Reflecting, Connecting
My initial interest in this course was planted firmly in the technologies of today. Personally and professionally, I am overwhelmed by the onslaught of new tools at our disposal. I have grappled with how best to harness these to inspire reading and literacy in my work with ‘non-readers’. I recognized that our increased use of technology has us engaging in some kind of reading or writing every day, but now I better understand that engagement.
The course has helped immensely in putting all of this into perspective. Defining a ‘text’ and positioning that alongside writing systems, literacies and technologies through time was reassuring to me. Reading Ong and Bolter on paper, SocialBook and iPad was an experience in itself. Studying history through this lens reminded me that we are now, as always, somewhere on a continuum. From Plato to present, there will always be objections.
I appreciate now more than ever ETEC540’s work to document the course online in all its evolving sections. I have not had the time to watch every film or read every post, and expect I’ll be viewing them for the rest of the summer and referring back to them for a long time. I never imagined that I would understand papyrus, stereographs, talking drums, cursive writing and tattoos as texts and technologies. It is amazing!
The recently used tools in our last assignment were like a candy shoppe, too. If ETEC540 doesn’t have a repository for all these as a reference, I will bookmark and add them all to my Twitter feed. The point, of course, is that the tools change… but playing with these technologies while reading history and discussing motivations past and present is what has enriched our experimentation.
Here we are, our postmodern selves in a networked culture. As ever-present as they are, I feel that many limitations are falling away. Yet the one limitation we cannot control is time itself. On any scale, we are in a race against time. It is a gift to better understand our time and place, and hopefully emerge from it having enriched our collective understanding even only a little if not for ourselves then for those who will come after us.
Thank you, everyone, for such a growth experience. I hope to engage with you again in some virtual or real space!
Julia (@jkdaina)
Image: Taken at Masdar Institute Abu Dhabi, Digital Guestbook built by Joshua Davis Studios
I echo your sentiments in that I, too, will be continuing to reflect upon and view pieces from this course throughout the summer and after! I’ll follow you on twitter, great idea to post the links you find useful here.
Sandra @sandratice
As Dewey said….we do not learn from experiences, we learn from reflecting on the experiences.