Symposium 5 – do, think write plan

Yesterday’s symposium was mainly focussed blog literacies. The discussion reminded me of my learning that photography wasn’t just about taking photos with a camera but could be broken down into a workflow of component parts. This is exactly the same with blogging. While its purpose might be to document and share via social networking the process required we consider issues of:

• Privacy maintenance
• Identity management
• Self presenting
• Creating content
• Organising content
• Reusing and repurposing
• Filtering and selecting

And it was these issues that Ed Kelly, the Associate Lecturer on the course, lead the discussion on. One key word that came up in Jonathan’s opening statement was “Transliteracy” and he references this back to an article of the same title. Looking this up here[1] the definition was clear – it mean being literate across platforms. Another that came up was David Kolb’s learning styles model.

• Concrete Experience
• Reflective Observation
• Abstract Conceptualization (Reflection gives rise to a new idea, or a modification of an existing abstract concept)
• Active Experimentation
• and start again….

[2]

Ed made the point that this could be made as simple as “do, think write, plan”….

Widening skill set
One of the strengths of Skype messenger is the fact that it keeps a record of the discussion and you can refer back to it and that people leading discussions can make information available in the discussion area before the meeting takes place. Of course they could email it but this way keeps all the information in one place for the discussion. So for example, when I logged onto Skype not only had the above points been made but also the distinction between skills and literacies that I can refer back to. This will also mean that even though I will not be present for next weeks symposium I will still be able to see the discussion.  I think its things like this and the course framework that are already widening my skill set allot. I had not used Skype messenger before and have begun to learn simple HTML coding – and it’s only week 5! (And I wouldn’t have learned to blog without the need for it in this course).

Looking forward
It looks as though it will be about this time next year that our completed research projects will be submitted. I read an interesting one yesterday from a Qianru Zhu – a student one year ahead of me here. It gives a good idea of the shape of what we need to do. Ed Kelly also shared Unit one success criteria and so I will look at this in some detail over the next few days.

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[1] Thomas, S., Joseph, C., Lacetti, J., Mason, B., Mills, S., Perril, S. and Pullinger, K. (2007) Transliteracy: Crossing Divides. First Monday, 12 (12), 3 December 2007. Accessed here:  http://firstmonday.org/article/view/2060/1908 on September 3oth 2014

[2] Saul McLeod published 2010, updated 2013, Kolb – Learning Styles [online] http://www.simplypsychology.org/learning-kolb.html Accessed 30/09/2014

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