2 of 366?

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but am motivated to get into a writing habit. Yesterday, I was part of a discussion about it on Mastodon, started by Kate Bowles where I jumped in and suddenly realized — inspired by yesterday’s post — that I want to write. I want to be one of the people who find writing a necessity and something one must do in order to think properly. We’ll see if it actually becomes a daily habit, but for now, I will try. But why? Much of it has to do with my field — pedagogy for…

Continue Reading

#rhizo15? Really? Another MOOC?

According to Wikipedia, “If a rhizome is separated into pieces, each piece may be able to give rise to a new plant.” Which really means that a rhzome is one of those plants you just can’t get rid of. You see it growing in your yard, and really, that’s ok. For a while. And then one day you want to get rid of it. The reason doesn’t matter, but as you pull and weed and dig, it slowly dawns on you – you can’t get rid of the damn thing unless you bring in the backhoe and remove all the…

Continue Reading

«Surviving Bologna» – a presentation, summary

I attended the Swedish Research Council’s annual symposium on artistic research on November 27th and 28th, and while there gave a presentation I had called «surviving Bologna». The talk – and the slides – were in Norwegian, but I have translated the slides, and post them here with some comment (since they are a little cryptic on their own). I will emphasize: this is not a transcript, and I was a little more detailed and a little less flippant when actually presenting. But the content is more or less the same. Not much to say about this one; I introduced myself and The Norwegian Film School. Wasn’t…

Continue Reading

“The future of education” in #edcmooc

Really, I should be finishing a grant proposal, due Monday. But…#edcmoocing is more fun. Hardly a small thing we are to contemplate in the second week of #edcmooc. The very future of digital technology and education, no less… Is this a future to look forward to? To dread? Is it coming no matter what we do? Can we controll what’s coming? Will it be recognizable? Questions humans have worried about since the beginning of time, I suspect. This week’s films look at ubiquitous technology in a near future, with the most realistic being A Digital Tomorrow, the only one which looks…

Continue Reading

Determining my attitude to determinism within #edcmooc

First, a dislosure: I have been stuggling with moocguilt this week. You know the one, the guilt that strikes when you come home from a draining day at work, and, after a family dinner, sit down with a computing device and say to yourself: «I will now reactivate my brain and go the #edcmooc resouces and get moocing! There are connecitons to be made, learning to encounter». And seconds later, comes the little follow-up «But first I need to relax a bit.» Some Twitter, catching up on some rss feeds, some mindless surfing…and before you know it the evening has…

Continue Reading

A take on dystopia. Or is it utopia? A stream of consciousness blog for #edcmooc

Ok, then. #edcmooc has begun, and the first unit is about utopias and dystopias. Naturally enough, given the focus on digital culture and education, we are to look at the first assignment while contemplating education… At first we are asked to watch 4 short films. They are Bendito Machine III Inbox Thursday and NewMedia All of them have a different take on technology. Bendito Machine is a fairly standard parable about the dangers of technology, specifically televion, telling us how it corrupts a society. The more subtle background is a commentary on how perhaps humans are dependent on something to…

Continue Reading

My #edcmooc «statement of intent»

A key part of our pedagogic method at the Norwegian Film School is the «statement of intent» (in Norwegian: hensiktserklæring). Every time the students are given a film assignment they have to write one of these, both individually and as a team, and at the end of the exercise, when the final result is screened, their success or failure is measured solely against this statement of intent. I seems only fair that I write one of these for myself as I enter into a learning process of my own. On the surface, the statment of intent is simple. There are only two…

Continue Reading

Anticipating #edcmooc

Third time lucky? This is the third year the University of Edinburgh is running #edcmooc  The first year I saw it, but did not sign up. Looking around my PLN, that appeared to be a mistake. The second year I signed up. Period. I think I followed it for about a week, but did not do a heck of a lot, in part due to an insanely busy semester at the Norwegian Film School that left me with little energy for participating in a MOOC. So…here we go again. This time will (may) be different. How can I tell? Well, for…

Continue Reading