In this last week of the University of Edinburgh’s Coursera MOOC – E-Learning and Digital Cultures, I mentioned in my last post that our assignment was to create a digital artifact for this learning experience. I chose to explore Scoop.It as a way of curating resources from this course, and posted my resulting artifact here. Now I wanted to go explore what some of my many classmates have done. I conceptually know that some 40,000-plus started the course, and that 7,000+ were active at the mid-point, but I have no idea how many saw the course through to this final step of submitting an artifact. However, I have another 36 hours or so before I can begin assessing my three assigned artifacts, so this is more a journey to understand the landscape (and maybe gather baseline data). After all, I would assess my own work as meeting the minimum standards…but I am interested to see what truly remarkable artifacts there might be out there.
What did the five instructors mean by digital artefact (Scottish spelling – we Yanks use artifact)? On the course website, they stated that it meant something that was designed to be experienced digitally, on the web. In other words, it would have the following characteristics:
- Contain a mixture of two or more of: text, image, sound, video, links.
- Be easy to access and view online.
- Be stable enough to be assessed for at least two weeks.
So in no particular order…but these I liked:
At A Box of Thistles WordPress site, a cool idea:
“…the idea that old technology gives way to new technology before we know it and at an ever more alarming rate. But somehow we assimilate it into our lives, into our world; the environment adapts and we adapt. However, there is always some fall out, some long lasting effect be it positive or negative and it is cumulative. So I think my message is that we should embrace technology and the opportunities it can offer us to enhance our lives and our learning but we should also treat it with respect and look to how we can protect and nurture our world so that it is there for generations to come.”
Which led to her artifact on New Hive – a neat compilation of text, images, and video. I actually like this layout better than Scoop.It! The tagxedo is more compelling than most wordcloud layouts and fits the theme perfectly.
I next explored Steven Sutantro‘s Prezi on Being Human Based On Local Culture. Very interesting to see the aspects of digital culture viewed through the lens of someone in Indonesia. This “young and enthusiastic” teacher suggests that “being digital human with local culture will bring harmony and balance in highlighting local action with global technology.” This brought to mind Tom Friedman’s popular book, The World Is Flat, and his premise that local individuals can have global impact…or use global resources to have local impact.
@jonopurdy (a name I recognize from Twitter) posted a YouTube video as both a digital artifact and a future message to his kids. Not sure what program he used, but nice mix of videos, images, animations, and audio.
I love that Sally Ann Burnett used Xtranormal to create an animation with two robots debating what it means to be human! Side note – if the definition of being human is having five cups of coffee, then I am definitely human!
The final artifact was from Buds in January. It was a voicethread that wove her journey through this course. Neat use of images to convey emotions and reactions…while using the larger audio as a reflective medium.
Six out of hundreds of artifacts…but you get a sense of the creativity displayed … and the potential these artifacts bring to adult learning.
For those of you in #EDCMOOC, what were some of your favorites that I missed?