Call out and props to Zoe, using the beginning and the next bits to begin to see that the really simple points being made are elegant and, well, not actually simple. Yoda a moment I think.
learning
Learning Styles
Ella enjoyed the knowledge-able talk, seeing its connections to this subject, and the way in which the internet is changing how media now communicate. I think I wrote it here the other week, and it is worth repeating. The media is now us. It isn’t an institution over there that we ‘use’ but it is, literally, us. Laura-Jayne enjoyed this too, and found the way it was presented much easier to understand.
Wesch and Knowledge-able
Shavoni liked Wesch’s talk about being knowledge-able, and that we learn by doing, not listening, and then makes the list. Join that to Robinson’s talk and lots of questions and problems just pop out. Responsibility for this is not in any one place, so it makes it easy to leave it alone. Or we can make changes, even small ones. Like letting someone make and share a list like that.
Robinson
Alois has an intriguing riposte to the Robinson presentation. Why do I still hold a lecture, even though it is 2013 and I can, at a click of a button, record it and stick it on that bit of educational pap that is Blackboard? Because, as Alois notes, the shared experiences matter. What, seriously, would this subject be if it were a video and a lab each week? Shavoni wants to make mistakes, maybe?
Essays and What Ifs
Patrick has a long post about the essay, tying the reading to Mode 2, while also weaving in several other’s comments. This is a blog that is beginning to mature as it writes with ideas and other people’s stuff. His observation that people might have gone better at school if they could write in the way the reading describes, rather than the more rigid way prescribed, is one of the things I was getting at in my lecture about why come to lectures. VCE and university preselects certain sorts of competencies. If you don’t have them, if you haven’t immersed yourself in them (generally unknowingly) then you don’t even get here. One of the things we’re doing in this subject is letting some other competencies be legitimated. Not great at the ‘formal’ essay, but good at tech, write lots of help. Or write some wiki entries that look at that door ajar.
Futures
Tiana got a shock, so let’s back track here. I get to play bad cop, Brian, Jasmine and Elliot good cop. Most of our graduates get good jobs, just mostly not directly making stuff for money. A lot end up in what I think of as creative middle management, they are production managers for a postproduction company (all around the world), or they are the person in charge of DVD development for a distributor. That means you don’t make the DVDs, you engage a design house, give them a brief and budget, and give the OK for their work. You work with marketing, distribution, and so on. These are very good jobs, and a growth area. Our students get these because you can talk to makers, and managers (remember my ‘T’ shaped people talk earlier?) Most don’t stay trying to make because the insecurity of employment and income is, well, insecure, you want a regular salary, holiday pay, superannuation. Some recognise the things we teach, and more sideways, portable.tv was created by two RMIT media graduates who paid attention to subjects like this. It’s a service, an experience, a series of events. The shock you need to get is that today you have the capacity to make this happen, and that is how it works. You have to take it to the world, rather than enter at the ground floor and work your way up (the world coming to you). So please, don’t panic (you have two more years here that will help), and realise the opportunities you now have, and take them.
Lauren picks up the experience media and content observations from symposium 0.1.
Niki Goes to Space
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.
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.
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.
Serendipity
Abby likes that in everyone’s blogs connections are being made. In spite, of regardless, of anything else. We are communicative beings, deep deep down. We are pattern making and recognising communicative beings. And most of your learning, in this subject, happens in your blogs.