Seeing as we are permanently old school and only writing with paper and a pen, it feels like my fingers just can’t keep up with taking notes. So it was a blessing in disguise when a friend asked me to record the lecture for her as a voice memo, as I can now listen back to the important parts which went so fast I had no time to take notes.

During this session, Adrian did not implement the same system as last week. There were no more question boxes (which was a shame, as I actually did have a few questions to ask). But Adrian explained that next week, he hopes to have a panel of the four experts in Networked Media (Jasmine, Elliot, Brian and himself) to answer questions, debate the readings and discuss important networked media related subjects. I think that this will work extremely well and perhaps be more interactive and productive than last weeks.

“Structure emerges through practice… the structure preexists the individual. In networked media there is no pre-given structure.” – Adrian

Adrian explained that eventually, our blogs will become more popular for the certain things they do well: some may be more technically savvy than others and give good descriptions of how to do certain things in our blogs; others may discuss more about the lectures; and other blogs may specialize in random, everyday events. This made me wonder what mine would excel in.

“Some of you will struggle in this model. The fault is not with the model. The fault is not with you. It’s just that some people struggle with what I define as highly defined and rigid systems.” – Adrian

Relating to the above quote, Adrian used the example of constructing an essay in high school where there are specific rules as to what ideas can be introduced and where i.e. no introducing new content in the conclusion because that is a sin and you will fail etc. English was my best high school subject, and I knew the correct method of writing a VCE essay. I can stick to a rigid system.. but I guess what this subject is testing, is can I do the opposite? Can someone take away the guidelines and mess up the system? Will I flourish then? I bloody well hope so, and I guess time will tell.

At the start, I put blogging off because I thought I would sound a bit pretentious and silly talking about myself – why should I think my voice is that important? I guess I had the same mentality in school: ask me to write an essay about Terry Malloy and I could do it. Ask me to write an essay about a personal event and I wouldn’t really know where to start.

But I now I realize it’s not really like that, and my voice is important, as well as my ideas and thoughts. I’ve broken down the mentality that I need guidelines and rules to direct my learning. I’d like to think I am navigating well under the circumstances of not really having many constraints in this subject. I don’t think I’m floundering without the strict system… yet. I guess well have to see how I keep managing over the next few weeks.

Oh and apparently Wikipedia is a reliable source… ? Try telling my high school teachers that.