Thursday, May 3

 

 

Jutta and I spent all morning reviewing twenty three forehandsuppgifter that applicants had sent us. We had to divide them into three piles: good, okay, and no thanks.

The exercise we had set asked them to draw a line, draw a map that included the line, and then write a reflection describing their thought processes while carrying out the exercise. A handful had actually taken the exercise to heart and demonstrated their capacity to think and to surprise themselves. Another handful had either completely missed the point of the exercise or carried it out in such a perfunctory way that they, in effect, ruled themselves out. That left a large pile in the middle that we had to go through several times.

Eventually we divided the pile in the middle into two piles plus one that stood on its own. That joined the no thanks pile. The smaller pile got added to the good pile, while the remainder formed the okay pile. When we finished we had twelve good to excellent entries, seven acceptable entries, and four that did not cross the threshold.

We walked to Lidl to talk over what we had done and then I went to have a talk with Annika about her trip to India. She had been on a fact-finding mission as part of Arcada´s putative export scheme. She had been with Pete Westabäcka, people from Pori University, and people from EduNation, a company with whom Arcada has formed an official partnership.

She showed me a lot of material she had collected and gave me her impressions of the market, the Indian educators she met, and the possibilities that might exist for Arcada. We also discussed the meeting on Monday, when one or two people will arrive from India on a reciprocal visit. I will take part in the lunch that day, and see what I can do to boost Arcada’s hopes.

On the way back I wander down to A310 to see if I might find a student I need to talk to there. The space contains nobody at all, but I look around for five minutes and then sit down to think through what I have just learned. I photograph the space, as I have done before, because I believe it has value while an increasing number of staff believe we should turn it back into a classroom.

I will finish the day finalising all the material for block 2 of Interactive Storytelling and then putting it online.