Wow! Just wow! My mind is still reeling from the sudden immersion into the world of the MOOC, or Massive Online Open Course. It is what it says on the box: Massive! There is no way on earth I could possibly cope with the sheer volume of data I am faced with. Every participant in the course has to create create a digital artifact and is encouraged to blog about his or her thoughts while taking part in this MOOC. So I figured I'd start out by attempting to simply process my first thoughts on the subject.
First-off, I've been doing a lot of reading on online education and flipping the classroom, mostly focusing on the Khan Academy and it's incredible potential. It excites me beyond belief. I really feel that as a new teacher, I'm riding the crest of a wave of revolution in the way we think about knowledge.
Secondly, I feel utterly overwhelmed, both by my seeming ignorance of a true digital society, since I live in South Africa where internet access is limited and expensive, and by the ignorance and indifference of my fellow teachers. The vast majority of the people I know think I'm strange for being such an involved netizen, and I have even had a headmisstress who scolded me for spending too much time online. To them it's a strange foreign world, barely worth a brief foray into. They prefer to watch TV.
Now, my responses to the films: I posted my comment on the first film below the video but I shall repeat it here.
Perhaps I'm completely off target here, but it seems to me that the criticism it makes of television doesn't apply to the web 2.0. Where before, as in the film, technology was something gifted to us by the all-powerful gods of mechanisms, now technology is our servant. We spend as much time typing into our computers as we spend reading from them. We engage, we learn, we communicate and ultimately we control.
To expand on this concept, I grew up without a telly in the house. My parents got rid of it because of the low quality of programming available in South Africa in the 90s, which in turn forced me to turn to books to get my daily dose of stimulation. This meant that even though my learning was not interactive, I at least had the ability to choose my reading matter. Gradually the number of computers in the house grew until every one of us in the house had our own. Now we torrent TV series, chat with family and friends on skype and keep up with the news of the world, each with his or her own favourite news site.
You see, in my mind, there's a world of difference between the mass media and the internet. Mass media is a set menu, with someone else making decisions on our behalf regarding what gets consumed when, how and in what format. The internet is not merely a buffet, it is a potluck dinner. Everyone brings something to the party and everyone is free to consume what he or she pleases, when and how.
So I feel that while the film is a relevant criticism of mass media with its hypnotic effect on the masses, the criticism does not apply to the internet. The internet is not a gadget, it is a way of being human.
The second film is an adorable bit of fantasy that takes the possibilities of the internet, especially the IM medium, and supplants them into a foreign context. My response to this film was wholly emotional. I myself have spent many charming evenings engaged in the kind of interaction the film parodies, and have felt that it added to a relationship, rather than detracted from it. Just as the two characters in the film share aspects of their offline lives with one another, so IM allows two people to share their digital lives with one another. Things such as what one has read that day, a picture that elicited a pleasing emotional response, or a film that made one think can be shared, discussed and enjoyed together. All in all, I think this is a charming analogy for the nature of online relationships.
Alright! Blog the first done for now.The next will hopefully expand on my thoughts regarding the human nature of the internet and contain a lot of links.
Ciao for now!
