Tag Archives: unlecture

Back to blogging

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it feels like i haven’t blogged in a while. do you guys miss me? (do you guys even exist? probably not, haha). i guess we all took a nice break for the week. (just to say, at least our mid semester break was in the middle of our semester!!! deakin’s was in week four and monash’s is like in week 10! whats up with that?) and i haven’t really done or been looking at anything worth blogging about. and “why is that?” i hear you ask? because my new kingdom hearts 2 finally arrived (well, by new i mean i jsut got it, the game come out in like 2004).

now, for anyone wondering, kingdom hearts is by far my favourite game (yes probably even more than pokemon. ok, lets not get too crazy, equal to pokemon. but they’r very different) and i’ve played kingdom hearts 1 more times than i can count. who doesn’t love the magical adventures of sore, donald and goofy and travelling through the incredible worlds of the disney movies? (peter pan is obviously the best world). so, once i got that pesky little comm essay out of the way (which sadly took a lot longer than i had hoped due to some facebook/youtube/all time low obsession interference), it was a nice dive into the world of kingdom hearts 2. and it’s pretty cool. there’s some awesome new features, like double keyblades, and new worlds, like milan and lion king! its just awesome. and i know you think it sounds lame but trust me, the kingdom hearts series is regarded as one of the best games out there so get into it.

now, i’m so hyped up about this because they are finally releasing a kingdom hearts 3!!! but the killer line….. only on the new PS4 or new X-box! 🙁 which i don’t have and am not planning on buying. so depressing. how will i ever know if sora, donald, goofy, riku and kairi and up happy??? but they are also rereleasing the first game in HD with extra goodies and limited edition sketch books so i’m happy about that.

wow. that got off topic, i was not planning on going on for o long about kingdom hearts. well, thats the blog for you, start off in one place and end somewhere completely different. i guess it’ll be good for me to get back into regular blogging this week, maybe with some stuff to do with the actual subject involved. well, last week (or two weeks ago i guess, stupid holiday) it was finally my classes turn to come up with the questions for this week’s unlecture! now, there was some confusion due to the whole naming of the weekly readings in the blog, you know 01 reading for week 02. or the 05 readings for week 06 but we’ll discuss them in week 07. all very confusing. but we came up with some questions anyway. proudly, mine made it in!!! what is? no spoilers!!!! you’ll have to wait and hear it in the unlecture. but let me tell you, it’s a doozy! (ok, not really, i wasn’t even expecting it to be picked! but the others all liked it). but the others were pretty good and also brought up some good class discussions about what can be classified as hypertext or what kinds of hypertexts can be classified as academic or essay. and then we dove into the usual niki work.

but i should stop there. i’m rambling again and this post has covered a few too many things. stay tuned folks, hopefully more to come!

Is this my diary? unlecture part 2

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so, i told you i was going to need a second post to cover everything that was mentioned in this weeks unlecture. this post will also probably cover some stuff from last weeks class and my most recent post about hypertext. but anyhow, onwards and upwards! (speaking of, i saw up for the first time the other day. it is brilliant.)

one of the main interesting things that was mentioned by both Elliot and Jasmine was the Korsakow program which i had neither heard of or was able to spell. but it’s a pretty cool concept nonetheless. similar to a hypertext novel, it does what a typical film can’t do by being fluid and changeable. it allows the viewer to create their own film by choosing the path that they wish to take. every time you return to something, it is completely different to what is was the first time you do it. now, this concept emphasises what was described as the “gap” between the media maker and the receiver. in any form of medium, the author can never guarantee the receiver will decipher the intended meaning of the text being created. and so hypertext and korsakow is allowing this gap to flourish so that rather than a specific meaning intended by the author that may not be received, each member of the audience can make their own personal interpretations of the text. there are an unlimited number of pathways one can take. it’s like in the brain, any one idea or thought can lead down a large variety of different neural pathways that span across the whole brain, each one leading to a different thought and each one individual.

this whole notion of hypertext leads on from the advancement of technology today. everything has had to change and adapt to fit into the new society. if a medium cannot adapt, it cannot survive. and hypertext is about joining all the little parts of the world together to make one big web of networks and connections where everything can be joined in multiple ways rather than just one linear connection. and our blogs allow us to form those connections and become a part of the wider network. this is similar to the niki’s we’ve been working on in class. each time one group presents their work to the rest, it’s a chance for everyone to gain. the group can get feedback about there work and the others can get both new knowledge and ideas about extra things they could include in their posts. the aim of the niki’s is to create a learning space for everyone in the course to be able to contribute to, in essence, to create a network that they have all worked on.

