Reflecting on the lifestream at the end of week 12, this flexible and highly engaging tool seems to reflect many of the course themes. The early readings articulated ‘narratives’ or ’stories’ about digital culture, and the parallels with the lifestream did not escape many course participants, including myself. My very first summary responded to storytelling as an analogy for digital culture,and I see the lifestream as usefully understood in terms of an individual ‘narrative’ of digital culture, or the way-points of a journey, from beginning to end. Furthermore, the notions of multi-modality and Transliteracy are present in the multiple modes of video, text and sound that constitute the lifestream. The act of lifestreaming is an exercise in multi-modality: forming understanding with the use of many mediums and numerous modes, beyond the domination of text. The collecting and documenting of culture studied in the virtual ethnography stage is apparent in the way the lifestream has documented, recorded and archived the web. In a sense the lifestream is a experiential study of the crossovers between academic and wider society in the digital domain, a transcript of my immersion in digital culture. Finally, the posthuman issues of disembodied information and distributed cognition are manifest in the fragmented and dispersed documentation of study that is the lifestream. If the lifestream represents my understanding, it is thoroughly enmeshed in the work of others, and distributed through networks of human and non-human.
Lifestream activity has stimulated much exploration of web services and environments, and this has greatly enhanced my professional practice, supplying a plethora of potential educational tools and techniques. However, the lifestream itself has perhaps been the most interesting tool, demonstrating sound pedagogical value. I found the lifestream to be a highly motivational tool for continued participation in this course. Recording, not only visited websites but ‘real world’ books and films, allowed those areas of research not traditionally acknowledged or documented to be registered as legitimate engagement with the course. Regardless of the assessed nature of the lifestream, such a transcript provided direct feedback concerning my course activity, and this was highly motivating. Moreover, the lifestream demonstrates active and learner-centred study, as opposed to the passive reception of knowledge. Although guided by the weekly course themes, the lifestream represents my own exploration and reflection, my individual response to the topics of study.
Ultimately, the theory of ‘gathering’ put forward by Edwards (2010) best reflects my understanding of the performative activity of lifestreaming. Rather than accepting any one definition of ‘digital cultures’, the lifestream records my personal gathering of knowledge related to this theme. In this sense, I see it as fragile and temporal. If I were to study such a course again, my lifestream would be very different, and so I think would be my understanding of the term ‘digital cultures’. The practical activity of lifestreaming is inseparable from my knowledge. The lifestream has been both my knowing and my doing of digital cultures; the theory and the practice as one.
Edwards, R. (2010). The end of lifelong learning: A post-human condition? Studies in the Education of Adults, 42/1, 5-17.
