School has always been a difficult task in forming my values and motivating me to achieve higher goals. I always sought out other means for guidance. While I value my public education, it has made me an educated person on basic topics, I feel it has failed me in terms of providing the tools to be successful in life.
A school aims to teach and guide all of its students to live an educated life. To do this, they use basic curriculum aimed at the masses to “educated” the population on what a board deems necessary for proper growth and development. Unfortunately, not all students are alike. Luckily there are some schools with gifted programs and SLD programs to accommodate a fraction of the variances in student ability. This still does not cover the vast majority of students who have different styles of learning.
In this course, there is one style which can cover all educational needs - inventiveness. We are challenged to create our own thoughts and opinions instead of regurgitating the theories read in a book or analyzed from a film.
Just as Susan Sontag took a step back and called war photography "art," we are challenged to step back from the social norm and challenge what views have already been accepted by the majority. We are to view ourselves from the perspective from "the others," and see how we are viewed through our online persona. This type of teaching not only enhances our views on our community and education, but it allows our process of learning to grow.
I feel that community influences an individual as much as the individual allows it to. In Night and Fog, we saw just how easily a community can overlook atrocities and be influenced by others in the worst possible ways.
Part of growing your mind and going through an educational system is learning how to challenge your community and challenge authority. The act of challenging causes one to think independently and invent their own ideas that might be better than the concepts being fed to them in an educational setting.
Just as Susan Sontag took a step back and called war photography "art," we are challenged to step back from the social norm and challenge what views have already been accepted by the majority. We are to view ourselves from the perspective from "the others," and see how we are viewed through our online persona. This type of teaching not only enhances our views on our community and education, but it allows our process of learning to grow.
I feel that community influences an individual as much as the individual allows it to. In Night and Fog, we saw just how easily a community can overlook atrocities and be influenced by others in the worst possible ways.
Part of growing your mind and going through an educational system is learning how to challenge your community and challenge authority. The act of challenging causes one to think independently and invent their own ideas that might be better than the concepts being fed to them in an educational setting.
In a college setting, this concept of inventive learning could not be more important. While most professors prefer to reuse powerpoint presentations year after year, some break the mold and inspire students to learn about themselves while navigating the preset course material. Curriculum committees can only dictate what material must be taught, not how you teach it.
If there is one thing the MyStory project has taught me it is how to look at yourself from an outside perspective when reviewing your work through a semester. By going back and reading the blog entries and projects, I can see how I have changed as a student and a person. This has not been taught, nor is it in a lesson plan in many classes at the University of Florida. I value this aspect of this course, because it taught me how to better my work through comparing older work. Most classes will tell you what is wrong with a paper and you will move on. This class keeps an archive of that work on the blog to make it easier to compare and learn.
The community found in the blog classroom is much more effective in teaching and influencing than a traditional class. By viewing other classmates' work you can not only grow from your changes throughout the semester, but you can be influenced by the work of others on the same topic.
