Experiential Learning (May 13th)

When presenting alongside Rab at JALT, listening to the professional educators’ comments on my presentation, I realized how important experiential learning is. Listening to the teacher speak for a full class can be informative to a certain extent. However, as I write this blog I still unequivocally remember today’s class, its objective, and what feelings I developed are still vividly evocated in my brain. Our experience of being abandoned and manipulated by the “boss” at the beginning of class was so dreadful, infuriating, and tiresome. I was unhappy ten minutes into class, but imagining this situation encompassing our real life was even worse. What we encountered in class was only a tiny fragment and if that was amplified in every strand of life, I am unanimous about Palestinians doing slightly violent things against the Islamic people to claim their oppression and anger. 

In the last blog, I elucidated on how my perceptions toward social media drastically changed within the past few weeks. Undoubtedly, within the past few classes, my eyes have opened up and accumulating information from social media became acceptable to me (not that I was against it prior to this course). Notwithstanding, Rab guided me in making a realization, that social media is still not 100% accurate or reliable. I thought as long as we were seeing the story told from those who were actually there, it can not get more reliable than that. Rab mentioned that he relies on social media platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn so he can observe and acquire knowledge about contemporary socirty through the eyes of local people who actually saw the situation. However, as I write this blog, I started to question the reliability and plausibility of that as well. Recalling the pictures we took of our school, and how we wrote about Rab’s backpack was already staged and biased. And the "culprits" for those biases are none other than ourselves. We were unconsciously yet deliberately putting a filter in our writing and pictures so we could portray our message in a certain way. Local people who depict their situation may be doing the same so regardless of which platform we obtain information from, all in all, critical thinking is vital. To summarize, keeping in mind that every single person has a bias is key. (Although in my opinion, after delineating the BFM I thought pictures and videos are much more plausible than writing.)

Notes: 

media- the average person has not seen everything

you have to judge the credibility on social media, EVERYONE HAS A BIAS

Camelbak- water bag for drinking - laptop

military special forces. limited edition

square pouches, first aid kids, BFB, 14 years.