This is my video essay, about the importance of relationships in the learning experience.  I have added the text of the essay below the video, in case of technical difficulty, or more accurately, for souls like me who prefer to read along.

It was odd and unusual for me to make a video like this, so it may be a little rough.  But hey, I think I may have learned.  I’m better at it today then I was yesterday, at least I can say that.

There is nothing to learn from an empty classroom.

We need teachers, we need classmates, we need the relationships that exist within the classroom.

We need to have relationships with our books, relationships with our movies.  Learning is built on the basis of relationships…

And if anyone says different, they can stick it.

Learning occurs in the presence of those you trust, in the conversations that last a lifetime.  Learning occurs not in the hour thats tests one’s memory, but in the moment that tests one’s character.

Life is like a comically sized chocolate bar.  It makes you smile, but in order to finish it you have to share it with the people you love.

So give a hug, make a friend.  Reach out and learn from everyone around you. Develop relationships that will last forever.  And don’t be afraid to look stupid, because when your around the people you love, looking stupid makes memories that last a lifetime   .

And whoever said never look back, well, they didn’t know how to learn.

Because you learn from looking back on every relationship you ever had.

For this reflection, I decided to take on a very visual approach. Initially, I wanted to write an imaginative story, but I also wanted to try something new. I decided that instead of a story, I would show everyone how I think. I use a program called FreeMind which helps me visually outline my thoughts. By making concept maps, I can see relationships that keep everything hierarchically organized. After I finished an outline on a comparison of visual learning to other learning styles, I felt that it wasn’t enough for a reflection and so I made a small comic. Though I appreciate visual learning, I am not a great artist. I hope my stick figures are acceptable.

(I was considering drawing a webcomic for this. No, really, probably in a Scott McCloud Understanding Comics kinda way. But I am the absolute slowest drawer in the world, so I ended up choosing something else to focus on. C’est la vie.)

I started exploring the different options for classes online, but I kept coming back to iTunes U, which I have used a couple of times. So I started exploring that.

As far as I can tell, iTunes U. was a natural progression from podcasts, originally. Podcasts are basically the blog version of radio shows, where you can make a podcast about anything and you can download podcasts about anything. I love them because they are free entertainment about anything I want to spend time on, which for me means that I listen to podcasts mostly about comic books and general geekery. I also have a few on Japanese and Hebrew and one about cooking. Every once in a while I go on a podcast downloading spree, just finding podcasts on everything I could possibly be interested in. I use up a lot of computer memory that way.

I was listening to podcasts all the way back in 7th grade, so I remember before iTunes U., when there was no way to verify the credentials of a podcast. But even then there were podcasts that were basically scholarly lectures to download. For example, I’ve downloaded the 12 Byzantine Rulers podcast which was just made by the author, but it’s an extensive, scholarly study.

Podcasts (and I’m only talking about the old-school audio versions) were great because I could just stick them on my ipod and listen to them in my spare time. I used to mostly listen on the morning bus ride to school, where my fellow students got used to my random giggling as the podcast host said something funny.

So was psyched when iTunes U. opened up. I downloaded a bunch of episodes and started listening.

Because it’s brilliant. Now you can take college-level courses in your spare time in a way that simply isn’t possible anywhere else. Grab a class on something you want to learn about, and listen on your commute to work, or as your driving to the store, whenever! (Yes, this has existed before. My mom listens to CDs on law to keep up with the latest developments while she drives. The point is that iTunes wields the media behemoth in the room, so their reach is huge.) And possibly most importantly, they’re free. I’m a big fan of open-source everything, so supporting open-source education is a no-brainer.

Unfortunately, I found out pretty quickly that some of the podcasts were just recorded lectures, and recording quality was not necessarily the greatest. Most of the podcasters I listen to have a great deal of pride in their sound quality, so I can’t really listen to bad quality sound for long. But some of them are fine, or even very good. And so I’ve started to download those.

I want to make a comment about vidcasts (video podcasts) now. In some ways, they are much better than a plain iTunes U. podcast, because they can show something in a class as well as tell. But they lose the convenience of audio-only classes because then you have to look at them. On a bus/train/subway, it doesn’t make a bid difference, but if you are walking/driving, they become useless, so I tend to favor audio only.

