Worried that I’m not excited

In 39 days I’m going to wake up in Delhi. That should be an exciting thought? But no I’m feeling nothing. Perhaps it’s because I know that nothing I can anticipate now will prepare me for what I’m in for. Or maybe it’s because I’ve had my head down for so long, working and striving towards something that I’ve got so in to life on the treadmill and not really thought much why I’m doing it. I’m going to be  lost when I stop, a bit like how the channel tunnellers felt when they broke through. Not an anti-climax as such, just a thought of “Oh. Now what?” On the one hand I’ve had all that great feeling of being focused, aiming for something, working towards a goal. On the other hand I’ve been wearing blinkers for over a year and living in a box with indifference to what’s on the outside.

So I’m going to be keeping this blog throughout my travels so that I can be pretentious and talk about my feelings? Well yes. If I sent emails I would have to consider who I’m writing to, what their expectations were and if I was meeting them. It would also be arrogant of me to assume that people would want to read what I wrote. On Facebook I’d just add to the noise, have the piss taken out of me and then fall off the news feed. Whereas here I’m writing to no one, so maybe I can try to be honest.

I suppose the one thing I am feeling now is anxiety of what it will be like to be on my own when I travel. I’m not talking about insecurity, boredom or loneliness. I mean I just haven’t got a clue who I am in that context – i.e. in a strange country with nobody to spur or hold me back. I want my trip to be rich and eventful, but for all I know I might just sit around reading and watching the trains go by. But if that’s me, then so be it.

Soul searching aside, I’m really enjoying all the shopping I’ve been doing in preparation. This week I bought:

• A sterile medical kit. Basically it contains loads of syringes in case I need an injection in a part of the World with less than sanitary medical supplies. In all likelihood they’ll probably be used to pump watermelons full of exotic booze, or loose them to someone in need in the Golden Triangle.
• A money belt. I’m not sure how good the nylon it’s made of will feel rubbing against my belly in humid 40 degree heat, but at least I’ll know it’s there.
• An 8Gb memory card for my phone which will be used for it’s MP3 player and GPS capabilities.
• A spare 4Gb memory card for my camera. I chose this size so that I would never put too many eggs in the basket and the contents would fit on to a DVDR.
• A head lamp/torch. I’ve always felt a bit silly wearing one of these, but on the plus side I’ll have full ownership of my hands…
• A wind-up phone charger. I really like it, but will be annoying for anyone around me as it’s quite noisy. Also think four hours of winding will be required to fully charge the phone. I’m tempted to rig it up to the headlamp so that I can be like Data out of The Goonies.

The postman has also been bringing me books I’ve ordered for people as Christmas and birthday presents, and of course the final components to my costume for the Finnish cross-dressing party. When I tried on the dress the other day the zip cracked, so now I’m going to have to get creative with safety pins. Oh well..

 

YouTube video

You can watch the first video I’ve uploaded on to YouTube by following this link Pedestrian crossing from Mecantile 3.04.It’s pretty boring really – just over four minutes of footage of a couple of pedestrian crossings filmed from the third floor of Mercantile house. I suppose it is quite interesting to watch people go about their days – following orderly routes like ants. I don’t think anyone notices that they are being filmed, nor really does anyone look up much. I used Apple iMovie using the built in webcam on a MacBook Pro to record the footage. I didn’t manipulate the footage in iMovie at all. I wanted to change the speed of the footage – I find that this brings out the movement and volume of groups of people. Surprisingly this was one effect that iMovie did not offer. I was pleased that the software was able to export directly to YouTube. 

The Digital Dilemma: Making the Most of the Digital Communication Technology and Pedagogy

Not reading it in it’s original form, I can only assume that Heather Hundley’s piece The Digital Dilemma: Making the Most of the Digital Communication Technology and Pedagogy is a review of three loosely related texts. Hundley attempts to unify the selection of the texts under an umbrella theme – that “as soon as equipment for and books on cyberspace, digital culture, and technology are published, they are outdated”. Surely such a theme could be used to review any text relating to digital culture or technology? I found it amusing that this theme was mentioned in the opening paragraphs of the text, then pretty much abandoned as critical tool. Actually, it is the example that Hundley cites in the opening paragraph, and the language that she uses throughout the text that comes across as being most out-dated. She refers to the book Modern Radio Production (Hausman, Benoit, and O’Donnell 2000) that states that one of the drawbacks of CDs (compact discs) is that they “can be used for playback only”. Hundley gamely points out that in fact by 2000 “CD burners were already on the market” and that students reading the book would find that “their personal experience was at variance with the state of affairs asserted in their textbook”. Her point still stands, however the technology of course does not. Her persistent use of the word “cyberspace” and the more dubious “cyberinterviews”, and “cyberstudies” carbon-date the piece to an era where one would “surf the information super-highway”. Use of such phrases also illustrates the keenness of the writer to show that she is familiar with the technology – dropping buzzwords. I will not attempt to summarise Hundley’s three reviews. As teasers I think Amazon would be the best place for them, they certainly do a fine job of promoting the texts. Hundley extracts the core themes and arguments of each text, and provides consistent chapter-by-chapter summaries. Her concluding opinion of every text is that it would be “for readers interested in media studies, engineering, technology, psychology, child development, law and computer science”. If this is true my reading list has just swelled.

