The ability to curate your own skills, how you have progressed and what you have yet to improve upon is central to any academic discipline, especially those within the creative realm where honest reflection is highly critical to progressing in your studies. Multiple of my year twelve subjects required very frequent and open communication (with myself, essentially) in terms of my own creative processes, what I was doing well at and what I had yet to improve upon.
In much the same fashion as Media One, the requirements of my Visual Arts class stipulated very frequent reflections on what we observed in our day to day lives. We were forced to consider how was this of relevance to what we learned inside the classroom and how we could apply this to what we were producing through our assessment pieces. Because of this, I was constantly engaging my senses to apply the knowledge acquired from a text book in the real world, a process that was essentially then illustrated through my constant reflections and the artistic pieces later produced.
The process of reflective practice, I know, is invaluable (especially in advancing the development of a sophisticated professional identity) and in representing the progression of your skills and knowledge basis. This is as well as illustrating our technical understanding of the mediums explored and the artistic licence that they poses as story-telling devices. Ultimately it is mainly through writing down our ideas, what we will think will work and why (in theory) and then making retrospective accounts as to the success of these theoretical applications that advances learning experiences greatly.
I can acknowledge that I should put aside more time in a week to devote to reflecting on the theories and technical skills being taught in Media One because the practice does serve an invaluable purpose. As media students we should be interacting with multiple strands of media constantly as well as understanding how communication mediums better enable us to connect with one another. These ideas will form the basis of my blogs from now onwards that will, from this point, be far more comprehensive and broad in going beyond what we learn directly in class. Because I want to reach my full potential in this course and make the most of the opportunities that I am exposed I know that I need to start applying these concepts to what we interact with in the every day experience.
