Designing our own Course

The most interesting part of today's class was Mr.Paterson talking about the Tiananmen Square massacre and it being censored on Bing. As a former Chinese resident, I am very much aware that the Chinese government is manipulative with what they share with the people and how the country is portrayed to other nations. I lived in China for approximately 12 years and only learned about the Tiananmen Square massacre years after leaving Beijing, via social media. A Chinese friend of mine was sharing the reality of videos and information being deleted off of Chinese media outlets, which I thought was such a brilliant, relevant and responsible act. after moving to Tokyo and saw a shocking video on social media which appalled me and had me researching. I was glad to hear that traditional news outlets established this problematic fraud, and exposed it to the internet because the millions of those using Bing are uncountable and should be notified. What was even more shocking and newly discovered was Google concealing the truth of Hillary Clinton during the elections. The numbers of Google users are pretty significant, and after years and years, have gained copious trust from various generations and countries worldwide. Yet, hearing such bias acts was disappointing, but what I found odd was how it was an obscure topic to the majority of students. I wonder if this was something that the media blocked out from the public eye, or it was simply our lack of awareness. (Although as someone who religiously watches TV, including the news, I did not see such headlines)

In today's class, Mr.Paterson pointed out a few mistakes students were making on our blog posts. With three consecutive LE classes each with meticulous yet ample amounts of information, there could be a few mistakes. I also had a misinterpretation a few blogs ago about a man in the documentary. Nevertheless, these mistakes are quite dangerous because they regard substantial problems permeating society. I usually write my blogs based on the notes I take during class, so hopefully, my notes are not inaccurate but when writing out of memory and simultaneously trying to construct an opinion on it is quite difficult. However, butchering imperatives pieces of information is not optimal. In other classes, we barely have the opportunity to speak about our reactions and feelings about the topic at hand, so in order to get used to this process, I would like to read other people's blogs and reflect on my own writing. Since as of now, I only read a few from time to time. 

Subsequent to Mr.Paterson rectifying our blogs and fundamental misunderstanding on the word "bias", we started group work to fabricate a syllabus for a university course. Recently, in other subjects as well, we are given the opportunity to create our own classes and presentations which really encourage us to think from new viewpoints. My team and I contemplated on the content and order of our course. Through discussions with classmates, I was able to realize how carefully selected and effective each of Mr.Paterson's classes was. The order of the documentaries and activities, being told to stand in the corridor was never really questioned, but now having to design our own course, the teacher's methods and lessons made a lot more sense. Eventually, our team decided to go with a lesson structure similar to Mr.Paterson, just omitting a few parts we did not find as relevant as others. Also, at the end of the course, we decided to have students tackle a significant project to end the unit. In my experience, doing debates are on e of the most effective ways to engage with classmates while accumulating abundant information, because, in order to succeed as a team, lots of research needs to take place. Another teammate suggested writing our own news reports (biased or unbiased, whichever way we want to challenge) so we can experience the standpoint of a journalist, as well as accumulate information about the topics by ourselves. In summary, today's class was imperative because it gave us a chance to analyze the classes we take every week and be more conscious about it henceforth.