November - the 4-legged monster

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The slide presentation on the History of Travel Writing is my first exposure to a learning phenomenon I have not yet personally experienced. Four people work together to produce one assignment. It really is like a 4-legged monster with uneven legs and no sense of direction, but we are all a part of it and we all have to make those 4 legs arrive together on a specific date. If a leg drops off or wanders in a different direction, the other legs have to take up the slack. I am so grateful that Joanne understands this factoid perfectly. The others say, "oh, it's not fair we shouldn't make decisions until everyone is here." Or, "everybody should have the same vote" meaning we should vote on decisions over and over again...

November - the pressure builds

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Joanne is my salvation. Yes, she is young, but she has already been through 4 years of university and 2 years of living and working on her own. She knows exactly what I am going through. She invites me into her group because she understands another person who wants to work, who wants to complete the assignments more than socialize, show off to their peers, and feel smart goofing off. Joanne has studied environmentalism and is now studying journalism as a way of channeling her environmental interests. Two other 18-year-olds are in her group, Dayna and Jason. She tells me they have not contributed much in the way of ideas or enterprise so far, but if given tasks they will do them. Well, that's better than nothing. Joanne...

November - Group work

Posted by Krystyna Hunt in

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This College relies a lot on group work. It's one way to process as many students as possible, and therefore collect more money, while dealing with the problem of how to teach them effectively. The College's theory is that if you make them do lessons and assignments in groups you only have to mark one assignment for every 4 people. The profs have left that fact slip out more than once. As usual I was having a hard time in the most precise, least philosophical class: Design for Newsprint. And I once imagined being a layout artist. No way. Because I am late with an assignment I have not been able to finish in class, I am not paying attention when Prof Marshall tells the class to form groups of 4 for a major assignment...

November begins

Posted by Krystyna Hunt in

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I am back after spending the last week of "rest" running through several university libraries and long distance calls to Winnipeg and special...