Well, I didn’t do it the way everyone else
did it, and now I like everyone else’s posts better! Oh well.
I studied with the post about the informal blog and the salon in front
of me, and I took notes on the interesting things I remembered, and reviewed
several of the blogs I found most à propos.
I went through after I was finished and tried to organize these more or
less by unit, but it’s far from a perfect science. Anyway, my notes!
Self-directed learning notes:
Roughly corresponding to folk knowledge:
Shuan made a fantastic post right at the
beginning of the semester, about showering.
She detailed the history of the shower, all the way back to the Roman
baths, and finishing with a few links, especially one that led to a virtual
tour of a Roman bathhouse, which permitted further personal study for those
intrigued by the history of something as simple as showers.
I particularly enjoyed reading about Jake
and Shuan, when they taught/learned how to knit. Jake’s face in their pictures is priceless,
and I enjoyed his depiction of the folk knowledge process: “it’s something you
just have to learn, you could never find it in a textbook.”
For the group activity, I learned how to do
a difficult and technical swimming stroke (which was...hard) because it was a
good excuse to get in a pool, but also because I had heard stories about how
hard this stroke (the butterfly) was to execute properly. Then, for the teaching part of the exercise,
I found some volunteers and taught them one of my favorite all-time skills:
making tortilla shells! I was glad to be
able to find ways to fulfill the requirements and learn/teach things that interested
me.
Learning about the Breton culture was very
interesting for me as well, especially when I got to interview my then-fiancée
about her culture. It is interesting the
things we would never think of learning or knowing that were such integral
parts of another society, and it’s sad to see old things being lost simply
because they are old.
Roughly corresponding to the oral knowledge
unit:
In my post “Is this not a connection,
Glaucon?” http://reinventingknowledge8.blogspot.com/2011/09/is-this-not-connection-glaucon.html#more,
I had the chance to review several sites with discussions of Socrates and his
method of teaching. Philosophical
teaching, aimed at leading the student along the master’s line of thought. More
interested in finding “truth” than in the way truth was found, unlike the rhetoricians.
Our group had a fun, if difficult, time
learning King Benjamin’s speech together.
We set goals to memorize our parts by a certain day, then met together
to practice repeating them together in a group that day. We
each practiced our parts, we practiced our starts and stops, we memorized our
cue lines, we repeated and repeated and repeated…we spent hours getting it
nearly perfect. I’m honestly glad we don’t
live in a culture that requires memorization of large passages of text, because
this was a fairly difficult assignment!
I enjoyed Montana’s post about the Mahabharata,
where he shares the story of a woman who was so talented with her language that
she manages to persuade death to give her back her husband. Besides being an interesting story, Montana
expertly tied it into the way the Indian culture viewed rhetoric and
speech.
Also had the chance to use Professor Burton’s
website about rhetoric http://rhetoric.Byu.edu
I explored the story of Plato’s Cave, and
found it very interesting.
Roughly corresponding to the written
knowledge unit:
Romances were an interesting joining of two
different ‘institutions’. They were
written in verse instead of prose, and many of them were likely in part
transcriptions of poems that had been previously transmitted orally.
In my blog http://reinventingknowledge8.blogspot.com/2011/09/effectively-ending-culture.html
on effectively ending a culture, I was able to spend time in the library as
well as talking to an expert to learn about the language and culture of the now
long extinct Minoan society.
Another interesting post by Shuan talked
about the Chinese invention and improvements given to paper. Originally a family craft used as a business,
Cai Lun made the process much more efficient by creating cheaper, faster paper.
The Rosetta Stone Project was a great chance
to meet people outside of my group, and a great chance to collaborate as well. We studied various Greek subcultures, and
made a clay artifact, on which we had to translate devanagari into English,
then finally into Greek. I think every
person in the group was able to contribute something significant to the overall
project.
Roughly corresponding to the print knowledge
unit:
It was really interesting for me to study
the history of novels, beginning with romances and progressing all the way
through diaries, novellas, and then I was able to use the publishing of those
novels for both my bibliography assignment and my final project paper. As a devoted novel-reader, I was very
interested by the topic and spent several hours over several weeks, using
sources from library books to internet sources to find more information.
A theme that we returned to several times
in our group (which I enjoyed and somewhat instigated, with my accounting major
and interest in economics) is the importance and effect of economics on
society. Paper was not significant in
the transmission of knowledge in the East or the West until somebody produced
it cheaply and efficiently enough that it could be widely used. When cultures develop writing systems, one of
the first things they use it for is to keep track of accounting-like
information.
The annotated bibliography was a fun
assignment. I really enjoyed spending
time in a library again; it brought back memories of being a kid. I am sure that I will find excuses in future
semesters to study in the library, because I found it a worthwhile
experience. I studied the history of
publishing, which was a somewhat difficult subject for which to find sources
(especially for pre-1700s publishing), but when I expanded the scope slightly
to include more of the book trade, I found the required sources.
The paper was also a very interesting
assignment, it felt good to write a short paper, when I’ve been so used to 10+
page monsters. I found myself having to
force myself to be brief and concise, something which, I must admit, I am very
much out of the habit of doing. I felt I
did well on the paper. When Blaine Harker
and I met to hash out our rough drafts, he gave mine very thorough (and needed)
editing, and I ended up taking my paper in a completely different direction
because of his advice.
There’s my studying! Here’s hoping that the salon and the rest of
everyone’s finals all go well!
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