And I’m not stuck with only one university either. I have my choice of classes, institutions and teachers. Of course, the selection is still limited, but it’s expanded tremendously in the past few years, and I think it’s only going to get bigger.

But would it work? More specifically, would it work for my learning style?

Probably not. While I will choose iTunes U. as my college of choice for subjects I don’t have the time/energy to pursue in a more traditional setting, it will never grow to replace real colleges in. At least, not in it’s current form.

There are a few reasons for that. First of all, iTunes U. is not credited in any way, and while the individual universities that contribute content are all real, there is no coordination in departments or classes. All of the different options could grow to be an amazing asset if anyone puts in the time, effort and organization to make it so. At Queens I’m limited by the focuses of my departments, but as a CUNY student, I (theoretically) have all of the resources of CUNY at my fingertips. So if I want to focus on a topic that is barely covered by the Queens Media department, I can (still, theoretically, considering the e-permit system) take classes at Hunter, Brooklyn, etc. that address that topic of my choice. iTunes U. could become such a system, but it probably won’t. I think there is the potential for such a collaborative system to exist in the future, and I would give iTunes U. due credit for making it possible, but Apple’s focus isn’t education on the whole, so they’re not going to give it the necessary resources for it to become some sort of viable option.

But it mostly won’t work because the style is not conducive to me personally for any sort of in-depth learning.  While I can, and do, pick up all sorts of things while listening to classes in my spare time, the only way the classes are really going to stick is if I take notes. Notes are how I remember stuff. I’m the only one who takes really good notes in my Media Studies 300 class, because the teacher posts his powerpoint lectures online after class, and he is incredibly detailed in his slides. But if I don’t take notes, I won’t remember most of the class, and studying for tests will be much, much more difficult. So that’s the first problem  – the convince gets in the way of the learning, a little bit.

The second reason is my own struggles with time discipline. I’ve mentioned before that this class is a bit difficult because the time commitment is so unique. I still plug in the hours, but without a stable structure, my time is clumped and unpredictable. In some ways, more convenient, because I don’t have to worry about missing class if some emergency comes up, and I can do my “class participation” in bits and pieces when I have the time. But sometimes it drops to the bottom of my “to-do list” and I have to scramble a bit to keep up, and I could never manage it for every single class. I really like the rigid structure of going into school, and I wouldn’t choose a “non-traditional” option unless I absolutely had to.

But the last, and most important reason is the teacher-student connection. In iTunes U. it’s a one-way transmission between the professor and the downloaders. I’m sure I could contact a professor if I wanted to. I do, after all, know their name and the name of the institution in which they work. But I’m not exactly encouraged to contact them, because if every downloader contacted their professor, the poor teachers would be overrun. But I think that the connection with your teachers is an incredibly important part of the classroom experience. In an normal class, I make it a point to participate and even try to come up with ways to talk to the teacher after class just to be sure the teacher will remember who I am (even if they don’t always remember my name very quickly). In this class, Professor Ugoretz has been very accessible, and even here I feel like there’s an extra barrier of the internet getting in the way. So until the internet classes offered for download have some sort of classroom connectivity going on, I can’t imagine ever taking them any more seriously than I do now.

I will, however, be keeping my eyes peeled.

I began this reflection as Option Three, but quickly realized that I was actually using Option Two, after all. I initially wanted to do a slideshow with voice-over, which is the sad attempt at what I tried below. It was supposed to be simple, quick, and easy.

(http://www.motionbox.com/videos/1c99dfb91419e3ce94)

Unfortunately, I’m not a verbal person, speech-wise. I’m not much for participating in discussion-heavy classes, and for good reason. In the video above, I attempted to work without a script, and speak as I would in one of the aforementioned classes, and it was a disaster.

Why? I lost the story somewhere in the middle. I was so focused on explaining one aspect that I forgot the main point of the slideshow. I got caught up in details instead of looking at the big picture, and by the end, there wasn’t even a way to combine it all into a conclusion. I spoke for roughly three minutes, and I think I stopped listening to myself about ten seconds in. So instead of conveying my thoughts, I resorted to babbling to try and explain myself instead of organizing my thoughts and trying again.

In writing, there’s a delete button. In speaking, there isn’t. And apparently, I do need that fine-tuned control of revision to present myself in a comprehensible and applicable manner.