#week5reflection

[saharraa-blog]

Week 5: Reflection

During week 5 tutorials we created a draft zine and looked at many different zine. Some zine were formal and long worded and other zines were funny and interesting. I created a watches zine because at first I couldn’t think of anything else to create in 30 minutes. Having a draft zine was useful because it helped me a lot with my week 6 assessment where I should create a zine using my ‘No-Space’. Week 5 reading covered the Centre for Land Use Interpretation by Karen Rapp. It spoke about the theory of the present. Week 5 also showed examples of zine and how to make them.

[designumn2015]

My Mentors

I have a lot of people in my life who I look up to. These are people who are able to bring positive perspectives into my life. These people challenge me to look at life a little differently. One of my mentors is my all supervisor at work. He is an upbeat gentlemen who lived on the South Side of Chicago. Fought for our country in the Vietnam War, and know works for the U. He once told me, "Kindness does not cost anything." He always has gems of good advice. He is one of my mentors because he lives a good life and leads by example.

[jennifervioni]

Dealing With Numbers

I know, I know, the word "numbers" probably makes you don't want to read my blog post this week but it's not like numbers as in maths, but the numbers have a connection with our daily life. Like for example, our social lives, does that encourage you to read this post yet? I hope so. Plus, I suppose it's the right title for this week reflection because yeah, that's what this all about, numbers.

This week we had some conversations and discussions about teams, (since the theme itself was Work Teams). We learnt about different contents, for example: The Dunbar's Number, The Group Pattern Language Project, Group Size by Chris Corrigan, et cetera. I personally learnt things I've never thought of before, because I thought the "perfect" number of members for a team like our group is going to be three until five. I thought five members for a team is good, a group of four is better, and the right number should be three.

But eventually, after I read about The Dunbar's Number (because that was what I supposed to read in the class) I found that the right number of people in a group should be in between five and seven. Because it said right there that a group of two could be creative but lacking of resources, a group of three is not balanced because one person would be feeling left out, and so it came to a conclusion that five or seven is the perfect quantity of a group.

Dunbar also calculated using maths that the maximum amount of people in a big company or maximum number of connections would be 147.8, and people would round it off to 150 people. So 150 connections would be enough, no more than that. Although, I don't think one has 150 strong ties and I don't think that we need to maximise the number of close bonds we can have in everyday lives. I found a blog post that supports my view. But, what I see is this 150 number is relevant enough for a company or for people who wants to start a business, then I would say 150 strong relationships could be useful.

Oh, numbers.

(Source: Wordpress)

This week we had hangouts with Marteen (our NGO) and Nancy as well. With Marteen we were talking about our assignments, last week he said he wanted us to focus more on agriculture rather than social innovation in general because it's so very very broad, like really broad. Then this week he told us that we are supposed to focus more on food consumptions because that's closer to our everyday lives. Unfortunately the connection were not very good so we didn't get so many informations this week. 

Although we had a really nice conversation with Nancy, we were talking about Marteen's website which is the main part of our assignment. We were discussing about the deficiencies of the site and now we had ideas about what to advise Marteen. Nancy really helped us with that one.

Yay, Nancy!

(Source: Me)

You know, the reflections are longer as week goes on, there are so many things to reflect on and to learn from. Which is good, I just hope I don't lose my writing style because I think I'm starting to lose it. I don't know though, you tell me.

So, moving on. About my group, group 6, The Matrix (yay): I would say that for me personally, it's working well this far in general. What works well is how we always manage to complete the tasks we have per week without spending too much times. What I'm thankful for is how nice people in my group, like Maggie is organised as (a place regarded in various religions as a spiritual realm of evil and suffering, often traditionally depicted as a place of perpetual fire beneath the earth where the wicked are punished after death.) and is so nice as a person. Maria is always cracking up jokes which makes the whole situation fun and not to stressful. Domantė is often stating the obvious which is really funny to listen to. And Eva is laughing almost at all times, either it's because of the group's jokes or tumblr jokes.

