Task 14: Final reflections

During the course I have had different kind of emotions about the assignments and so did the results vary. Maybe my misunderstood of how the whole course would look like, not knowing when there will be tasks posts and what are the reply's that the course leaders are looking for had involvement in results!? At least I'm very glad that the hosts of the course understood our workload and queries about the assignment dates and after each week we had more days to post our replys and the requirements got bit clearer.

I liked the tasks like "creating a study plan" that needed to think about a schema and assignment about re-design of some activity. I wish I had chance to take part of the meeting where components of interactive systems with Piratpad where composed. Actually I think that all tasks should be something similar like this by using various online communication tools and experimenting with new interactive environments.

I have to be honest that from the topic and Subject descriptions (pdf) I was hoping to be introduced 20-30 new interactive environments. What are their pros and cons, which are the future trends etc. By experimenting on these new environments and discussing about future trends we could have proposed extra functions or our own new interactive environments. Subject description pointed out "Students will examine how users interact in more and more interrelated media such as: interactive television, mobile phones, wireless ambient technology, GPS (Satellite Navigation) and interactive advertising." Right now just Piratepad and Flashmeeting where not familiar to me…

Maybe for next years I would suggest to use forums for posting and getting replys of assignments. In that case everyone could get familiar with the others posts and argumentation of topics could lead to wider sharing of ideas.

A groupwork is always the best way to learn and put theory into practice. This should be more mandatory than just an option.

Best of luck for coming years!

Task 13: Redesigning and re-instrumentalising activities

I will propose two activities and small redesign of the ideas. One is rather entertaining and the other more practical but they both use Google translator as the platform of the activities.

Google translator for making music

Google translator is a tool to make translations from one language to another.

Some guys have found out that there is possible to make music with the google translator. You might want to try to translate from German to German. One example text could be like this: "tkk ck tkk bsk bssk bsk bsk bssk bsk bsk bsk bsk bssk bsk bsk bsk bssk bsk bsk bcccccccc". While you hit the play button it makes a music that is called "beatboxing". It's a kind of music where rhythms, drums and beats are being made by using human mouth, lips, tongue and voice.

Different languages could be tested for incompatibility if they are good enough to make beatbox music. Those languages could be put into one website specially custom for music lover. With adding new functions such as changing the speed of the translation or making repetitions of it there could be formed new level of beatboxing. If it has a special website produced this sort of musicians community could grow and there could be made singing battles.

Google translator for better learning language

For the second activity lets take again simple google translator. We all know that for some languages it is very useful and could give precise reply's but how to use the tool better for learning languages. At the moment you could view either the original page or translated page by clicking radio button. It's rather hard to know the meaning of some exact word when there is long texts.

Instead with a rollover of right click one could instantly see options for word translation and by clicking the option there could be made sound sample of pronunciation. Under settings one could make a selection if the sound of word translation could be played first or just the word translation could be show. The first option could be quite useful specially for the blind people where voice navigation make everyday surfing the web easier.

Reference:

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/11/google-translate-beatboxing/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatboxing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLN63bRcY5I

Task 11: our components versus components of activity theory

Are in Pirateapad all necessary components for analyzing and describing interactive systems? What components seem irrelevant?

The list seems to be more than complete. Maybe just few components may have the same purpose like actors and participants or isn’ Project manager a participant? So I would put project manager under participants or actors dependency and add facilitators, tutors etc. The relevance and highlight of the components seem to vary depending on the tasks.

Currently we have a long list of components, which can be definitely shorten. How would you do that? do what degree the list of components is concurrent with the components of the activity theory framework?

It depends on what is the purpose of shortening of the components? When we take the example of the activity theory framework purposed in a research where we find common ground with the components in piratepad assignment. Rules are mentioned in piratepad but maybe should have been defined more specifically which aspects are considered as rules. Definitions related to time(timeframe, star, end etc.), limitations, restrictions should go under rules. So have been mentioned community consisting actors and participants, division of labour consisting project managers and tools consisting of methodology, software and modeling. Also are pointed out subject as actor and object as result with aims/goals.

Are there components which are not covered by the activity theory framework, but the activity theory framework could benefit from?

