Remains of the day

Die, die we all pass away
But don't wear a frown cuz it's really okay
And you might try 'n' hide
And you might try 'n' pray
But we all end up the remains of the day

Not only humanity but also time passed so far and as fast as a blink the course is over. Its hard to believe that nearly 4 months are gone  and that the end is near. Gosh that sounds dramatic but its not the end of the world but the end of a time of working together. I don’t want to write end of the project because we really want to continue and this would sound so negociating. Anyway our time together as the glorious five is nearly over and this means its time for a little resume. The project – it started as a normal course but become more a personal and group project so Ill stick to this term – was an entertaining but also sometimes exhausting time. I think I also write enough about the project itself in this blog so Ill focus on the circumstences of the course and about the blocking stones on our path. This will be a reflection of how I felt as a student in this course and what is my impression about it, what could be improved and what were my personal highlights.

Its hard to say what were my expectations now then everything is over. I had, to be honest, very little clue about what would be going on in this course. Even after the introduction on the first meeting I was not sure at all and this feeling lasted for a long period. The course was open structured to give lot of freedom to the students and I really struggled with this at the beginning for two reasons. First I was not really used to this “freedom” to do whatever I want and second to fulfill the expectations of the professor. I spent too much time guessing what this expectations could be and I think the others did the same which lead to some of the troubles we had inside the group. When everybody guesses about expectations you are not really free to use the freedom that is given to you. I think sometimes a hint in one or other direction would have been something that really have prevented some of the argues we had inside the group. It has always been hard for me to formulize expectations and concrete goals for me and its even harder to follow a path to goal without feedback also in a critical way. I think this can guide you in some way better than accepting everything. 

The course is about the “production” of social media and so we tried to use as many media and tools as possible (in a meaningful way ;)) to get used to them and see how the production of content works with them. I first really liked our “learning”platform wikiversity. It has a nice structure which is so similar to Wikipedia that you have no troubles to find content and know how to sort and organize the content. It was also not too difficult to use after you figured out some codings to create headings, links, etc. I really liked how my text good this nice Wikipedia structure and looked far more “professional”. Now there is the part where the BUT pops up and in my case its not just a small but like…”but its not good to include pictures or something like that”, it’s a huge BUT like “But the system kicked me out, banned me and erased my content”. This was so damn frustrating for me, you cant really imagine. You work on content for over a month and suddenly everything is gone. I was a bit disappointed because I did not feel supported at all in the beginning but at least I learned to stay calm and continue contacting people from the helpdesk. After a disturbing weekend the problem was solved and although some content was gone forever I could continue working but my trust in this page was gone. This made me think about the construction of the page. I think the platform itself is nice for creating content at a very high level based on scientific sources but I think its not the best tool as learning platform. Content by the students itself might get claimed as spam and that is everything else but not motivating. I guess our professor mentioned it in one of our first meetings that he had chosen this platform to show us something new beside the common moodlething. This is an excellent thought especially concerning the theme of the course but the selection was maybe not the best choice because it is no protected space where the students can come up with own ideas and try out different things. It is a stable system that doesnt allow any mistakes and is also public for everybody. This shall not sound like blaming a person or a system. Things like this can happen but what I really learned is to have a look at a social media, its system and its rules before I add content and another thing we should always keep in mind. Make backups. Lots of people are praising the cloud but just make sure you have your content also saved somewhere at your own computer.

 
What did I learn beside making backups? Working in a team was nothing new to me because you start with groupworks already in primary school but this groupwork was a bit extraordinary. We had to come up with complete own ideas and the whole responsible was on our shoulders. We had no leader figure but tried to give every member enough room for own ideas. We tried to include the strengths of the individual so that the whole group can benefit. I think the whole process was not only working on a common goal but also a learning progress. What is my opinion to this topic? What do I want as outcome of this teamwork? What can I do to realize it? We had the moments where we stuck but when the stones continued rolling and goal was insight we were more than glad that we made it. 

In the end it is great so see that have not just finished a course but produced a concrete idea that that hopefully will grow and become real. For this reason its even topping my expectations because I would never believed something like that in the beginning. I think one of the essential points which make this project possible was the size of the group. Five is a perfect number. Enough brains for collecting ideas but not too many cooks that spoil the broth. Overall I can look back on a sometimes quite rocky road but it was really worth going and I hard ever had such nice accompany which wants to continue walking together after the goal for finishing the course has been reached.

In this way
So long and thanks for all the fish

P.S. pardonne my youtube overkill here but I really like that I can include the music/lyrics that came into my mind while writing this feedback for the course. In traditional feedbacks you dont have the chance to include such things but a blog is more open and so I thought I just give it a try ;) So if you dont like the text you can at least enjoy the music.
Especially the music from the hitchhikers guide through galaxy because today is Towel Day ;)