Assignment Five: Decision Analysis Framing and Alternatives

Assignment for this week.

1) Describe a decision where you framed the decision too widely and another decision where you framed it too narrowly.

2) Work out a table of alternatives for the decision that you came up with in Assignment 3.

Assignment Four: Plato's Republic

Just a reminder for all of you that you will need to hand in your Plato's Republic assignment next Monday. Same 3 questions as before.

Don't try to read the whole book, I have mentioned certain chapters you might wish to go through. Please go through the "Cave" Pick the parts that capture your attention and write about them, I will then try to talk about them.

Organisation of Interns Blog

I was wondering whether there was somebetter why of organising the stuff that I am having you guys put up on the Blog. Could you guys look through this?

I would propose that we should do better "Titling" of the blog entries...

What suggest the following titling

- Assignment # .....

- Journal Update: <<>>

- Meme # ...

Interns Alumni

I spoke to Lina last week when we went down to support Angelina in her belly dancing routine on Dance Floor. Lina was sharing with me how useful she found our sessions now that she was in university. I thought I would invite our previous interns to share their previous experiences plowing through Plato, participating in the events and programmes. I have also invited them to post comments on your entries as well so as to make our discussion all the more richer and fun.

Good work!

Would like to commend all of you for reading through Gorgias and writing these comments. I don't think that it is easy and I am glad that all of you ploughed through it and made it. I hope that this is a good learning experience for you that really it doesn't matter whether you have studied literature or english, so long as you are willing to read, try to understand... you can pick up just about any text and get somewhere.

I think most of you have gotten somewhere. As before, I would like to encourage all of you to read and also comment on each other's postings as well. It helps in our learning process.

Okay, the Socratic Method....
Some of you hated it and some of you liked it...

To be honest, I also dislike Socrates way of leading his opponents by the nose until they ended contradicting themselves. And yes, I also do find it rather manipulative.... much as there is a part of me that really doesn't like debating and debaters.... (I like the winning part of it though)

However, it is important to understand the fundamentals of the Socratic method... I am glad that Inez has gone on to do some research. It is really about teaching by asking questions and having students answer those questions. The starting point of the Socratic method is really that the teacher is a guide, facilitator... asking the right questions to get the student to learn themselves. I am sure you hear about the Montessori method, and this is what underlies this as well (if we strip away all the hype behind it) is the belief that children can be and ought to be self-directed learners.

So the Socratic Method is really about learner-directed learning... with the learner charting out his own path of learning...

In some ways, this is what I am hoping to achieve when I get you guys to blog about what you have read. I hope to pick out the salient points that you have raised and try to teach based on the points that you have raised. Ultimately however, you will find that the most part of the learning experience is reading the books for yourselves, commenting on them and reading other people's comments.

Assignment Three: Decision Analysis

Okay here is the assignment for the Decision Analysis module.

Would appreciate your responses on the following, due 21 Jan.

1) Give an instance of when you or have friend have acted in a pro-active instead of reactive way?

2) Do you think our educational system teaches student to make good decisions? Would like your views on this (2-3 para)

3) Choose a real-life example of a difficult decision you are in the midst of making a decision for?
(We will be using this example throughout our various decision analysis modules, so do please choose a real and substantive example.

Assignment Two: 3 Questions

I hope that all of you had a chance to read Gorgias. It is quite a thin book, and it shouldn't be such tough reading. As mentioned to you, here are the 3 questions, that we will apply for all books that we are going to read...

1) What stands out and really captures your attention? What struck you after having read that passage, why?

2) What lessons does this book have for the work here as CDC, for public policy?

3) What lessons does this book have for you?

Comments

I have been reading through the responses to the first assignment. As mentioned would be nice to have pictures of the places that you mentioned up. I have commented on several of the posts and I will try to comment all of the posts.

I would also like you guys to comment on each other's posts. I had to put a rule to say that I expect to see 9 comments per post, but really part the learning is really amongst yourselves rather than between myself and my other colleagues and the rest of you.

One More Thought On the Resume Book

Sorry guys, I left out one really important point that I didn't get to share.

One of the reasons why I have wanted you to collate the resume book is that I want all of you to be aware of the talents, skills and gifts all of you are bringing to the internship. All of you come highly qualified... with lots of useful knowledge skills that we need in our CDC work serving the community. I don't want you to leave that all behind after you have left JC and started joining us. However, it is not just important for us to know the talents, skills that you have but also all of you to know the skills and talents that each of you have. I hope that you will also take this opportunity to learn from each other and to grow from each other.