Activity theory seems to cover all the mentioned components just in a bit smaller contexts. Good points to be pointed out from piratepad are learnability of how the participants should learn from the interactive system and workmanship as a way of using creativity while doing the tasks/activities, which could be benefited in the activity theory framework.

Task 10: Applying activity theory into practice

Components of “PLENK2010” course

Set up

Like mentioned in their website the course idea is to learn not from theory but from the activities one will complete, which different among individuals. The tasks involve activities around all web by creating one’s own web pages or going through some others.

There is used a daily newsletter “The Daily” which give an overview of activities needed to be done and highlight most important topics other course members have pointed out. This load of information eases participants to make choices among the topics of their interest and focus on exploring these ideas.

The course has facilitators who work as coordinators of the project by sharing content posted by the participants and adding something extra.

Interactions

Weekly activities involve:

- Daily newsletter, which will have reflections of students blogs, twitter tweeds and discussions in moodle.

- Course wiki can be edited by the participants

- Moodle discussion forum with other participants of the course and response by course faciliators

- On Sunday readings and resources will be posted to the wiki

- Wednesdays Elluminate session, usually with a guess speaker

- Fridays Elluminate session, as a week review with course faciliators

“This whole course will be about how to read or watch, understand, and work with the content other people create, and how to create your own new understanding and knowledge out of them.”

The subjects of the course post have been related to different topics:

- Online participation

- Personal learning environments

- Learning theories

- Evaluating learning

- Personal knowledge management

Subjects

Every person is free to join the courses.

Rules

Each of the content has to have source. But the ideas is taking the existing content any trying to add your own “flavours” and thought to it. The content is not important but the idea is to use online tools and learn from practicing with them. The facilitators of the course will give examples of how to use the tools and participants will learn from these posts to make their own.

The participants are suggested to keep documentation about the content they have gone trough. Most probably the best way is to share it online that the other participants could see and learn from it but one could also work without sharing.

Participants can join in or dismiss themselves from the course when every they feel like.

Instruments

There are given few ways to the participants to share their content:

- Make a blog in either blogger, wordpress platform or any other blogging service.

- Create account in del.icio.us for making bookmarks on the things you have read.

- Participate in Moodle discussions and make posts about the accessed content.

- Tweet with Twitter

- Also one can share the content within any other envoronment: Flickr, Second Life, Yahoo Groups, Facebook, YouTube

For sharing there should be used a webtag called: “#PLENK2010”

Components of NIE course

As we all are very familiar with the NIE course I will just make a short review about it according to activity theory.

Instruments

During the course one could have used only the course Flashmeeting tool, course blog to get the assignments and pdf readers to read articles. A blog account is also needed to post the assignments and get feedback.

The other tools depend on the participants. Some they may have used Skype to communicate with course mates, Pirate pad for one not mandatory assignment, RSS to get the assignments to e-mails and UML software to create diagrams.

Rules

Tasks will be published in NIE course blog and participants should check the site in regular basics.

Mostly tasks are carried out each week with a deadline. Each will have 10 points wich means there will be 10 tasks all together. Every 24hours that the task is posted after the deadline will give 2 points less. Early tasks would give the participants a chance to get a personal feedback. The course is a pass or fail. 70% of the points should be collected to pass the course.

Subject

Students of TLU make the most of the course participants.

Interactions

Depends on the assignments but mostly there needs to be written blog posts about the read articles.

Comparison of NIE and PLENK2010 courses

In PLENK2010 there are used more tools to get the participants involved to the course and share each other’s work. Especially the Moodle that has option to have discussions with each other helps to get to know topics more in dept. In NIE we mostly use our blogs to post the assignments and that is it.

With PLENK 2010 the schedule and the assignments are clearly pointed out. NIE program and assignments are not know much in advance which makes it hard to organize our time and get most out of topics.

It seems to me that almost no possibility of the physical contact of lecturer and student makes learning of course much harder. Both of the parties my understand the tasks differently so the outcome may vary a lot.

