After reviewing my notes from Adesola’s great last campus session I compiled my thoughts below to clarify in my own head but in case they were useful to others also.
We covered:
Learning through mistakes
Seeing familiar as unfamiliar
Looking at things differently
Action of doing it is more important than context
Notice when I'm learning/my own noticing’s
If you have not yet visited Aicha's blog i suggest you do as she has done an excellent job of capturing the days teachings/learnings and of corse Adesola's.
For me the whole session was explaining and opening our eyes to the fact that information is only meaningful once you apply it to an experience.
Experience without noticing it will be wasted and never turn to knowledge. This is the point that Kobe discusses; “At what point do you start noticing experiences”.
Knowledge is just a current opinion / belief, you must open yourself up to new information/experiences and consider them to form new opinions, deepen your knowledge.
I'm very task orientated. So was falling into the trap of trying to make my site the best and visit and comment on the most blogs possible. After this last session though I realised that “sometimes the activity/process is more useful than the story/content” – Quoted from Adesola
The experiences we are currently having, is the setting up and the use of the various web 2.0 platforms. However the work we will get marked on, is the thinking part, reflection, noticing this process.
The thing with this course is that we are not being given experiences (opportunities to have experiences) but you must get involved and through this have the experiences, it's the journey and the taking it in, thinking about it and forming an opinion which becomes knowledge until further experiences challenge this.
You have to have moments of "what does this mean" and have silences to reflect.
It doesn't really matter what you do, it's about how and why you do it. It must be meaningful to you. It's about finding your own artistic direction, who you are. You just have to know the reason, make a conscious decision on what you write or do. What do you think about stuff and then draw comparisons to this?
I always like to get the biggest bang for my buck and not waste time and effort on needless tasks or finding out info when I can just get it from somewhere. It's very much the end result and not the journey that I'm interested in. Despite loving time, nature, beauty and simple things (an interesting internal paradox for me to explore).
It's not the work it's self that is important but the process of doing it and the thinking involved that we will be graded on.
After the last session I chatted with Paula and realised that I have been blogging with helping others in mind, which is great, but now I need to temper this a little by writing for myself.
Interesting though that this my first natural instinct. Something else to think about…don’t think my very simple brain can cope with too much more thinking.
I have actually just finished reading a book called “Screw work let's play” in which they suggest you keep a book, called your play book, and write in it all your thoughts and homework from the book. This, essentially, did exactly what I now understand I should be using my blog for. To capture my thoughts and feelings on lots of topics, related or otherwise, and then be able to look back over them to see, with retrospect, what I think. Are there any themes, ideas that pop out when viewed at a distance this process facilitates?
So what next?
I want to become a professional speaker and need to develop my material and opinions on this topic of procrastination and taking a passive role in life.
I'm going to read books in this field, see where they got their sources from and read them too.
I will concentrate on areas of interest and research in this field and note my thoughts and feelings along the way.
Off now to write a day in the life of entry into my journal and read the 2nd Reader.
Let me know your thoughts
Stay safe - Phil
I agree with your last statement. I think this course is more about learning about yourself and yourself in your profession. It is about being conscious of how we process and deal with our thoughts, information and task within our professional life. There isn’t any wrong or right answer or the amount of work we do (to some extent). It is about how we process, reflect and analyse our work within our profession and relating it to this course. These are very powerful skills that I think we would need for life because these skills are transferable skills that are need in all sectors.
ReplyDeleteI annoyingly missed the last session so this was a great read for me as you have given some concise conclusions of the day. I have finished writing my first week of journal using different techniques and I am clearly "all work and no play", or at least I am only writing about work which is a little depressing really... However, your statement about commenting on others blogs was interesting. I feel awful that I haven't commented for a while as it has been half term but in fact I have been focusing on my own work and making my own experiences to reflect on. I think once again I am over complicating a relatively simple task.
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