Letter to the North Pole, what class I want at BGI

If I were designing a class, I would like to learn skills that I could apply immediately, readings that are timely and relevant, a assignments that build upon each other in a logical manner and a project that has meaning and positive impact.

Wait I just took that class....

In order of magnitude of what worked:

Incorporating video as a medium of expression and Frank Lopez as a speaker, the combination unleashed a creative force within me. Since I found Adbusters, I have wondered if I would ever be able to create art that also be part of some greater change, now I know how.

Blogging, all of it drove home the discipline necessary to be successful as member of the online community and the tools to do so. The Beat blog generated alot of synergy for me as I began to focus on where to find my right livelihood. I needed some examples of the types of posts to get me started otherwise I felt inspired to get my voice out there.

The tagging exercise should be in LPD, it opened my eyes to how others saw me and how close that aligned with what became my personal brand. The branding was much harder, felt rushed and was one of the most timely parts of the class as it setup nicely with Right Livelihood.

The Social Change Project simply the most important assignment as the sole desirable outcome is change, which is why I am here. To see how social media can immediately impact a community was empowering.

Organizing my online presence at Linkedin Google, Youtube and Twitter offered me great insight into aligning my social networks so they respond to one another.

I loved the readings, so this is where I see room for improvement. Organization, too much information on one page, since we read about simplicity and complexity and how it affects influence made me think, less text on the syllabus and put more of the readings in a resources page with links to them for that week.

I am not sure Delicious deserved the hype it got. It seems right now someone else benefits from my tags and I can't find what I am looking for, I did not see the application of Delicious put into practice in class so other than putting my bookmarks on the web and off my computer.

I think a wiki should come out of this with all the terms listed. Post Mortem reminds me of CSI and something dead, I prefer After action revue or something else.

This is the first course to link me back to Adbusters and how I can participate in the revolution.

Thank you Christopher ! I hope the future BGI'rs will be able to take your class.

Cheers,
Matt

Bonnie commented on my last post and offered some great opportunities for synergy with what we learned in Social Media to enhance intergrated learning with LPD and CRL.

'Matt-- and Tomas--
This makes sense to me. I am always conscious that under each complaint is a commitment: in this case I believe it is a commitment to get maximum value from our time at BGI, and for the school to be everything it promises to be, in every sense. Yes, BGI is a young school, and while the growing pains are felt by all of us, the opportunity to take this kind of complaint to action is huge.

So for the record, I also feel that these Personal Learning Journal blogs have been not only of the kind of great value to me that I think both LPD and CRL are intending, but in fact have been a MORE effective space for the kind of free reflection those two classes aim for.

My vote is more coordination between LPD and CRL, and that we find a way to integrate pretty much all the first half of Christopher's class into the curriculum of the entire school, primarily through LPD and CRL. Then EVERYONE gets the benefits of these skills and tools-- it kind of kills me to think that only some of us have access to this class-- and then when Using the Social Web for Social Change is offered again as a DLM course, the participants are starting with a well-established base of skills and can get going directly into what is currently the second half of the course. I would be happy to talk to anyone in the faculty or administration to tease out the details.'

Beth is incorporating our learning from this class and trying to integrate it right now;

'Emailed Taj tonight about using this blog as a medium for my CRL portfolio... we'll see what she says. I think it would be a great experiment in how to use the learning journal blog concept across various classes and types of assignments.'

Manan and Karen also seek more rigor and execution so I see a use for AI and bring it forward in our LPD/CRL as a commitment to making our last two semester count and leave a legacy as competent change agents for future cohorts to look to for inspiration of what is possible. Table topic, next steps?