My take on the secondary readings for week 3.

Blake, N. (2002) 'Hubert Dreyfus on Distance Education: relays of educational embodiment', Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 34, No. 4

His description of how he sets up an online course on p. 381 makes all the more sense now that I have seen it in action at this IDEL course.

My main takeaway from this article is the following quote:

'Even insofar as the electronic message is literally disembodied, its content no less than its form must draw on the writer’s embodied experience of other embodied persons, at least in terms of generalisations and often with regard to specific occasions; and the success of the communication will partly depend on the quality of this experience and the skill with which the writer draws on it.' (p. 383)

This, for me, explains my whole uneasyness with the concept of (dis)embodiedness I had with the core readings. In online interactions I cannot think away my body or (even?) the body of the person(s) I am interacting with.

Dall'Alba, G. and Barnacle, R. (2005) Embodied knowing in online environments, Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol 37(5), pp.719-744

I found the first part of the article, up till page 727 hard to digest, I am still not sure what the authors exactly mean by the notion of 'embodied knowing'. It echoes things like tacit knowledge, learning-to-be, but that is as far as I get.

In the middle part of the article there are some great observations:

p. 727 "For example, Marion Coomey and John Stephenson (2001) reviewed 100 research reports and journal articles published between 1998 and 2000 on web-based online learning. They identified four features of online learning essential to good practice, as follows: incorporation of dialogue; active involvement of learners with learning materials or activities; provision of support; and enabling learners to take appropriate control over their learning. These conditions for promoting learning are similar to those identified in much recent literature on learning in environments that are not online (e.g. Brockbank & McGill, 1998; Brown & Glasner, 1999; Ramsden, 2003; Walker, 2001), as Coomey and Stephenson acknowledge.

p. 727 "For instance, Geraldine Torrisi-Steele (2002) argues that a desired approach to integrating ICTs ‘does not
focus primarily on technology but instead directs focus on learner needs, discipline requirements, learning outcomes and reflection on teaching practices’."

p. 728 "In a review of studies about online learning, Barry Jackson and Kyriaki Anagnostopoulou point out that ‘where effectiveness is demonstrated, it can often be attributed to a pedagogical improvement rather than to the use of the technology itself ’ (2001, p. 61)."

p. 729 "‘The potential for rich learning experiences online is mostly exploited by teachers whose conceptions of learning and teaching predispose them to consider deeply and continuously the needs of the learners in
any situation, regardless of technology’ (2001, p. 61)."

p. 729 "(Laurrilard) argues that ‘design has to be generated from the learning objectives and the aspirations of the course, rather than from the capabilities of the technology’ (2002a, p. 22)."

p. 730 "Alexander and Boud (2001) argue that the current higher education context and usage of ICTs do, indeed, primarily extend rather than transform conventional pedagogies." BTW, WebCT is a prime example of this.

All these remarks also correspond with some of the observations we made in discussing the net generation. The focus needs to be on engaging pedagogy and how ICTs can help there.

Than, in the final section the article goes real bad when they online the 'opportunities being offered through the use of ICTs' (p. 735). A lot of conjectures here.

I like the conclusion: "Instead, the issue is recognition and design: recognising the nature of humantechnology
relations in the design of learning activities and models." (p. 740)

Clark, A. (2003) Natural born cyborgs: minds, technologies and the future of human intelligence, Oxford: OUP chapter 1, 'Cyborgs unplugged', pp.13-34

A very refreshing read!

(p. 26) "In each case, the real problem-solving engine was the larger, biotechnological matrix compirising (in the case at hand) the brain, the stacked papers, the previous marginalia, the electronic files, the operations of search provided by the Mac software, and so on, and so on. What the human brain is best at is learning to be a team player in a problem-solving field populated by an incredible variety of nonbiological props, scaffoldings, instruments and resources."

And p. 27, "My goal is to dispel this illusion, and to show how a complex matrix of brain, body and technology can actuallt constitute the problem-solving machine that we should properly identify as ourselves." p. 31 humans as "natural-born cyborgs".

It is no longer about disembodiedness, rather it is about embodiedness-plus.