Fraingers in the Night #edcmooc – Sunset Observer #23…by Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture | @MDWorld

December 5, 2013 Whitney Farmer 4 Comments

It wasn’t a diplomatic crisis, but technically it was an international incident.

The last live hangout for the online class “E-Learning and Digital Cultures” had to be scheduled to start at 10 a.m. instead of at 4:00 p.m. to accommodate graduation ceremonies. But since the class is being given by the University of Edinburgh which is located Greenwich Mean Time and not Pacific Standard Time, this meant a start time of 2:00 a.m. for me. On Friday. With Thanksgiving turkey still in my belly.

I stayed quiet throughout the session because of being intoxicated by tryptophan. For a brief moment, I dozed. But I woke up in time to hear a discussion of a new word that had been coined by Ary Aranguiz, a MOOC Community Teaching Assistant.

The word was a combination of identities that arguably all who spend an appreciable amount of time communicating online will understand. We are ‘strangers’ and yet we become ‘friends’. We could be sitting next to someone in a coffee shop who we have instant messaged the choicest details of our lives, and yet we don’t even recognize them unless their avatar is a really accurate photo. But no one posts accurate photos.

The next day after the sun arose, I incorporated the word ‘franger’ into my academic communications. I am determined to be an early adopter and to not settle for being roadkill on the information highway. And I wanted to be part of a global effort to change the English language in the same way that ‘humongous’ and ‘gnarly’ have.

Within a couple of hours, I received a message from Angela Towndrow, another CTA who is based in Australia. Angela gently let me know that I was spelling the newly minted word incorrectly. She said that the way I was spelling it meant something quite different in Australia. Almost simultaneously, I was messaged by Ary as well.

Ary wrote that it was meant to be FRAINGER, not FRANGER as I had been calling everyone on two hemispheres. In Australia, the word ‘franger’ means ‘condom’.

Out of 23,000 people who are registered in this class, I have been noticed. Fairly soon after that, I finally got more followers on Twitter than my bird Mia.

I sent out the mea culpa into cyberspace and was glad to hear that I was already being given grace, including by Andy Mitchell. From Andy I had learned that clubs not only refer to mosh pits and green rooms but also to certain sports wherein grown men wear knee highs.

One difference between being humbled – a good thing – and being humiliated – a bad thing – is laughter. I got skooled, to use our vernacular, and my laughter keeps bubbling up and improving parts of my day that have no connection to my midnightly academic adventures. An important hope in my life is that I will always have the power to learn, and part of this is to be wary of allowing pride to enter into my decisions and close the door to new paths in my promised land. If I am convinced that my way or former ways are best, learning dies. And soon afterwards, creativity follows the slide into the grave. Being humble allows us the capacity to learn…which conveys flexibility…which accelerates the efficiency of transmissions between our dendrites…which ignites creativity in a beneficial viral geometric progression…which leads to increased skill acquisition…which leads to the time when things get fun.

This was something that I saw first at the Club – the one with moshpits and no knee-highs. One night we had a sold-out show with a huge backup at the front door because the type of music that night required additional security procedures. Our procedure had been to have Will Call pickup at the box office window and then the security line. From what I could see, it would take an hour…Wanting to keep people happy, I shouted to the crowd for anyone who had ticket confirmations to hold them up. My plan was to walk through the crowd, check IDs, distribute Will Call tickets, and then direct them to the security line. Expecting sheets of paper to be waved at me, I was surprised to see the glow of smartphones being held up like flowers blooming up from a Goth landscape. 15 seconds later, I had gotten skooled. I walked through the crowd, incorporating the new technology in order to improve our operations. It hadn’t been my idea, but it was a good idea.

Everyone walks like a toddler into new territory. But the more we walk, the more balance and strength come to us. And seemingly without hope, success can follow.

Remember the design contest for the class that I wrote about in the last blog? With 22,000 people enrolled, I was one of five winners. I won an art contest…Able to draw only Batman stick figure renditions, by God I am learning how to click buttons.

Now as I am finishing up my coursework, I am awaiting the delivery of my Major Award for the contest with the pensive passion of Ralphie’s dad in “A Christmas Story”.

It will be fra-GEE-lay, from Scotland and not Italy, but not, “…electric sex in the window…” as Ralphie described his dad’s lamp when it finally arrived. It’s a Christmas ornament.

As such, it will dangle beneath the conifer.

NEXT TIME: Ummm…Hmmm

Photo courtesy of Bob Stepno via tweet from #bobstep to Dr. Hamish Macleod of University of Edinburgh who retweeted it to his #edcmooc followers.

NOTE: The following is a link to my final project – a digital artefact/artifact – that will be part of my class assessment. I have also included below the description of my method from the “About” section on the link. Comic book cognizanti, be nice if at all possible, but I want so much to hear your assessment:

http://farmerwhitney.wordpress.com/

This 12-panel graphic story is designed – rather than to reflect on e-learning and digital cultures – to demonstrate the concepts and methods that have been introduced to the #edcmooc class by launching a real project.

The Gypsy students and community in Le Gua who are referenced in the story have invited our team over the last four years to come alongside them in providing education. Our shared goal is to provide alternate ways to learn for a nomadic people who through various reasons have not enjoyed sustained access to the traditional education structure.

Despite a high rate of illiteracy, digital technology – perhaps because of its successful use of icons – is enthusiastically adopted, (see Lili Rose using a smartphone on Page 8). I selected images sizes that are best suited to smartphone scrolling, their most common form of content delivery.

Animals were incorporated into the story anthropomorphically as a method of observing both the emergent digital culture and the ancient Gypsy/Roma culture simultaneously with the eyes trained through different cultures(s).

Pictures of the camp were processed digitally as a basis for the images to hopefully create compelling enthusiasm for these young ones to engage in reading. A comics-based format was used because of the established success of this method that blends visual and textual content to enhance literacy acquisition.

The term ‘Gypsy’ is used intentionally. It is what they asked me to call them and what they call themselves. To this group, it is not pejorative but a term of honor. As such, I capitalize this always.