Austria - ETEC 531

I really enjoyed ETEC 531: Cultural and New Media Studies. It was one of my favourites for sure!

This was my first of three courses with Dr. Franc Feng.  I was impressed from the beginning with his knowledge of technology, tools and passion for the course.  He is an amazing professor who truly set the bar for online instructors.  I have met few that can meet his example.  He modeled to his class how online instructors should teach, scaffold, guide and interact online with their students. 

As a result, the course was interesting, fun and quite the learning curve!  And I actually really liked the Murphy & Potts (2003) book.  It was an easy, interesting read that actually related to what we were learning and discussing in our forums.  We built a great learning community (CoP) and learned to help each other quite regularly.  I really enjoyed logging on to see what people had said and what was new.  But as I mentioned, the learning curve was huge.  I had never created media projects before but at least I was familiar with Moodle so the digital module didn’t intimidate me.

Even though I was able to feel confident with the DM because of my Moodle experience and skills, I’m new to the MP world (at least I was at the beginning of this course).  The professor, Dr. Franc Feng, was very supportive.  I really liked the flexibility of the deadlines and extensions on the MPs, he gave us.  It allowed me to have the time to be able to practice my skills.  I was also taking 2 other courses at the same time as this one (565 & 500) and many deadlines overlapped so this flexibility was really appreciated.  It was about time management for me to keep participating online, doing all the readings and required postings, completing all assignments, as well as interacting and collaborating with my group members in all my courses.  Many long hours reaped amazing rewards! 

I’ve learned that I can be creative and that it’s not all that hard with great guidance and support from a great professor and a great CoP.  I have been able to see my growth, reflect on it and even share my experiences and MPs with my family and friends.  But now they see what I can do and I have many requests to make them all movies for different things and the list keeps growing.  Needless to say, I am enjoying my MET learning journey tremendously and sad that its almost over!  I can truly say this was one of my favourite MET courses! 

As I have two favourites in Austria: Innsbruck and Vienna, I have selected two types of artifacts from this course:  my media projects and my digital module group project. Links below! 

Villach is the second largest city in the south of Austria.  We made a short stop here as we traveled on to Innsbruck to see the Olympic stadium. 

The following three links will take you to my three MP’s.   If you view them in order you will see the progression of my skills and learning. 

Am I an Artist

MP1 – Science Fiction

MP2 – Cyborgs

I liked having ample time to learn and practice my newly acquired skills. I have been on quite the learning journey with these MPs.  My practice MP – Am I an Artist? Is quite a beginner production compared to my MP1 and MP2.  I really have learned a great deal along this media production journey from having no clue how to convert a power point to a movie or to splice and time music, slide transitions and animations.  By viewing all three of my MPs you will have a picture of how far I really have come and that I eventually learned these skills.  This is where our CoP really came alive I think, building our MPs.  Sure we discussed our readings, interesting as they were, but I found we all collaborated very well online when there was more of a way to actually see individual and self- improvement visually though our digital artifacts, our MPs and not just verbally via text discussions in Vista.  This feedback was instrumental in guiding the changes I made in my future MP’s (#1 & #2).

Login as Guest – Scroll down to Cybernetics Serendipity – this is my group project!

Innsbruck was the host of the 1976 Olympics and on our tour we visited the Olympic stadium where they lit the Olympic flame.  We saw the ski jumps and many of the places where they hosted winter Olympic events.  It was very exciting and some of my favourite memories. 

I also really enjoyed working with my Digital Module group: Cybernetics Serendipity.  My Moodle experience from ETEC 510 and EDER 677 came in handy and I was able to take a leadership role in our group.  But we all really did work so well together, planning, meeting, collaborating, editing, dividing up the work-load, etc.  We each used our strengths to help create an amazing DM.  I think I lucked out with the best group, I really do think so!  Little did we know at the time that we would work together again in future courses.

References

Feng, F., The Role of Narrative at the Heart of Science Fiction.  University of British Columbia, B.C.

Murphie, A., & Potts, John. (2003). Culture and technology. New York, N.Y. : Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.

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