Campus Session 2

Unfortunately I arrived late to this session so missed out on the start of the first exercise, but I soon picked up that it was all about the method of thinking and essentially what the whole course is evolved around. For those who were not there, we were given a diagram of three circles, one inside the other which was "Mapping Professional Domains". I missed the first words that the rest of the group had done but I was there for the key word "knowledge".  Personally I thought this was a very interesting word to use because in my opinion, knowledge is the key to everything because without it, nothing can be achieved. The inside circle was 'My inner world' which represented what certain words or events meant to just you or how they affected just you. For me I just put down that it was knowing something (obviously!) but Alan brought up a good point that it is all about memory making because at the end of the day, we only know what we know due to memories we have of things that have happened. The next circle out was 'Tools, technologies and methods'. This section immediately made me think of Web 2.0 and how we can use this and other tools to help expand or develop what we know. But also, how is it, that the 'knowledge' is put across to us. Finally, the outside circle was 'The outside world'. And was what other people bring to your learning and what you may learn from other people. This caused quite a big discussion amongst the group and everyone gave a really good input of their ideas. The one that stood out for me was that in the outside world it is "everything we don't yet know". On top of this, the outside world can offer you a different way of thinking which will also help develop you as a practitioner.

For the second part of the session, the group was split and the Module 3 students went away to work together and the Module 1 students got a chance to work with some of the Module 2 students. This was really nice to get the opportunity to meet and work with people who had already experienced what we are now working on and could give us some much needed advice and encouragement! Furthermore, we were able to hear their chosen topics for their inquiry and then were able to have a group discussion about where they were going with the inquiry and questions they were going to ask and how they were going to do.

This then led into another discussion about "Learning". For me especially I am struggling to get to grips with part 2 of this module 'The Reflective Practitioner ' and so this really helped me. I couldnt understand why I would benefit from writing, what I felt was trivial information, in a 'personal journal'. However, Alan, along with the rest of the group, helped break own that essentially, learning is an "experiential process" so by me writing something down that may not mean much at that moment in time, I will then be able to reflect on it in the future and the take something from it. We also learn from experiences we have, and this links back to the discussion of knowledge earlier in the day, we reflect on that experience to gain new knowledge.

I hope that this helps those that were not there on Tuesday as it greatly helped me and I am happy to go into more detail is there are any questions!