Evaluation of the use of blog for learning by Ashley Yeung

Undoubtedly, blogging is not only as an isolated phenomenon, but as part of a broad palette of cybercultural practices, which provide us with both new ways of doing and new ways of thinking. This is the very first time for me to use the blog for learning. In order to create a learning community, weblogs actually can help us achieve it by giving us a space to share our writing with other classmates in the class, who have the opportunity to leave comments under our classmates’ posts. Weblogs are also a powerful tool for teaching students about writing for an audience; we can reach the other classmates in the class, and also the readers outside the class who leave comments. Moreover, Weblog is easy for us to create content for the Web without knowing much HTML, find online articles related to topics discussed in class, and share them easily with other students. In my experience, blogging can encourage associative thinking. For example, we can share a youtube video or an image, which is related to that topic on the weblogs easily. And we can share some non-academic information, which can enhance our interests to the topic. For me, it really works since I may not be so active in class discussion but actually I have some opinions in my mind indeed. Therefore, weblogs can provide a good place for me to type some opinions or comments of some interesting issues. But at the same time, assigned blogging can be easily regarded as forced writing, since somebody may not have any opinions of the issues and writing blogs should be self-motivated rather than a forced writing. By the way, it is a good place for learning and commenting.

The most interesting topic in this course is the question of “Am I a cyborg?” and the posthuman. I have read some articles from Hayles and Harraway. Hayles’s view is that being posthuman does not necessarily require one to literally be a cyborg since the defining charactertistics of being posthuman involve the construction of subjectivity rather than bodily interventions or ‘prosthetic’ extension. Being posthuman, Hayles contends, is a point of view rather than a prescriptive state. I could consider myself a cyborg, since I can conduct daily activities online such as shop, communicate, bank, study and work. I can apply for jobs online and the system will remember my details to help populate future applications. My presence online can be recorded and tracked. I can be artificially kept alive in some cases. I can be projected via webcam down the wires and am a digital photograph, which can be modified, touched up or completely remixed. My whole essence is a series of codes from brain waves to DNA.

In the end, I would say this course has done a good job for me to rethink our bodies, identities and self in cyberspace. We always think that we are the creators of the technology so we can control the technology, however, we actually cannot live without technology in the twenty-first century. Thus, do we still have the boundary between human and machine? The technology changes our thinking and reasoning systems. It seems that we are now following the technology and adapting to the technological environment. The boundary between human and machine becomes blurred and disappeared. I think that is an interesting and critical issue for us to study further. Last but not least, I want to share a video of the ‘Future female: fetish or force to be reckoned with?’ Please enjoy!