Social Media at University

As I said in the post before, reality is way ahead institutions at the moment. The outburst of social media is obliging universities to regulate its use in campus. Interestingly enough, the first reactions from students have been complaining about censorship.

The case of Sam Houston State University (SHSU) is eloquent. Certainly the “Occupy Wall Street” mood is behind the naïve street actions done by SHSU students reported in this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education. Freedom of Speech is mixed up with utter freedom of one side in the story, no doubt about it.

Nevertheless, it is interesting to read the manual of Social Media Policy and Procedures of SHSU draft (click here) because we all will be involved very soon in problems of that sort.

Reinventing Higher Education

¿Is education going to be reinvented by institutions or by people? Facts, like Kahn Academy, show that the acceleration of current life is leaving behind even the best educational institutions. The article in this link gives an idea of the real dimension of the problem. Anyway, IE University is making a great effort that benefits all.

Learning Revolution at Harvard

The only way to go ahead changes is improving learning.

Harvard, again, has taken the lead: transversal knowledge among the whole university, ICT, Mobile Learning, etc. It is not just a matter of having funds: those 40 million dollars could have been spent in so many fashionable items far away from pedagogy.

Mobile Learning

Relating knowledge to everyday life is the clue for a long lasting education. Mobile technology give us that opportunity. Let's try it.

The Thinking of Thom Mayne

Interesting lecture by architect Thom Mayne, at IAAC, Barcelona, yesterday. He talked about the “type of thinking” behind his works.

Through the lecture, he developed his point underlying certain “Non-Cartesian way of thinking” and also “thinking through things and not through words”. He illustrated his approach to thinking by celebrating things that are “always unique, never systematic”. In the case of the entrance to his extraordinary new building in China, the Giant Group Campus, the architect from Connecticut described it as “100% conceptual, completely useless, pure rhetorical”. Even, at a certain point, the 2005 Pritzker Prize resumed his whole life as a devotion to “not doing classical architecture”.

Ultimately, it sounded that Mayne, more than showing his way of thinking, showed the way he intensifies his beautiful forms by hiding the simple and extremely conventional way of thinking that lays behind his works. This slight contradiction, that does not devaluate a bit the immense quality of his work, is interesting for me, as I am working at the moment "How we think" by John Dewey in order to improve how we teach architecture. This contradiction just mentioned is assumed by Mayne himself: He emphasised that the “chassis” of his Cooper Union building in New York, was “incredibly simple”, and that this fact was completely hidden to the user through the concentration of the “encounters of different things” in its extremely sophisticated hall.

In the end, it seems that it is not “not putting the dot in the middle of the line” what warranties that Maine puts it in the proper place. It’s clear that it is his sculptural gift, which undoubtedly he has, what allows him to behave the way he does, not a especial way of thinking. But, wait a second… ¿Is not classical to hide simple structures under decoration?

The Architecture Film Festival of Rotterdam

To connect architecture and cinema is always a feast. At Rotterdam, it's already taking place, maybe, the best of this mixture the AFFR.

From 6 to 9 October the LantarenVenster cinema in Rotterdam on Wilhelminapier is the epicentre of the 6th Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam (AFFR). For four whole days film and architecture devotees can indulge themselves with a programme packed with shorts and feature films, documentaries about glamour architects, debates, talk shows and excursions.

Wrong Things with Education

"There are only two wrong things with the education system:

1) What we teach

2) How we teach it"

Roger Schank

Zenithal Light (Sonia Álvarez)

Former student, Architec Sonia Álvarez, from R3 Arquitectura, has published on the Web this design done by her at our 2007 LAR Workshop at IE University. I agree with Sonia that this two weeks work is one of those works that resists the pass of time.

2007

ALUMNA: Sonia ÁLvarez

PROFESOR:
Dr. Arq. Miguel Jaime

DESCRIPCIÓN DEL EJERCICIO:
La definición más elemental de arquitectura siempre incluirá a la luz. Por su parte, la luz cenital es la relación entre la luz y el espacio más primaria, ya que naturalmente la luz (del sol, la luna, las estrellas) viene desde arriba. En el presente ejercicio se pide iluminar cenital y naturalmente un espacio de usos múltiples de 40,00 m X 12,00 m de planta y de 12,00m de alto, con su cara más corta orientada a norte. La altura libre resultante después de cubrirlo influirá directamente en la versatilidad del espacio, como es lógico.

Reflexive Organizations

Organizations of any kind, social, educational, political, business, etc., tend to remain the same. They are all characterized by what Donald Schön called "dynamic conservatism". That is not a hundred per cent bad: it makes institutions and companies reliable. Nevertheless, at times of uncertainty and big changes, like today, the exageration of this tendency can be lethal.

Reflexive organizations, that means institutions able to understand and react in front of changing realities, is the solution. The "Knowledge Based Society" should be renamed as "Learning Based Society".

Maybe one of the best texts on reflexiveness and society is Schön's Beyond the Stable State, published in 1973.

A learning system… must be one in which dynamic conservatism operates at such a level and in such a way as to permit change of state without intolerable threat to the essential functions the system fulfils for the self. Our systems need to maintain their identity, and their ability to support the self-identity of those who belong to them, but they must at the same time be capable of transforming themselves. (Schon 1973: 57)

The link has a good and comprenhensive information on Schön's learning approach.

Reflexiveness and Artificial Intelligence

The base of reflexive learning is on Dewey's work. Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and machine learning could be a natural development if we take into account "How we Think", the marvellous book written by Dewey in 1910.

It is worth giving e-learning and AI a try in education. I already signed. The NYT article is extremely interesting.