Blog 2, 3rd session #emergence

As in the previous session, we started off with a mediation of ourselves again, to connect with your body and ask yourself how you feel at this moment, why you are here at this course and what you are looking for to achieve. I would like to get a better understanding of my feelings and what they are influenced by in our very dynamic world with lots of technologies like social media, that connect people virtually all over the world. The main essence of the lecture was about systems thinking and interdependence, looking at the patterns that connect living systems, like the crab and the lobster or you and me. There are interactions everywhere, and one things we came to see was that it highly depends on the observer, on the individual if one can see an interconnection between certain things or not. Therefore the question of collection or system arose. Are we looking merely at a collection of parts like tools in a toolbox or at a system that is made up of interacting interrelated parts that combined serve a specific purpose, like a car or a football team? It was interesting to hear different opinions on if people see a system or a collection when talking about a certain research object. For instance a bouquet of flower, a collection or a system? For me it is system, as different arrangements and selection of color change the interaction of the flowers and how one person would perceive them, more appealing or less appealing. Again it is very much dependent on the observer and what purpose he wants to bring across.

Blog 1 (2nd session) #emergence

Attending the course for the first time I did not exactly know what awaits me, as I never visited a psychological course before. We started with a self-mediation, to connect with yourself, with your body to concentrate on how you feel at this moment right now. After some time, each of us anonymously shared five of his most striking feelings via Metimeter. It was interesting to see which feelings popped up the most, you could clearly see that those were the most natural and superficial feelings, but every person has different, very individual feelings deeper inside of themselves, me at least. Subsequently, we got the task to introduce others to the place where we live, what we call home, how we relate to this place, what connects us to it, and what we like about it. I wrote about the place I grew up, in Bavaria, Germany at a beautify lake close to the alps. We did this via a mapping platform where everyone published his text connected to the place on the map, which shows the social media learning technology emphasis of the course. After this, we started with a face-to-face experiential activity, all of us moved randomly through the room to mingle until the professor, Mr. Braila told us to stop. At this point, we were asked to talk to one of our fellow students next to us and tell each other about our homes and what we feel for this place. Ensuing, we were asked to go together with another pair and then introduce the home of the person you just interviewed, to the group.  Then we had to come up with one sentence comprising a common value or values that collectively mean the most to us as a group. It was interesting to see that we all put a lot of emphasis on the nature of the place we call our home and how that connects people with the environment.