learning readings from the past, there are
some very strong positions being taken about the MOOC phenomenon.
Utopian and dystopian stories are definitely
shaping our understanding of what is happening
now in the sphere of learning technology and what might happen in the future.
This week we'd like you to consider
how your understanding of how education can and
should develop is being influenced by current Utopian
and distopian accounts of how technology is developing
in a digital age.
I'm here at the informatics forum at The University of Edinburgh where
some of the work of the Scottish Sculptor, Eduardo Paolozzi is on display.
These sculptures, from the last 1960s are part of
what the Tate has called Paolozzi's attempt to realize what,
in a science fiction sense, might be imagined as
the art of the future, streamlined, gleaming, and machine art.
As the forum's description
of these works says, they have an ambiguous
quality between the organic and the technical form.
This ambiguity and attempts to create representations of the future
are common in art and culture, and as has been said
many times before but bears repeating, representations of the future
are often very revealing about our present day preoccupations and concerns.
Some of those representations can be seen in the short films
this week, which offer visions of what
the future of information technology might hold.
We don't want you to think of these as predictions but as
an interesting way of thinking about our present day hopes and fears.
Always on, ubiquitous communication embedded directly into our
bodies are carried with us at all times.
Is presented in some forms as a
profound threat, in others, as a thrilling opportunity.
Above all, the question seems to be,
who is set to benefit from
the personal constant attentions of information technology?
And who might lose out?
To help you identify where utopian and dystopian
perspectives are being presented, we'd like to suggest
that you pay particular attention in this week's
films and meetings to the use of metaphor.
Metaphor is another lens, like determinism, that we can use
to analyze utopian and dystopian stories about e-learning in digital cultures.
Whenever you see or
read a metaphor this week, try to think of an alternative
that could've been used and consider what difference it would have made.
So, for example, the visual metaphor of the empty room
at the start of the short film Site is quite evocative.
It suggests that real life for this character, whatever that might be, is
barren, and that all meaning is to be found in the virtual world.
Depending on how you interpret the ending, that might include relationships too.
What sort
of effect does this metaphor produce?
What might the filmmakers have done differently if
this were a utopian rather than a distopian film?
See if you can pay attention to the use
of metaphor in the readings this week as well.
And ask yourself what kind of work they're doing
to construct a particular kind of vision of online education?
Have a great week, everyone!
And see you online!