someone asked in the lecture, “do the blogs even count if no-one is reading them?”. now this was a matter i had considered, because i write as if people are listening, adrian called them our “imaginary audience”. but that doesn’t mean that the imaginary audience won’t eventually become a real audience. that’s why we make those connections, so that we can get that audience. i think it was jasmine who asked “why do you write a personal journal or diary if it’s not intended to be read by anyone?”. and that’s a brilliant point. when i was young i kept a diary. i never wanted anyone to read it, but i still wrote in a manner of telling a story to a reader, just like how i write this blog assuming people are reading it. so is this blog my diary? i guess while it hovers at a low 5 visitors a day it probably is. but hopefully i get up there soon.

and one more thing from the lecture. it doesn’t really relate to anything but i thought it was cool. in fact, i don’t even think it actually happened, i think i just heard something. but at one point adrian said “automatically” and it sounded like “automagically”. now i don’t know if he really said that or i just had a major mishear but either way, it’s an awesome word that i think really represents how our world functions today, especially if you consider it in the eyes of some of the people we are researching for our niki’s, (i’m looking at you charles babbage) who would just see everything we have today as a sort of magic. who could have imagined 100 years ago where we would be today in terms of technology. it really does seem like the world is “automagic”

please don’t kill my books

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i really enjoyed today’s symposium/unlecture. i found that there were a lot of interesting points brought up from the answers to the various questions. so much so that this post may be split into two posts discussing different things. but we’ll see how we go (that’s real essay writing here folks, i never know where it’s gonna lead!).

so, onto today’s ever so important question… is the book dead?
I, for one, certainly hope not! you probably all think i’m crazy but i love books. and i hear you all saying “but lauren, it’s all so much easier on the ipad. who wants to lug around 6 text books?” and the answer is.. me!!! even despite the slipped disk in my back, i still would rather carry around 6 physical books than one lousy ipad. you can flip through a book. you can hold it there in front of you. and you can highlight it!!! (as we’ve already discussed, i cannot do readings online, i need to print them out to be able to take in the info while reading). maybe it’s different on the ipad but on the computer you’re reading upwards, like, vertical. it just doesn’t work!

now, i do see what adrian was saying, the difference between literature and books. and that even though books may be dead, but literature isn’t. and yeah, that’s alright

for the people in offices who don’t want to have to search through 50 filing cabinets to find one file. but what about all us bookophiles (is that a word? it is now) who just love to curl up with a book and read it. an i pad or e-reader or kindle just isn’t the same. you don’t get the love, it can’t really be passed down. and it doesn’t crease when you’ve read it too many times (like my harry potter 4, which had so many pages falling out from overuse that i need to buy a new one. but i love that!). and best of all, crazy bookmarks. i love using different things as bookmarks. here’s the one i’m using now, isn’t it great? can’t have one of those on a fancy e-book now can you?

i liked the idea that soon, when everything does become digital, books will become more valuable, collectors item like vinyls. i guess i’ll be rich then with all my books! not that i’d ever give them up. i was explaining to someone today just how attached i am to my books that when my mum took my copy of twilight overseas and left it there i was both furious and devastated. now, i hate twilight, i thought the book was terrible and i was never planning on reading it again. but it was still my book, i had read through those pages and it had sat on my shelf with my others books so the thought of it lost in a foreign country was just awful. (still haven’t worked out that i’m crazy?).

and no one can ever really get rid of books… right? like was discussed at the symposium, everyone thought theatre would die with the introduction of film, but plays and musicals are still going strong (and if none of you have heard of or seen “book of mormon” i urge you to check it out.) and vinyl is back in fashion again (if only i had a record player). i don’t remember who said this in the unlecture but it was a good point; “the same content but different carrier”. i guess the problem is i like the book as the carrier. i don’t want the book to be a temporary technology. but i guess it will have to adapt to survive in our ever changing modern world. if only we as humans didn’t always find it necessary to have things as technological as could possibly be. i miss being able to throw my brick phone nokia at a wall and pick it up like nothing has happened. i miss when toddlers had to learn shapes and to read from books and toys not electronic games and screens that just tell them everything. maybe i’m a little too nostalgic. but i will miss the book when it goes. hopefully that won’t be for a long long time.

 

goodbye lecture

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so we were finally getting the hang of the unlecture symposium only to have it stripped away from us. yes, hopefully the strike will lead us to a good outcome for students and teachers, but it was cold and raining and i spent around 2 hours trying to film the protest while shielding the camera from the rain under other peoples umbrellas. safe to say, i couldn’t feel my hands when i came back inside which made transferring the footage onto the computer a much harder task.

but, onto the the lecture that never happened. instead we got some pretty interesting youtube videos to look at. the problem was that watching these videos on youtube of course led my mind to wander so after watching one i’d be led onto something completely random and irrelevant (like the new honest trailer for star trek into darkness or what if star wars episode 1 was good or more info about the new pokemon mega evolutions – megakangaskhan anyone?!?!) so it really took me a lot longer than it should have to get through the videos. but i did. and they were pretty good. and here are some interesting points i took away from them.