What's challenging for me personally is how fast the other members think and sometimes I can't catch up, it's on me though. I have to improve my way of thinking. As for the size, sometimes if we have five people sitting together we would often get distracted, it'd start like this usually: Maria'd start talking with Eva and Eva'd laugh for sure then the three of us would get confused about what were they talking about, then it's either they would explain to us or not. If they do, we all would get distracted and so yeah. Then after a while either Maggie or Domantė would remind us to get back to the assignments. It's not a big problem (to be honest it's kinda funny) but if it's named distraction then that means it holds us back from our original goals.

I don't think as a person I have a problem with the cultures we have in our group, everything goes well. Task is something that I see as a piece of work that needs to be done within a period of time. And for me as long everybody is contributing and is done before the deadline then we are doing well and I'd say more or less we do exactly just that.

We did decide something in the last meeting that we'd have a "distraction pen", it's just a normal pen but we'd mark someone with it if she gets distracted in the middle of the task(s). And I think if one can't make it to a group meeting it's best to tell the rest of the group that she can't make it and give some pieces of informations or ideas for the group so she'd be still contributing.

(P.S. I sincerely apologise if I unintentionally said something horrible about someone because I didn't mean to)

Have a nice day!

[bizzarebehavior-blog]

Week #5: Energy Facilitation

Internet have many facilitation tools either free or paid. Of course paid ones are most of the time comes with the better quality, but we as a students are much more dependent on our budget which is rarely big.  Free stuff here I come.

We as a students in online facilitation must be creators and contributors. In order to understand both sides of the game, so we could improve our quality of facilitation. Teachers in other way should be either spectating or contributing as facilitating group. The feedback of how the facilitation should’ve went can only be given after the facilitation itself. I don’t know if I must mention the reasons, but it’s called feedback for a reason. And the other is that we must make our own mistakes so our teachers could explain them for us simply pointing them out and correcting our path, not putting our feet in their engraved one.

To generate better facilitation experience enhance dialog between facilitators. It provides a dialog and the breakout of ideas, especially if you’re people motivated to facilitate. I’ve tried getting online feedback myself (not exactly a facilitation) and it’s not an easy task. I’ve posted in numbers of forums which I’ve found and only one person responded. But what a person he was! When I told him more about my project he gave me a lot of tips, places where I could find information and even corrected my grammar in my text! If you look deep enough you can find people like this in forums and then they can be your gateway to more enthusiasts which could be a valuable facilitators for your study. Before that, I couldn’t believe that these kind a people exist.

Of course in team’s facilitation I believe there’s one more very important thing is to keep in close contact with your colleagues. It depends on your project, but meetings offline are crucial for project success.

So the main idea is try to gain valuable facilitators which requires very much energy, but will pay off if you figure out at least one person like that. Another is to provide your facilitators quality info, so in other words: to be prepared. And the last but not least, keep in contact and work like a team, do not always divide tasks, but rather try to solve them in team.

[bencebnagy-blog]

Student Facilitation

As you think about the learning you are embarking upon here at the university, reflect on the role that your instructors and fellow students play in facilitating yours and their learning. What are they doing? How is it facilitating learning and teamwork based on what you have experienced so far? What has been useful? What would you like to see and experience that you haven’t yet in the facilitation of this course from yourself, peers and faculty? What can you contribute as a peer facilitator? For your commenting on others’ blogs this week, maybe you notice where another colleague has contributed to your learning through their facilitation and let them know when/where it happened and how it was of value to you. Are you game for that?

Learning in a group is always a great experience. The more groups you work with the more you start to understand how groups work. You understand what the most efficient form of collaboration is and how to achieve it. I have found that every group is different. Different people work best in their own conditions and their condition may be different to other people. All groups also need guidance, otherwise everyone in the group is lost and no work gets done.

what I have enjoyed within my group is seeing the enthusiasm and contribution they all have to show towards the completion of this project. At first things were a bit slow within the group, but now that the project is much clearer and that we have a full group, we can really build momentum to finishing this project.

Based on my previous group experience in my high school projects I have tried to facilitate the project with the old techniques. Personally I don't think I have enough group experience to be able to facilitate peers efficiently so that's why the more groups I get involved with the more I realize what does and doesn't work.

[magickarlmagic-blog]

Facilitation of new ideas and group dynamics.

