This week saw another challenge to the typical styled lecture as we watched three youtube videos instead, and all I can say about this week was that I absolutely loved it and I can’t remember the last time I was so engrossed while doing work for Uni at home, and I quite often am interested in my homework so that is saying something. I even propose that maybe as opposed to readings, some weeks we could watch youtube videos instead. Don’t get me wrong I definitely understand the importance of the written text and I am an avid reader myself, but there have been so many times this year where I have just been absolutely bewildered by the set readings and have even lead me to question my intelligence and whether I deserve to be in this course if I can’t understand the weekly readings. Although I have to say I haven’t quite experienced this yet with the readings in this subject yet, and I just feel that the structure of courses need to evolve to help contribute to students engaging with the course, which I guess all ties in with theme of these videos that a change in education is desperately needed to allow for creative thinkers.
The first of the videos by Ken Robinson really resonated with me, and I so wholeheartedly agree with everything he had to say. Coming from a childhood where I lived under the expectation that I would follow my older brother’s lifestyle of becoming successful engineers, I really did feel like I had my creativity drilled put of me. While my parents are completely nurturing of my career choice now, I do feel like my biggest task in this course is to try and rid myself of the limits that were forged during my formative year, and I just really think that it is a truly devastating thing to lose your creativity.
To think of how much more nurturing and beneficial schools would be if they took in account the fact that everyone has a different kind of intelligence which must be catered to, as opposed to having a factory like system where academic ideals are engraved into student’s minds as they are taught to put emphasis on thinking that requires left-brain activity and inhibiting any streaks of creativity we may possess, is truly phenomenal and I believe that as people like Robinson continue to raise this issue a reform in education will occur.
I was also quite startled at the thought of how the invention of ADHD is robbing people of their creativity in order for them to fit a certain mould that is synonymous with an academic mind.
I too found Michael Welsh very engaging. He made some incredibly insightful points, especially when he talked of communication through the internet not being one way yet still not quite being a conversation. I used to consider communication via the web a two way interaction but after Welsh pointed this out, I have to agree that it still does not fit the mould of a conversation but something completely new and something that is far more lateral.
Welsh also mentioned a very valid point where students need to stop searching for meanings but move onto the practice of creating meaning, as it is this practice which will be relevant to our lives once we have commenced studying as we won’t always have someone or something to neatly answer our questions for us so we therefore have to forge answers for ourselves. It is in relation to this point wherein lies the beauty of this subject and degree as a whole, as it is this kind of self-directed learning which are really promoted and instigated.