My pal Memphis had some excellent take away ideas from this week’s reading by Vannevar Bush. She even wrote a blog post about it – making my job easy..here’s a link!
In summary:
– The reading re-affirmed the importance of technology in this course, and utilising the technology available to us.
– Re-visited the idea of active learning and adapting with technology instead of doing what we’ve always done out of habit. A good example of this is how we learn at Uni. Why keep having traditional lectures and write essays to prove knowledge when we can move forward with technology? Be active in learning, not passive!
This week’s un-lecture was symposium style. I’m not usually a fan of the whole question/answer system, speaking up in a lecture theatre scares me, but I think that it is a relevant style of learning for Networked Media.
I guess it comes back to the reading about double-loop learning. I am slowly starting to appreciate what Networked Media is demonstrating by being so open and experimental.
I enjoy this type of learning more than I thought. When everyone is encouraged to contribute, I sometimes surprise myself and do have something to contribute. In classes like cinema, where the classroom is very open (everyone sits in a big circle facing in), it feels more like the tutor is a part of a team discussion, rather than being at the front of the class. As daunting as it may seem, it is pretty good for building confidence when you have a lightbulb moment and realise you have something valuable to add.
I also got thinking about work environments and immediately remembered the Youtube videos we were shown during our first class for Client Relationships this semester. The videos were from a series called ‘Cubes’ – think MTV ‘Cribs’ but for workplaces…The first video was about Google, and wow, they have got the whole ‘happy workers are productive workers’ mantra down-pat.
It really makes you think about working and learning in a different way. It’s 2013 – maybe we should be taking a more experimental approach in order to be more innovative.