Tagged: knowledge

Thinking about learning

Learning by doing: making, reflecting, making again. We can only learn how to write essays by writing essays.

  1. Learning is individual
  2. Learning is contextual
  3. Learning is relational
  4. Learning is developmental

Reflection helps to:

  • Understanding what we already know
  • Identify what we need to know in order to advance understanding of the subject
  • Make sense of new information and feedback in the context of our own experience
  • Guide our choices for further learning
  • Reveal and make explicit tacit knowledge

Taking stock: what do I know  –> Reflection: what do I need to know –> Feedback and Evaluation: how much and how well do I now understand –> Planning: how can I take my learning further –> Repeat

The learning process is incremental.

 

 

Changes in knowledge

Bordwell and Thompson‘s reading this week focused on narrative and relations. A quote in the beginning on the reading explained narrative as a way of organising knowledge which I found quite adequate. I think all we try to do through art and creation is organise our knowledge. We explore, interrogate and critique the world and our ideas through what we express, whether it be through writing, film or painting.

We can also express and organise our knowledge through non-narrative and multi-linearity. As humans I think we crave narrative: we look for signs, symbols, patterns; we believe in fate and destiny, and that everything happens for a reason. But does that necessarily mean it’s the ‘best’ or most appropriate for our lives?

The reading explained relations in narrative: we connect events through causality, time and space.

This chapter also mentioned reactions to conventions, which got me thinking about creative rebellion.

Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence. If you want to create you have to get rid of all conditionings; otherwise your creativity will be nothing but copying, it will just be a carbon copy. You can be creative only if you are an individual, you cannot create as part of the mob psychology. The mob psychology is uncreative; and it lives a dragging life, it knows no dance, no song, no joy; it is mechanical. – Osho

Find the extraordinary in the ordinary

The ways in which we are connected – various thoughts from the week

  • Relations – media as a relational thing, eg the components within the frame/
  • Tacit Knowledge – knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalising it. Egs: facial recognition, the notion of language itself, riding a bike
    – We know more than we can tell
    – Tacit knowledge as ‘artful doing’
  • Process
  • Problem-based learning = learn research skills, critical thinking, content, contextualising
  • Cycle and Reflection = return to problem and think about it in what ways it is now different and from this make new decisions.
    – make, test, critique, make changes
  • Roland Barthes:
    – disenchantment with both established forms of writing and more experimental, avant garde forms which he felt alienate the reader
    – art should be critical and should interogate the world, rather than seek to explain it
    – search for individualistic meaning in art
    – attempts to dissect and expose the misleading mechanisms of bourgeois culture
    – limitations of signs and symbols, and Western culture’s dependency on beliefs of constancy and ultimate standards.
  • Constraint as liberation – frames 10, 40 and 70 minutes into a film
  • Multi-linearity
  • Entanglement
  • Sketches: suggest and explore, intentionally ambiguous
  • Specificities matter much more than generalisations
  • Juxtaposition
  • Multiplicity: being in two places/two things at once
  • Readerly Texts: classic texts presented in a familiar, linear, traditional manner. Meaning is fixed and predetermined. The reader merely receives information.
  • Writerly Texts: reader takes an active role in the construction of meaning. There is a proliferation of meanings and a disregard of narrative structure.

 

Books belong to their readers

Chantelle‘s entry this week about books that change each time you read them excites me almost as much as I think they excite her, and it reminded me of something I read once that asked a question along the lines of: what if when we read we are reading what we want to read, or in a sense what our imagination makes up as we go along, ie that we write what we are reading as we read it.

I also think this is the cutest thing I have ever read:

With the aid of technology, we can create millions or trillions or billions (not sure which is bigger) of stories.

While I think the idea of an ever-changing and never-ending book is amazing – I mean we have all mourned that heartbreak of when a really good book ends, right? – I can’t help but think it already exists.

It’s funny, but it seems each time I read James Joyce’s “Ulysses”, it’s a different book, begging the question: Has the book changed… or have I?

It’s one of Ted Mosby’s quintessential quotes, and it gives a nice insight into this idea. My life has literally been changed by certain books: they have this power of changing the way you think and subsequently how you go about your life. And I like to believe I grow as a person and a creative as I open my mind up to new ideas. As our experiences grow, our perspectives change, our prejudices are disrupted… these factors all influence who we are, and often re-reading a favourite book after a few years can feel like reading an entirely different book all together. Has the book changed, or have I? I know that I’ve changed, but I don’t see why these concepts are mutually exclusive. Books belong to their readers; we impart our own meaning; we construct our own knowledge from the information presented to us.

 

Lecture week 3 – takeaway ideas and what I’ve been thinking about this week

  • Structure emerges through practice
  • Blog as an opportunity to learn about your own deep patterns
  • It’s not broken just because it’s uncomfortable
  • Need to recognise that we liked the scaffolding of being told what to do and doing, eg VCE
  • You have to ride a bike to learn how to ride a bike
  • Knowledge is constructed –> knowledge is not the same as information
  • Make it relevant
  • Education is an experience not a commodity

Naming the boat

Here she is, the ‘CLAY KNOWLEDGE‘. (All capital letters, thank you very much. As Gaga would say, it’s about the details.)

I hope Adrian doesn’t mind as I’ve taken this concept directly from his own post about the knowledge of clay, and I think it’s a pretty accurate representation of what this blog will be: thickly messy.

Spin it, pound it, fire it, paint it. Use tools, fingers, hands, palms, fire, water, colour. It is thickly messy. That is knowledge. Information? That’s the clay, as a lump and not anything yet. The potter, well, there’s knowledge there, and in the hands, and in the clay.

Using a Wheel

  1. Smack your clay. Throw it firmly from hand to hand, smacking it into a ball shape.
  2. Dry your wheel. This will help the ball of clay adhere to the wheel once it starts spinning. The last thing you want is a ball of wet clay flying across the room.
  3. Have some water. Place a bucket of water where you can easily reach it to wet your hands while you work.
  4. Throw the clay. Throw down the ball of clay as close to the center of the wheel as you can, then press it down into a conical shape.
  5. Start spinning. As you build up speed, wet the clay, and with one hand on the side of the clay lump, and the other side on top of it, ease the clump towards the middle. Use the upper hand to keep the clay from flying out of control.
    • You can tell the clay is centered when it no longer looks like it’s wobbling, but sitting stationary in the center of the spinning wheel. Don’t stop spinning.
  6. Wet your hands. Then work the clay into a cone, then press it down into a thick disk. Repeat this step a couple times.
  7. Push a thumb into the middle of the spinning mass.
  8. Push 4 fingers into the hole, and work them around until the hole is as big as you would like. Continue working the hole, using a hand on the outside of the clay to shape your pot.
  9. Work slowly. Gradually pull the clay up with even pressure, until it’s the desired height.
  10. Spread the top. If you want it a bit wider at the neck, just pull back with your inside fingers. Don’t do it too hard.
  11. Remove the finished pot from the wheel. Wet the wheel (not the pot) and using a stiff wire or fishing line, and holding it with both hands, pull it from the back the pot towards you until the pot is separate from the wheel.
  12. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions for finishing and firing your clay pot.

But will it ever be finished and fired?

Don’t stop spinning.