ETEC 531 Culture and Technology

“New media technologies have intensified and transformed the way we communicate, the way we learn, and the way we teach.  They have, we might say, transformed the student and transformed the teacher.  But what is the nature of these changes?  Cultural and new media studies are specifically oriented toward understanding the ways in which culture, nature and technology are converging to intensify and transform everyday life.  This course provides a forum for exploring technocultural issues such as cyborgs and hybridity, digital property, cyberpunk fiction, the posthuman, AI and AEI, information warfare, virtual reality, third nature and religion.” UBC, MET Program.

ETEC 531 was a favourite course of mine as it involved how culture and technology effect our lives. It explores curriculum issues in cultural and new media studies. The book Culture and Technology by Andrew Murphie and John Potts fascinated me.  It was used as a text in this course. I plan to reread it once I finish the MET program.

The question of what is culture and what is technology are addressed with various theorist presenting their theories. The authors discuss theoretical perspectives using assessments to present the strengths and weaknesses of various theorists. I like their neutrality and how their organize their book.

ETEC 531 is a good example of Constructivism. Learning was scaffold and facilitated by Dr. Franc Feng. There was ample opportunity to learn new concepts, analysis, synthesize, and reflect. Dr. Feng set up an optional discussion group on Tuesday night to explore the weekly readings, as well as critiquing examples of Learning Management Systems (LMS) using Moodle. The discussions were stimulating and thought provoking which helped me in building knowledge for using Moodle. I got to know one of my group members better through weekly discussions. We worked on our collaborative Moodle together and became friends on Facebook.

The Moodle site that my group created was amazing. I learned so much from every member in the group. We all had our role and we managed to communicate asynchronously and synchronously to put it altogether. You can access it through my UBC ETEC 531 Blog. See our Moodle site. It is called Cybergroup Meme-ory.

I thoroughly enjoyed the way this course was designed. It used constructivist strategies that scaffold learning and promote collaborative interactions. Dr. Feng is a very encouraging professor who promotes the unfolding of a community of practice in very positive ways. I am very thankful (no nightmares) with the interactions and learning in this course. Within the structure of ETEC 531 I found myself nicely assimulating new knowledge, reflecting, and applying new theory to my own teaching practices.

“The principle goal of education is to create men and woman who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.” – Jean Piaget

References

Murphie & Potts (2003). Culture and Technology. Palgrave MacMillan, New York, N.Y.

 

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