Before I get into my opinions and thoughts on David Bell's Why Cyberculture?, I just want to share my thoughts on learning the basics of Flash Professional, and they are:
OH SO MUCH FUN!
I've always enjoyed playing around with creative programs on the computer. I loved learning Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, and I still play around with them whenever I can. I feel like these kinds of programs (Flash included) are a great excuse for adults to mess around like kids. It's like Play Doh and Lego, but with more buttons.
Awesome.
On that note of technological advancement, Bell's article (or chapter, or whatever it was) definitely brought some interesting things to mind while I was reading it. At one point, he talks about experiential stories and interactions with new technologies by conjuring the image of connecting to stories, images, and ideas via the world wide web, and the, what he calls, "ambient fear" of infection through spam, pop-ups, and unprotected searches (Bell, 2007). This automatically brings up the question in my mind, how did we reach this point of the cyber world, or "cyberspace," crossing over into the physical world? We worry about getting viruses, but when it comes down to it, a computer virus doesn't affect us physically. We don't get sick from it, and we certainly don't die.
In a more general sense, when Bell lists the inclusions of cyberculture studies, he mentions such technologies as artificial intelligence, artificial life, robotics, and new modes of film production, distribution, and consumption (Bell, 2007). All of these actually do exist in our physical world, but still retain that somewhat intangible element of cyberspace. With AI and A-Life, as with robotics (which often gives the illusion of AI), we can physically see and understand the results, but unless we're scientists or engineers, we often can't quite comprehend the "how" of it. The film industry, on the other hand, touches many people more personally because we all watch movies, and many of us take advantage of new distribution and consumption methods, such as movie downloads, illegal pirating, and so on. I don't want to go on forever, so I'll just leave it at that.
Bell, D. (2007). Cyberculture Theorists: Manuel Castells and Donna Haraway. Routledge: New York.
Thursday 17 March 2011
Wednesday 9 March 2011
My Blog on Blogging
Although I don't have extensive experience with blogs, I have a firm grasp on the basic concept. Blogs are one of those web tools that does nothing but grow. More and more people use them every day, and for an increasing variety of reasons. I've read blogs that are used as an outlet for creative expression and story writing, as well as journals, informational posts, and collaborative projects.
All of these and more fall into the wide range of genres discussed by Jean Burgess in his article Blogging to Learn, Learning to Blog (Burgess, 2006). I find it interesting the way Burgess distinguishes these genres not only by content, but also by writing style and conversational or speech patterns. Speech patterns may seem like a strange thing to use to categorize writing, but there's a huge difference, as any writer knows, between a serious, informative tone and a personal or anecdotal voice.
When it comes to using blogging in an academic context, as Burgess discusses, I never really thought about what a valuable learning tool it can be. It was obvious to me right away the value of using blogs to get students participating in readings or summarizing lectures, but I never thought about the full on integration of an academic blog into the everyday life of a student. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes in getting students excited about learning. When we're young, we love to explore and discover new things for ourselves, but somewhere in our stages of growing up, we tend to lose that excitement, instead falling into a pattern of fact memorization and regurgitation. Suddenly, when we're thrown into this world of creating our own learning and sharing space, students are given the opportunity to experiment again and learn how to... well, learn how to learn things for ourselves, without having them spoon-fed to us. Academic blogging opens the door for students to learn all about the world and then share what they've learned with others. Personally, I find that kind of invigorating.
References:
Burgess, J. (2006). Blogging to Learn, Learning to Blog. In Bruns, Axel, & Jacobs, Joanne (Eds.), Uses of Blogs (pp. 105-114). New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
All of these and more fall into the wide range of genres discussed by Jean Burgess in his article Blogging to Learn, Learning to Blog (Burgess, 2006). I find it interesting the way Burgess distinguishes these genres not only by content, but also by writing style and conversational or speech patterns. Speech patterns may seem like a strange thing to use to categorize writing, but there's a huge difference, as any writer knows, between a serious, informative tone and a personal or anecdotal voice.
When it comes to using blogging in an academic context, as Burgess discusses, I never really thought about what a valuable learning tool it can be. It was obvious to me right away the value of using blogs to get students participating in readings or summarizing lectures, but I never thought about the full on integration of an academic blog into the everyday life of a student. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes in getting students excited about learning. When we're young, we love to explore and discover new things for ourselves, but somewhere in our stages of growing up, we tend to lose that excitement, instead falling into a pattern of fact memorization and regurgitation. Suddenly, when we're thrown into this world of creating our own learning and sharing space, students are given the opportunity to experiment again and learn how to... well, learn how to learn things for ourselves, without having them spoon-fed to us. Academic blogging opens the door for students to learn all about the world and then share what they've learned with others. Personally, I find that kind of invigorating.
References:
Burgess, J. (2006). Blogging to Learn, Learning to Blog. In Bruns, Axel, & Jacobs, Joanne (Eds.), Uses of Blogs (pp. 105-114). New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
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