The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places

This week I have been reading Carol Mullen’s review of the 1996 book The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places by Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass. Mullen opens by describing the familiar scenario that “…preschoolers believe that the popcorn shown on a screen will fall out of the bag if someone were to turn the television set upside down”. In my case it was the newsreaders that disturbed me – why didn’t their legs come out of the bottom of the television? Within a few years of troubling ourselves which such questions (and the even less comprehensible responses we receive) we somehow learn to accept pseudo realities.  I was reminded of the time when I was seventeen - David Bowie’s Life on Mars? was playing in the background as my eighteen month old sister was crawled round my room. I didn’t realise that she was listening to the song until the lines “But her mummy is yelling, ‘No!’ And her daddy has told her to go” when my sister looked at me in shock horror and her eyes began to fill with tears. In instant I knew how she felt, that I could not explain how she had nothing to worry about, or that one day she would understand. Mullen then continues to exemplify some of the books key concepts. I could strongly relate to her experiences of emotional and social engagement with computers. In a typical day I experience the satisfaction of Nero telling me that “The burning process completed without errors”, Visual Studio boosts my confidence with the message “Build completed successfully” or the smugness I’m feeling now as I notice that Word is incorrectly highlighting spelling mistakes – it’s dictionary is still in Seattle. Mullen relays the argument that responses to media are “natural” : “… media are perceived as real people and places, and … human responses to media are determined by the rules that apply to social relationships and navigating the world”. Disappointingly (but understandably) the subject of how our minds make these unconscious manipulations of the mediated world is not discussed. But essentially, to understand media we have to make these conversions. As a human race we have historically lived in a real world –real objects and real people –we only know how to interact with reality. We must trick our un-evolved minds in to understanding alternative realities on their terms. I would be very curious to see how this process pans out over the next few thousand years of our evolution.Mullen also points out that the authors discovered that characters used in media did not need to look real. Studies showed that even basic line drawings would elicit rich emotional responses. Microsoft’s (hopefully deceased) Office helper came to mind. The smug little creature would stand over my shoulder, condescend me with its tips, shrug it’s shoulders when I ask it for advice or just stand there grinning like a fool. I’m certainly in agreement that in my mind the mediated world does activate very strong emotional responses.

Strategic Use of Digital Learning Resources in Designing E-Lessons.

I recently found myself in the unique situation of making small talk with an interactive whiteboard salesman. He had arrived at my company for a meeting with my boss, who as usual was running a little late. On the one occasion I had used a whiteboard I was impressed by the technology, but at the same time curious as to why it had been installed – aesthetics aside. So it was with a certain degree of incredulity that I began to exhaust every query I could think of relating to interactive whiteboards.

“Was looking in to the projector beam detrimental to children’s eyesight?”, “What can you do if you write on the board using a conventional pen?” and “How accurate is the hand-writing recognition software?”  With my technological concerns quashed, I finally asked the question “Do whiteboards help children learn?”  I was expecting a polished response straight from the marketing department, but instead was told that “Yes, the children who would have previously been daydreaming at the back of the classroom were now vying for their place at the front”. I wanted to dismiss this, but then I recalled my own encounter with an interactive whiteboard. For once I had the confidence to stand in front of a room of full of people. The technology had killed the butterflies.

So it was with the same interest (and I admit slight jealousy of the fact that I could only dream of such technologies when I was at school) that I read Myint Swe Khine’s paper, Strategic Use of Digital Learning Resources in Designing E-Lessons. Khine first discussed how recent technological developments had affected educators. Khine recognised three roles of a teacher in an IT-integrated learning environment:  a presenter, a facilitator and a designer. The presenter is a more traditional role – at the front of the class transmitting information. As a facilitator the teacher provides guidance for pupils discovering knowledge on their own and as a designer the teacher is preparing learning materials for dissemination either as a presenter or a facilitator. Khine then documents the assessment of an existing learning management system – SchoolDNA . The system was assessed by surveying 90 trainee teachers using a 17 question questionnaire. The paper concluded by analysing the results of the surveys.

What initially interested me was the way in which technology has arguably changed the role of the teacher – no longer the speaker at the front of the classroom, now a personalised guide to every pupil. From a more traditional point of view, it would seem that the status of the teacher has been eroded – less revered. On the other hand education has become more accessible and personalised through technology.  For me the paper also raised questions as to whether IT was effective in learning environments where pupils did not want to learn, or could not be left to discover knowledge on their own.

I was a little disappointed with the methodology used to assess SchoolDNA, or rather I did not feel that the selected methodology was appropriately justified. Yes the teachers’ opinions and experiences should be recognised, and of course the system must be usable – but its greatest objective I believe is to aid learning.

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My First Post

Well, if you haven’t met me, or can’t remember what I look like, this is me.

Unfortunately I broke the sunglasses shortly after wearing them. If you find any similar ones, let me know.