Artifact or Artefact? #edcmooc

The Rift

I made a very interesting assumption back on Monday when I read I would be tasked with the creation of a Digital Artefact. I just assumed that Artefact was just the way the Scotts spelled Artifact.

This morning I performed a search for the term "Digital Artifact" and was very surprised by the result. (Please forgive the sources)

"Digital Artifact: In digital photography and digital video an artifact refers to any visible defect. Jaggies is considered to be a type of digital artifact, and image compression may also introduce artifacts into a digital image." Webopedia. 06 Nov. 2014

The Digital Artefact is indeed quite different.

A digital artefact is any type of item produced and stored as digital/electronic version. Examples of digital artefacts include digital documents, presentations, programmes and codes, video and audio files, images and photographs and the like. WikipediA. 06 Nov. 2014

I've not yet had time to read and absorb the scholarly documents, reading such digital artefacts is even more tedious than having to write, but the video clips put me to thinking. All four videos seemed to depict a lot more of the distopia than the utopia of the digitally connected and created world.

While Thursday depicts some benefits to a technologically enhanced world, the characters in the movie can still be seen to be negatively affected by it. The woman is so busy texting while walking she never bothers to look up. they still are depicted as disconnected to the outside world, not noticing the wildlife; at the same time the mechanized technology depicted by the elevator, provides us humans the ability to see the world from and elevated perspective. What they see is this citified world, with rows and rows of buildings and streets devoid of any view of nature, not a tree in sight. The one creature we see, the lone bird is robbed of food (discarded on the street) by the street sweeping machine.

The lure of technology is inescapable as we humans have a thirst for new and interesting things, we worship them in fact as Bendito Machine III depicts.

Many of Instructors I work with do not like the idea of technologically enhanced anything, they would prefer a good old fashioned dry erase pen white board to the "Smart Boards". I've been told there is no substitute for the experience of a book, or a in class discussion; those that do catch the technological wave seem to understand the powerful influence of, as our LMS provider describes, a media rich communication platform, where meaningful Digital Artefacts can be created.

#edcmooc

Creating a Digital Artifact #edcmooc

So here I am creating my first blog post ever! Thank you e-Learning and Digital Cultures @ The University of Edinburg!

#edcmooc

This is both thrilling and terrifying at the same time. What do I have to contribute to the incredible collection of information available on the web? The knowledge and detailed expression of that knowledge by many of my colleagues in this e-Learning and Digital Cultures mooc is very intimidating.

Among the many other factors that have prevented my personal contribution and engagement in the Blogosphere are: I can't be offering anything new, and I find writing very tedious. Being a kinesthetic learner I much prefer a good conversation, a play or an opera, and using more than one of the many popular communication platforms just seems too much like multi-tasking, an unproductive practice to this human being. On day 2 I really am a bit perplexed by tweeting, and rss and a few other things. I know it will get better.

In the past six years I've been tasked with the challenges of supporting instructors (most of them lifelong learners who eschew computers and technology) to turn their instructional design inside out and put it on the web.

I witness many of these scholars and subject matter experts experience a nightmarish anxiety dream where the live, extemporaneous lecture is dead and their day by day on the fly lesson plans float up into thin air. It isn't very pretty especially because there seems to be little structural support to expand the instructors skills. The instructors suffer terribly and, more importantly, the students are not given a learning experience of much value at all. 

It is the dystopian nightmare, and I am expected to facilitate the emergence from the nightmare. I am eager to experience a transformation of my approach to the teaching and learning process that integrates a human approach to this seemingly mechanized and heartless process.