The largest difference between the teachers and students teaching me is that while the teachers explain and facilitate the pure learning experience, my peers allow me to make use of this learning. The lectures are quite interesting and allow the introduction of new ideas, this helps build a base of what my knowledge is. My interaction with the other students is a key part of my learning experience. The ability to exchange ideas and thoughts and get direct feedback is a form of learning that I hold to the highest regard. But having teachers there to coach and guide us through more difficult problems is quite a feat in its self. Probably the most useful way that we have learned is through our small talks with Nancy. She has cleared up many issues that we have had and gave very direct answers that we have been looking for. Thumbs up for that! Losing a group member has been quite a change for us as we have had to divide research and even though it has been a little tougher at times, we have compensated eloquently. This said, our group is not without its problems. Something that I would love to have within the group is a better group environment and dynamics. Being people from vastly different cultures and places gives our group a very strong multinational base but also adds tension to the mix. This could be one of our strong selling points towards customers and it is being squalled by group conflict. I feel that I try to always stir up ideas, where we try to look at them from a different point of view. A different perspective while problem solving helps to stir up and can lead to really innovative ideas and allows for quick response to changes in our group dynamic and the problem at hand. 

[jstvaiciunaite-blog-blog]

sooooo... facilitation !

To begin with, I would like to explain in easy way what facilitation and facilitator is. This describes the best: “Facilitation is the art of leadership in group communication. A facilitator is one who fulfills this leadership role.” Deeper (as I understand this): “facilitation is like making art with others, also, being a communicable leader. Facilitator is the one, who does everything to make others tasks easier.” University is still like a new, unexplored planet for me. Teachers and classmates help me to “survive” on these trebling floors. I am learning from them, I hope they are learning something from me also. We are communicating very much. The main platform is “Facebook”, because it is the easiest way to do this, we have our groups, we can upload all files, show results, chat and do mostly everything. now we just started to use “Google+ hangout” to make conversations between us. I don’t really like this way, I would prefer to use “Skype”, I think, that it would be easier to communicate. Wednesday’s “hangouts” are reaaaaally helpful to understand everything. I think its not only for me, but also for others. Without this it would be harder to find solutions and to write a blog every week. Lectures are very important, too. Before my studies here I thought that The university has to be the place where teachers wont show initiative to help you, you have to find everything by yourself and so on. But.. I found this course in other, better way. Teachers want to be like friends, communicate, they help us, they give us information sources, say what do we need and try to plug the information to our brains. I like this much.

To be a good facilitator you need to have many skills, but, in my point of view, it is “enough” to be COMMUNICABLE, FLEXIBLE AND BALANCED OBSERVANT WITH RICH IMAGINATION AND PATIENCE, WHO HAS A LOT OF CONNECTIONS, IS NOT AFRAID OF AFFIRMANCE AND CHALLENGES AND, ALSO, CAN KEEP SILENCE.. J

Facilitation is like art, as I wrote, we are designers - we can understand the art. We all are facilitators. Maybe not at the university, but anywhere else.

p.s. I really like what ive found about online and offline facilitation: http://www.mindmeister.com/767714/online-and-offline-facilitation-different-and-alike I think this describes mostly everything about facilitation.

Sites Ive used: http://www.mindmeister.com/767714/online-and-offline-facilitation-different-and-alike http://www.slideshare.net/cococorina/team-facilitation http://www.odos.uiuc.edu/greek/resources/downloads/artfacilitation.pdf

[falamalinka-blog]

New way of learning

During this course i'm experiencing absolutely new way of learning. In schools and at the universities in my home country everything is different – in my opinion much worse. Lectures are taking place in big classrooms with something about 150 students inside and a lecturer comes, speaks to the crowd drawing something on a board without any personal interaction with students and after one or one and a half of an hour he leaves and the students have to go to another big classroom for another lecture, which looks exactly the same. And usually nobody cares if you are there or not. You just have to be prepared for your exams. Fellow students are borrowing and copying notes from each other and that's all about their contact in learning matters. Sometimes they are studying together for exams, but there are no group activities in their study program.

