Month: August 2017

I DO NOT WANT TO BLOG

Yes, I do not want to blog. This assignment has required tons of effort and bravery from me. It is not easy to start formulating my ideas into a coherent message for the class to discuss; or to build the confidence to write them as discussion generators and to contrast them with my classmates’ ideas to produce knowledge…. instead, I am afraid of what I am writing, and how people will react to the way I am expressing my ideas. I am feeling tempted to find pieces of information to share rather than expose my creative and deep thinking to my classmates and instructors’ frameworks of judging. I am also afraid that my ideas may be so poorly expressed that people don’t want to read this and therefore, they won’t comment. Which can be hurtful.

Having this feelings about this blogging assignments reflects very close to Gardner Campbell’s article and Michael Wesch TEDx talk. The article is about experiential learning in the digital era and how we are not only not taking the fullest advantage of it but we are rather falling in the same vicious habit of traditional learning: forgetting about inquiry or awareness of self-learning experiences. We are succumbing into Ku’hs prediction that learning is turning into syllabi program of how to continue the path towards a career, rather than seeing objectives to achieve by following a syllabus. We are forgetting that learning is a process that involves failure but also recovering and continuing pass that failing event. Like Michael Wesh TEDx’s lessons from baby George, who enjoyed and learned from every failing step, but continued to master taking that step down the stair.

Experiential learning is becoming an unknown process for students, at least in my personal experience in STEM/Engineering majors. Not even studying abroad, a popular activity among colleges, is an experience that students in these technical fields consider useful in their future careers. Education in engineering focuses in technical education, with little room for failure. And the use of the internet is following the same path, becoming more of a tool to transcribe knowledge rather than an experiential learning instrument.

Writing this blog not only required to bring my known information out, but to go through creative thinking, using self-judgment frameworks and learning from information. In other words, implementing a rational process of reflection and knowledge production. This process took place in the connections of the digital web, reaching out to other “places” to gain information for me to process with my own ideas, and also reaching out to my classmates for contrasting of ideas and learning generation. I am still nervous to read the reactions that my post can generate, but I am thinking it is a normal feeling when network experiential learning is not familiar field.