Spaces … blank spaces.

A blank space is what I have encountered this week in thinking about the spatial experience, metaphorical or otherwise of virtual learning environments. I am in caught in the grip of Biesta’s “frustrating middle ground”(Biesta 2013). I am experiencing some serious resistance to the use of spatial metaphors with regards to VLEs. In a bid […]

The Ethics of Transhumanism: a Case for Implanting Nanobots

In my sanctuary week I read nearly every post in On Education. Journal for Research and Debate- Issue 2 entitled “human, all too human?” transhumanism, posthumanism and the “end of education”. I quite literally choked on my coffee when I read the following excerpt about ideas for future educational development in Klichowski et al. 2018. […]

Minecraft Musings

On Tuesday, I met up with com_cult_girl aka Noreen Dunnett and some fellow students in the IDEL Minecraft realm. The aim of the meet-up was to get to grips with the basics of Minecraft; building, moving and using the text chat. I confess, I have ambivalent feelings about Minecraft; I am intrigued by seemly […]

Discourse on Discord: Reflections on voice chat

I’m quite glad that the voice chat was introduced after I had already experienced the forums, the blog and the text chat on Discord. I was already becoming more accustomed to interacting with fellow students and tutors in a virtual environment. Going into today’s chat, I felt a mixture of curiosity and nerves but mostly […]

Thinking critically about my critical thinking

I am feeling a huge sense of accomplishment this morning. I posted my critical analysis task late last night (officially it was Tuesday morning in South Africa). The accomplishment was, to my mind, simply the completion of a task that seven days prior seemed utterly impossible. I welcome as much constructive criticism as you […]

A Critical Analysis of Online Education: A Science and Technology Studies Perspective

The key argument proposed by this article is that the prevailing “common sense” perspective on the nature of technology that has framed the majority of research in the field of online education has limited the value of that research and, if left unchanged, will limit the fruitfulness future research. The article observes that researchers have […]

All Quiet on the Blogging Front

This has been a challenging week indeed. I have been pushed way beyond my usual domain of intellectual musings. It feels as though my flabby, complacent brain has been given it’s first proper workout in years. I spent most of the week, until Friday actually, just reading up and listening to whatever lectures and […]

Teacherbots

The second reading this week is: Bayne S. (2015). Teacherbot: interventions in automated teaching. Teaching in Higher Education, 20(4), pp. 455-467 After having a good old giggle at my Sci-Fi inspired fantasy of a teacherbot, I decided to do a bit of research prior to reading the above-mentioned article. One interesting example I came across […]

Twitterbots

I must confess when I first heard the term micro-blogging back in 2008 from my tech-obsessed husband, I scoffed at it. “It’ll never catch on,” I confidently pronounced. I seem to remember making similar predictions about the success of Take That back in the early 1990s. So with a feeling of eating humble pie, I […]

Thoughts on productivity

We have only just completed week 1 and I have already felt the presence of my crippling tendency towards procrastination. I am feeling quite overwhelmed, not by the work that needs to be done, but by formulating a systematic way of approaching the tasks that need to be done. During the past week […]

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