Task 9: exploring activity theory as a framework for describing activity systems

According to Kari Kuuti article about Activity Theory the historical roots go back to 18^th and 19^th century scientific thoughts of German Philosophy from Kant to Hegel that emphasized on humans evolution ideas and its active and constructive role. Marx and Engels elaborated on the aspect of activity being the transforming of material objects. Vygotsky’is cultural-historical psychology was the base for further research of activity theory by Leont’ev and Rubinstein. The psychological meta-theory theorizes that when individuals interacting with environment, production of tools results. These tools are forms of mental processes and mental processes reveal in tools becoming more accessible and communicable to social interaction.

Three main principles of the Activity theory from Kuuti article state:

- Human actions are the basic of analysis but they are impossible to understand without the context. Individuals take part of many activities at the same time.

- Activities elements are under continuous change and discontinuous development. Activities stay often embedded and have history in themselves, which help to understand the recent situations.

- Activity always contains artifacts which feature is having mediating role. When there is mediation between an actor and the related object, the object is manipulated by the limitations of artifact. Artifacts have created and transformed during the development of the activity itself with addition in culture.

Activities consist of tools to enable communicate between subject and object. This mediates relationship at individual level. For a larger environment there needs to be added community. Activities have motives and they consist of several steps: actions that have goals and operations that have conditions.

Task 8: From mass media to personal media

M. Lüders article "Conceptionalising personal media" describes distinction between mass media and personal media in the matter of digital media technologies and social networks. He tries to answer the questions: “What happens to mass and interpersonal communications when private individuals turn into mass communicators.”

Different Scholars articles say that for personal and mass communication the same technologies are being used. But they are partly because of digitalization and change of network structure. For example emails can be sent for private use or as newsletters in a mass communication way.

John Thompson(1994) divides products and technologies in his concept of media. While interned is the media technology, Instant Messanger, emails, blogs are the products or actually media forms as he later proposes. Yet again the same technology is being used for both mass and personal media. By adding the theory of Andrew Feenberg the concept of media or technology slits into four stages with addition of genre which comes from media form. For example a website could be devided to personal site, corporate promotion etc.

Lüdens article outlines that difference in personal and mass media comes from the involvement made by the users. In personal communication media the users are more or less the producers and receivers of message.

Task 7: In search for my own understanding of interactivity

The articles “Interactivity” by Jensen and “Interactivity: a concept explication by ”Kiousis have argument a lot about the different definitions of interactivity. Even thought there are some similar characteristics the experience and playability each individual get from human-computer communication has change a lot in the last decade.

When we look at Jensen’s paper about communication patterns, we see that the fundamental of information communications have definitely remained as they where, just there has been fluctuation among the stakeholders. The traditional media channel like TV and radio have lost significant amount of their stake to new media. With the growth of online communication tools provided via Internet or widespread of mobile devices, new media has become the source to provide, own and share communication. Also we can see that the environments presented within each communication patterns have move to other patterns. Over ten years ago it was mentioned that WWW belonged to consultation pattern when central provider produced information and consumer controlled the distribution. Nowadays I should say that the within WWW the consumers are the largest group to produce and consume the information. Furthermore they are also interacting with the information by making replies or sharing it in another online environments.

The last decade has introduced and embraced many new media platforms, which have been the base for humans interacting with media in a multi-way communication. Mobile as common everyday gadgets, have become the source for information. Last previous years have introduced thousands of diverse mobile application. It’s has become as a “credit card in the wallet”, “voucher for purchase”, “personal trainer on shoulders”, “pet to feed” or “entertainment center”. On the other hand these application and other digital transaction have made each personal more tractable. A “leaving home” note on twitter tweed or gps map positioning reveal can lead to a crime or “hate my job” note on social network wall can lead to being fired. Hopefully the positive sides like gps surveillance devices of car or image recognition algorithms in street cameras can cover it up. For sure the interactivity and the outcomes to queries have increased.

With the years to come its rather hard to predict how the interactivity would have altered meaning. Definitely the humans are the source to communication. Maybe some material objects will start to communicate and reflect according to human’s desires or mood. Hopefully the humans can interact in such way that depending on their hand movements, eyes blinking or emotional stage the environment around, changes.