Here it's completely opposite – we have a lot of group activities and we have to talk a lot about what we have to do together, share our ideas and solutions. Through that we are learning to be open for different points of view and criticism, to listen to each other with understanding and explain our ideas, so they could be understood by others. The classrooms are usually not so big, so everyone can be seen and heard and that encourages to interaction on both lines lecturer-student and student-student. I feel that i'm treated personaly not as one of the crowd and that's great. The lecturers are closer to the students than i imagined. They care about us to understand what they are talking about and to be at the classes, they are also very helpful in a lot of matters unconnected with the course. They are really nice, friendly, smart people, who are sharing their knowledge and experience with us in many interesting, creative ways, but who also wants to involve, understand and get to know us. I think that they are learning a little from us too. Great and new for me is also that we can stay in touch with them online. That's really helpful. Just like meetings with Nancy, which surprised me even more. It's not yet popular in Poland to use any online tools in education.

In my country learning is old-fashion and boring. It's impossible for people to imagine that studying can be fun, so i wasn't expecting that they will be here, but they really are. I'm happy that i choose this course, because even if i won't decide to be a designer in my future i'll develop my creativity and learn here a lot of things, which can be useful in my personal and profesional life doesn't matter what i will be doing. And the best thing is that i'll learn them having a good time.

[itsmechell0]

Week 5 - Facilitation Process

     Knowledge is one of the most essential things that we can gain in our daily life, can be obtained by learning anywhere and from anyone. This week is my 5th week at the university, and I have to say that, in this early beginning of the year, the people from this university play some roles in facilitating my learning process. 

     First of all, my learning process is being facilitated by instructors. They keep an eye on the students, make sure that they are all on the right track. In order to do this, they constantly give students input and comments. However, this learning process can be stressful sometimes. Uncertainty of the tasks and also overload assignments are mostly the reasons behind this, and sometimes, some of the instructors are really there to help students to overcome their stress.. By doing this consultation with their students, I think that instructors can also learn new insights from the students, about their personality and maybe, their culture as well.

Not only through instructors, my learning process is also gained through other students. In some cases, it’s even easier to learn from my classmates than from the teachers, since it’s more comfortable communicating with someone who also is a student and has the same problem as me. Through instructors and also fellow students, I receive input and comments which will surely be useful for self-development; I discover new ways of working together by trying to understand others’ culture and way of thinking in my group; I learn about some new useful platforms and tools, either online or offline, asynchronous or synchronous, that will facilitate me in working such as Basecamp, Asana, or even offline tool like meeting. So far, facilitating learning and teamwork based on what I have experienced, is, really constructing, we all teach and also learn from each other.

     Finally, what I would like to learn through the facilitation of this course is multitasking. Even though this is not something that people can really 'learn', I would like to know the methods or explore other tools that might be useful facilitating this multitasking, especially in synchronous project community class, when we are asked to listen, watch, think, and maybe, speak at the same time. As a peer facilitator, I think that it would be useful to contribute feedbacks, comments and constructive input for others; and also generate some new ideas for a better way of learning.

[phicphoc-blog]

The people in my class, both my fellow students and the instructors play a major role in my learning as we always have talks with each other and always learn new things from each other, that's not only from the instructors but also from the rest of the students since different people always have knowledge of different kinds of things relevant or not to what you are doing. Speaking of relevance though, I don't think you can call something completely irrelevant to what we are learning since in open innovation everything is linked and understanding those different kinds of things can help you down the road of learning even if they do seem kind of irrelevant at the moment. The whole learning in this course is (I believe) a give and take between students themselves or students and instructors, so what I believe I can give to help would be information sources so people can get that extra information they might need.

[designumn2015]

How I Learn Best

Like all of us, I have been in school for a very long time. Ever since we were little kids, we have gone to school. Throughout my schooling career, I have figured out how I can personally increase my learning capabilities. You get a lot of information thrown at you in all the years of schooling, and still will later graduation. Everyday we learn more and more, so it's crucial to figure out how you can learn things quickly and efficiently. After years of schooling, I have found that in order to actually fully learn and understand something, I have to apply it to something in my life. Whether it be using math equations in my everyday life, holding conversations about historical events, or even analyzing a situation using a creative approach. Applying things we learn in our life helps us remember and retain information, so for me personally, doing this helps me learn.