FCJManager
FCJ-007 Learning through New Media Objects
Karen Woo University of New South Wales Learning objects sneaked into educational technology vernacular in the latter half of the 1990s. [1] Its origin can be traced back to military training, where the Sharable Content Object Reference Model was invented (ADL 2003). Through workplace training and learning/ content management systems, these obscure objects have recently made their way into higher and K-12 education. At the time of writing, various Australian projects have started involving educational institutions in higher education (COLIS), K-12 (Learning Federation, EduNet) as well as vocational education and training (OTEN-DE). Despite their popularity in e-learning, no one has a definitive answer to the question of what learning objects are, though a range of opinions have been expressed. Some answers are intuitive while others are more technically sophisticated. In the introductory chapter of The Instructional Use of Learning Objects, David Wiley gives an exemplary introduction to these objects: Learning…
FCJ-006 Halflives, A Mystory: Writing Hypertext to Learn
Lisa Gye Media and Communications, Swinburne University of Technology In what ways do electronic media, and, in particular, online media or hypertext, have the potential to change the ways in which we acquire and generate knowledge? How does writing hypertextually transform the learner’s experience of the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge in contrast to the kinds of learning that takes place when students engage with the proprietary systems used for online course delivery in universities. While online learning systems are believed by many in higher education to be a viable alternative to face to face teaching, many proprietary delivery systems neglect the role of the student as learner, emphasising instead the student as a consumer of course materials. Halflives: A Mystory (https://halflives.adc.rmit.edu.au) was and continues to be a research project that has enabled me to consider these questions from the perspective of a learner engaged in constructing knowledge hypertextually. [1]…
Issue 02 – New Media, New Worlds?
The second issue of the Fibreculture Journal reflects on both new media in relation to their past, and some attempts to adapt the past to contemporary technologies in the new circuits of education. Of course, these two concerns are closely related. Education is very much trapped at the moment between present (technologically informed) potential and past institutional formations. Despite all the discussion about new pedagogies and the institutional love for technological “solutions” such as WebCT, there still seems a dire need for subtler theories of technology and education, more informed critiques of current major moves in this direction, and more supple, dynamic tools and concepts providing alternatives to these major moves. Here we provide Lisa Gye‘s discussion of her own experiment in pedagogy, Halflives: A Mystory, which implements some of the valuable ideas of Gregory Ulmer in an Australian context. Tama Leaver gives a critique of WebCT as a seemingly…
FCJ-005 The Erasure of Technology in Cultural Critique
Belinda Barnet University of New South Wales Isaac Asimov once suggested that it would make far more difference in our everyday lives if the automobile had not been invented than if Einstein had failed to formulate the theory of relativity (Hansen, 2003: 1). Theory and technology are very different things. Likewise, language and technology are very different things. According to US critic Mark Hansen, technology should be assessed according to its concrete experiential effects, not just its symbolic or cultural significance; it is more than just an effect of language. This is a tall order, because we have little to draw upon in taking such an approach: contemporary critical theory treats technology as a trope or representation rather than a physical reality in the world. The “machine” is not just a metaphor for a particular technology, but for technology itself. And at a deeper level, this metaphor enframes technology within…
FCJ-004 The Military-Entertainment Complex: A New Facet of Information Warfare
Stephen Stockwell and Adam Muir Griffith University All by itself, a Go piece can destroy an entire constellation synchronically; a chess piece cannot…Chess is indeed a war but an institutionalized, regulated, coded war… Go is war without battle lines, with neither confrontation nor retreat, without battles even: pure strategy, whereas Chess is a semiology. (Deleuze and Guattari, 1989: 353) A revolution in military affairs (RMA) has taken place in the US since the first Gulf War as the data-processing power of the computer has been applied not only to the strategic complexities that had prompted the development of the computer in the first place but, now, to the systematic operations of small units and individuals. The ability to micro-manage the organisation of logistics has raised the possibility of micro-managing the organization of information to target particular audiences among both the enemy and one’s own populations to produce close control of…
FCJ-003 Internet Politics in an Information economy
Jon Marshall University of Technology, Sydney Introduction The Internet, and information technology generally, is not separate from the social world in which it is embedded, neither does it fully determine that world. It may, however, allow modifications, intensifications or even subversions to occur. This paper will discuss some of the problems and paradoxes of the “Information economy” and its regimes of property; issues around the so-called hacker ethic and open source software; and some of the expectations which have been held for the Internet’s role in fostering democratic politics. It is possible the idea of the “information economy” itself has a negative effect by suggesting a whole new range of property to be appropriated and kept from common use. The term “information” is not a concept which links things together because they are similar in the same way. It is an open and magical term, which may hide as much…
FCJ-002 Perfect Match: Biometrics and Body Patterning in a Networked World
Gillian Fuller School of Media and Communications, UNSW Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness. (Benjamin, 1992: 217) When a body is in motion, it does not coincide with itself. It coincides with its own transition: its own variation. (Massumi, 2002: 4) Life is increasingly concerned with traffic management. Home-work-play *.* life fractures in multiple directions and dimensions as we simultaneously move or wait in various queues in different modalities. Through this constant movement, this endless folding and unfolding into and out of various assemblages, movement happens at innumerable speeds and lives as many lives. These lives of constant transit invoke different infrastructures for their own distinct functionalities. More highways, more airports, more servers, more nodes on the global network of flows, we always need more, and it needs to be faster. As writers like Paul…
FCJ-001 Report: Creative Labour and the Role of Intellectual Property
Ned Rossiter Communications and Media Studies, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University This report is based on the survey I conducted for the fibrepower panel initiated by Kate Crawford and Esther Milne – ‘Intellectual Property-Intellectual Possibilities’ (Brisbane, July 2003). I wanted to explore in some empirical fashion the relationship between intellectual property and creative labour. Why? Largely because such a relationship is the basis for defining what is meant by creative industries, according to the seminal and much cited mapping document produced by Blair’s Creative Industries Task Force (CITF). Despite the role IP plays in defining and providing a financial and regulatory architecture for the creative and other informational or knowledge industries, there is remarkably little attention given by researchers and commentators to the implications of IP in further elaborating conceptual, political and economic models for the creative industries. There is even greater indifference towards addressing the impact…
Future Issues and Archives
Connections
- ARCDigital
- C-Theory
- Cntr History & New Media
- CoDE
- Computational Culture
- Cosmos and History
- Ctrl-Z
- Culture Machine
- Digital Culture and Ed…
- Digital Humanities Alliance
- Digital Studies
- Eludamos
- Film-Philosophy
- First Monday
- Future of the Book
- Hyperrhiz
- Inflexions
- Institute of Net Cultures
- Jrnal Digital Information
- Junctures
- nmediac
- Noema
- Open Humanities Alliance
- Open Humanities Press
- Parrhesia
- Public Library of Science
- Sarai
- Transformations
- Vague Terrain