the first video asked us if schools kill creativity. this comes from us learning and creating through making mistakes and being wrong however the current construction of the school system puts great emphasis on being right and never making mistakes. kids aren’t afraid to be wrong but as we grow older we become more afraid of being wrong because the institutions around us push us to be right.  if you’re not prepared to be wrong then you’re not gonna come up with anything original. education system restricts creativity by not allowing being wrong at all. we grow out of our creativity. again this relates back to design fiction. we need to be able to think ahead, to speculate and not just live in the present where we are told what to do and whats right and wrong. nothing can ever be created in an environment where creation is inhibited.

next came the description of the hierarchy of subjects in school: maths at the top, then humanities, then arts (and within arts is art and music then drama and dance). and all these relies on academic ability – aimed at creating the university professor. in this model, most useful things (subjects) for work are classed as more important. we need science and we need doctors and lawyers and maths. but the problem with this system is that highly talented people don’t realise they are because what they are good as is not classed as important during school. kids who are brilliant at music or dancing or acting are forced into those horrid methods or physics classes and are told that they are not learning right. and so the actual talent is suppressed. who knows what these kids could create? and now we might never know and the whole world has missed out.

the second video emphasised the difference between knowledgable and knowledge-able and the importance of the latter. Wesch describes knowledge-able as “being able to find, sort, criticise and create new info.” again this is similar to what we were hearing from adrian back on day 1 of Networked media, we want the “know-how” not the “know-what”. anything can tell us the know what or give us the knowledge but we need to know what to do with that, how to use it or even how to create our own.

there was also a lot of talk about the impact of media on communication and the world in the recent years. how “media has mediated our relationships” for example us changing the layout of our living rooms to be situated around the tv. our programs and conversations have been shortened and are punctuated by commercials. tv and media is a one-way conversation. you have to be on tv to have a voice or be significant. in the classroom, the students are trying to finding meaning in the word and find their significance in the huge world online. media is a global conversation, and now, even though it is easier to connect and share than it ever was before, it is also know eve harder to actually get out there.

Welsch also discussed the video he made with his students. check it out below if you haven’t already because it was actually brilliant and describes how most students feel at uni or even high school.

just so interesting, it’s like what’s been discussed previously in the lectures and classes. we need to create our futures. what we are learning right now isn’t necessarily the best or most conducive way to learn what we need. problems with technology now, we all have our fancy laptops open in class but are we always working? sit at the back of a lecture theatre and at least half of the screens will be showing facebook or some other social networking site. the sentences i found the most interesting in the video were about how much reading and writing would be done for their classes compared to their online life. which is why i have found keeping this blog is so great. it encourages us to contribute in a way that we are familiar with. i feel i’ve written more in this blog for the subject than i would have for any other class this year so far. and that’s the importance of creating and introducing these new modes of learning that better suits the way society and students function today. the current education system is practically archaic and students tune it out purely because most cannot focus for that long. we are used to 6 second videos, not 2 hour lectures.

unlecture or lecture?

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so, according to our most recent “unlecture”, a lot of people have not been enjoying this subject. i don’t know why, i think it’s great. the only thing that i haven’t enjoyed so far was the lecture this week. not only was it going backwards on the notion of having “unlectures”, but it literally felt like adrian was giving us a lecture on our dissatisfaction with the way this subject is structured. all stemming from that question people have been asking: “why should i go to the lectures if they are unnecessary?”. but the lectures are necessary. they are our way of communicating with the subject and the tutors. our way of having our questions answered.  but it’s also a way of learning for us. if we only ever do things that are necessary, we will never get anywhere. to progress in life and in media especially, we need to do the things that are unnecessary in order to excel in whatever it is that we want to do. the point’s of uni is to understand not just yes or no but “why”  but we will never see why if we don’t try (that sounded so corny but still).

the other things that adrian discussed was how the problem people are having with this subject is that they are simply too used to the teaching and learning methods of VCE and most other uni courses (i assume, this is the only uni course i’ve ever done, but i assume stuff like med or engineering is nothing like this). rather than an inherent structure of the course, we obtain structure through practice. we grow our skills and our knowledge by participating and contributing and asking questions. as adrian said, “the scaffolding of VCE is gone” and some people’s strength is in structure and order. it doesn’t mean they are dumb or that the subject is wrong, it just means that this method doesn’t necessarily suit them. but there’s nothing wrong with that, we are all different. if we were all the same, there would be no network. and if there was no network, there would be no subject.

my one criticism is not being able to use laptops during the lectures. i’ve found the stuff that we’ve been told in these three lectures to be the most important stuff that we have been learning so far this year. this is life lesson kind of stuff, not knowledge you’ll use in a one-off scenario kind of stuff. and i like to write down important stuff like that. because i am a better learner when i’m reading than when i’m listening. so if i’m taking down notes, then i’ll be taking in the info. and when i’m trying to write in a little notebook, my notes become illegible. but that’s not a problem with the subject or it’s structure. i’m really enjoying networked media.