Die Begriffe und das Verständnis von Nähe und Distanz haben sich vollkommen verändert. Dazu trugen und tragen auch die Entwicklungen auf dem Sektor der Kommunikationstechnologie bei. Und das, so meine ich, hat Auswirkungen auf unseren Sprachgebrauch und unser Verständnis von Welt. Grete Schütte-Lihozky hat solche Zusammenhänge schon 1994 erkannt. Die Architektin als Soziologin. Architektur als Sprache. Das gefällt mir.

Überrascht darüber, dass ein Land über den Tod einer Literatin, die Gedichte veröffentlicht hat, dermaßen trauert. Gedichte, wurde mir klar, sind wesentlich bedeutender als es die Verkaufszahlen von Gedichtbänden vermuten lassen. Ist nicht auch der Literaturnobelpreis 2011 an den einem breiten, internationalen Publikum vorher nicht sehr bekannten norwegischen Literaten Tomas Tranströmer vergeben worden?

Polen, so wurde mir klar, kenne ich viel zu wenig. Wislawa Szymborska leider auch gar nicht. Nachrufe in der deutschsprachigen und amerikanischen Presse machen mir aber klar, dass ich in meinem Leben Gedichten viel mehr Raum widmen werde wie bisher. Leider habe ich diese sehr sympathische Frau (Google Bilder) erst nach ihrem Tod kennen gelernt.

The teacher recalled an incident with a school practicant: The practicant explained currency values and let the children calculate with them. The children acted little stories of buying and selling and instead of filling out form sheets, they discussed WHAT to buy and sell.They where busy for quite some time with this task. The practicant was getting nervous and wanted to end the “game”, but the teacher stopped her. Learning, he explained, was going on the exact moment when the children started to extrapolate the given task and were NOT thinking about the form sheet anymore. So why bother about that more than necessary to fill it out AFTER the learning situation?

I continued talking with the teacher and learned once more: Lots of primary schools spoil the learning desire in children during the first six months they are schooled. Instead of triggering what is inside of every single child, teachers put enormous effort in imposing what has to be learned on the children.

The same holds true for teaching in college: You have to consider and count on the knowledge and experience the students bring into your classroom. As a good teacher you have to develop and know methods to trigger what is inside – not so much to impose you own knowledge. This might be a paradigm shift. And it includes working together – with the students and with your team.

PS: In Looking through “Authentic Learning” in #change11 I just found corresponding research: Alex’s blogentry proves that creative children in the classroom are watched as being disturbing rather than welcome. Transferred to college settings I’d stick with Jan Herrington:

“So in a physical sense, it is easy to organize, but in a pedagogical sense it is actually very challenging to plan and enact because of the need to cleverly design an all encompassing task, and deal with the limitations imposed by curriculum requirements and institutional restraints.”

We will have to do all we can to foster authentic learing and thus get the creativity out of our students. We, every single one who teaches. We, the teaching staff as a whole in a given course or department. We – together with our students.

• It is a matter of expressing yourself,
• filing your thoughts,
• archiving ideas in a networked way,
• leaving and eventually provoking the possibility to develop ideas even further with comments and in discourse/discussion/conversation.

The beginning of a blog must be found in yourself, though. Outside motivation could be a trigger, in best cases, nothing more. MOOC got me hooked. I found my motivation for blogging in MOOC. Let’s see…

#change11 even drove me into remembering my blog, long time abandoned. For that reason I am writing here right now. Still rather unassertive about the sustainable quality of this revival, though. I know me. And I know that I am not the extrovert guy writing about herself a lot. Maybe MOOC turns out to be a topic enough. Maybe.

What I especially liked about the conversation with my collegue yesterday was the language philosphical aspect emerging immediately while talking about the topics in #change11 MOOC: Would talking about theorectical concepts in a didactic field become clearer when you’d try to translate it from your mothertongue into a foreign language or vice versa? I said yes, because the different languages would act like a filter – the more filter you’d apply, the better the output. In natural sciences, my collegue replied, it never made any difference for her to read something in English or German or any other known language. Different in humanities, I’d say.

Markus Pirchner ist da weiter und schreibt programmatisch auf facebook.

Social Media and PR – lernen von den Amis

As far as I know (and have experienced) that is so much true and so simply uttered that I would kiss this film just because of that – if it wouldn’t have been for the music beforehand.

They, all those musicians in the film, transmit a feeling quite different from everything in an economical dominated world like Europe – and sadly enough we in this so called first world we have lost to notice this feeling, this authenticity far beside all reasoning and far beside all all the well argumented quest of having to achieve something named beforehand.

The Tag der offenen Tür at FH JOANNEUM made me experience something similar: A collegue took positive notice about the authenticity our students presented the degree program there, far different from last year, he stated. I didn’t notice so much difference. But maybe he still has a sense for authenticity and spontanious feelings – as long as they fit into his own reasoning and thinking, I might add.