SHAVONISAPS.

When I opened my email to find that Tuesday’s usual 2.30pm unlecture was cancelled, I was over the moon! My initial thought was “Thank the Heavens above” to be frank. I thought about giving the reading recommendations a miss, but ever since Week 3’s unlecture, I can still hear Adrian’s voice ringing in my ear: “Learning happens when you decide to remake things for yourself!”

Ok Adrian, will do… will do…

In lieu of the unsymposium this week, we have been asked to take a look at a few YouTube clips. Michael Wesch’s ‘From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able’ spoke to me as a student. I could definitely pick up on the same ideas that Adrian had addressed in Week 3- the need to shift students from a state of simply ‘knowing’ and having information thrown at them to acquiring the ability to criticise and to create.

Wesch puts forth the question,

“If these walls could talk, what would they say? If students learn what they do, what are they learning sitting here? The information is up here, at the front of the room. Follow along! The message of the room is pretty clear: bow to the authority and follow, follow, follow. Of course walls and desks cannot talk, but students can!”

What would the lecture walls of Building 12 say to me? They’d probably tell me to listen and to pay attention. They’d tell me to get off Facebook and stop doodling on the side of my page because it is affecting my learning. But is it? Am I truly ‘learning’ if I were to sit and to listen to the words flowing out of my lecturer’s mouth for one whole hour? No.

So what am I ‘learning’ sitting in a lecture theatre? Nothing. Learning happens outside of these walls. It is a choice. We are provided with the information and the facts- they are free. But to learn means to convert this information, to use it; to relate it to who we are, our experiences and our atmosphere. We don’t learn anything by relying on the whispers of the lecture theatre walls to bring our attention back to information. We learn when we make the conscious choice to rework this information for ourselves.

I’ll end on Wesch’s concluding point.

It is time that we, as students, move beyond being simply ‘meaning-seekers’. Meaning isn’t necessarily something that we can find. It is something that we ultimately must create for ourselves.