Props to Anna and colleagues for their idea about Jeff Bezos (their topic for Niki). A promo video for his space travel venture. Noice. Well, nice idea, I guess we need to wait for the execution. But this is the sort of thing that you can do, remember you will do four of these, they can be edited again and again and again, and you choose one for assessment. That’s lots of licence to experiment, good to see it being taken.
Feedback Invited
Evan has lyrics. He wants feedback. They deserve feedback (they’re good but if I say that it’s like the kiss of death, but if I say nothing then 80 students try to read between the lines what it means that Adrian didn’t say anything), it’s a classic double bind.
Baby Geese
One from Jasmine, a Chrome extension to flood you with Ryan Gosling. I’m just spreading the message.
Musing
Courtney realises that how we have been taught to write essays, and what an essay is, in school, is not really what the essay is. This bastardised version of the essay is what happens when it is turned to an instrument to standardise and assess. Sort of kills its joy. Yes, good essays follow ideas. As far as I know the main advice is the TEEL structure, which is, well, so proscriptive as to think that something good comes from formulaic steps. It is what we call teleological, so you have to know where you’re going before you begin. This is actually the opposite of learning, discovery, invention, creativity. This subject is taught as this other sort of essay. A door is ajar, we have a look inside. Different doors different days, you open some, we open others. If you want to model and afford learning, discovery, invention and creativity it seems to me all of us have to accept the risk of not quite knowing where things might lead. Finally, Courtney wonders about facts and evidence. There are amazing essays about history that use facts and evidence (see Jeff Dyer’s work), they are not excluded.
Lectures, Yep, Presence
Ashleigh picks up some concerns with the structure of the subject. I’d suggest killing two birds with one stone. Blogging, or if you’re serious, use Medium for your writing, is where you learn how to write, get a profile, a voice. There are already people in the course who have paid gigs writing online content. As the journalism teacher said, there are no jobs, and experience is what counts. They might say work placement, but you’ll have to take it on trust that these days a lot of people get their first gigs based on what they’ve proved they can do, online. So your blog posts are your rehearsal for the journalism position you want. Or, at the end of three years, get some people together and create the online journal you and your friends would read. Hook up with advertising and marketing students, build the entire team, now.
And no, being present to a lecture matters. Yes, it is old fashioned. The experience of it matters. However we can’t run a symposium with no one there, co-presence is an important part of the model, and of learning – which is why you have enrolled in a degree with classes and not just doing your course via Open University. But just ask someone to hit record on their phone, and the job is done. Again, you don’t need me to do this. I have asked you to attend, as has the university. If you can’t, the responsibility is yours to ask someone to record it. I don’t understand why this is no different to getting you ready for your professional careers. If you can’t get to your job you are expected to find a way to get the work done. later, by someone else, it all depends. But you don’t expect your employer to just solve this for you.
Yes, we expect a lot. The argument I’d like to hear is why we shouldn’t.
Kernels
Have added a menu item to the blog called ‘kernels’. They are key nuggets, ideas, the primary take aways that I (just I) think matter from the 75 blog posts written so far. Think of it as a high level filter.
Peter Jackson
Patrick on Peter Jackson and a culture of making it happen because you want to, you can, and you need to. You don’t wait to be given permission or told you can. You go and do. Worth a read.
Directed Practice
Nice writing from Alois wondering about good writing. My first drafts are rubbish. Its where you get it out, and from then on it is craft. I don’t actually know any decent writer who works any differently. Authority comes in many ways, how you use language, sources, tone, temper. Here in a blog it varies. Some are good, others rubbish, most in between. Some require more care than others. But what matters is the practice it provides. The problem with practice is it does not make perfect if you’re doing it wrong, it makes it permanent. So a blog, being public, is good practice because you quickly learn to pay attention to your words because they start to matter outside of our little hemispheres. It is a practice that involves noticing as a feedback loop.
The picture above. Something I’m just finishing, a book chapter. This is from the third draft. The first edit each page is a sea of red. In honours the biggest problem are students who think it has to be right the first time, it is an enormous invitation to writers block, and not finishing anything longer than what you can get away with in a night.
Nice View
Anna has a preferred location to do her niki research from. I can see why. Now, step back fifteen years. That first sentence was science fiction, every part of it.
Interrupted
Am sick. For a subject where most of the stuff happens during the time of the semester (it doesn’t support the prep of stuff before hand), outside of class time, being sick will be disruptive.