First of all can I ask those of you who haven't yet done the survey to complete it please.
This week all of you will be starting Soliya and you will have your first chat session. A lot of the time will be spent resolving technical issues and understanding how the software works, but don't worry, it gets better!
After your session remember to select, copy and paste the text chat into a word document and then send it to yourself and also to me (francesca.helm@unipd.it).
Also you have to write your diaries and send them as a comment to this post in the blog. Also read each other's diaries and comment to them too if you like, you may have advice to give!
Why write diaries?
It is not sufficient simply to have an experience in order to learn. Without reflecting upon this experience it may quickly be forgotten, or its learning potential lost. It is from the feelings and thoughts emerging from this reflection that generalisations or concepts can be generated. And it is generalisations that allow new situations to be tackled effectively. (Gibbs, 1988, p. 9)
Reflective writing gives you the chance think about what you are doing more deeply and to learn from your experience. Writing your thoughts down makes it easier for you to think about them and make connections between what you are thinking, what you are being taught and what you are doing. Your written reflection will also serve as a source of reference and evidence for your final paper. It will help you understand the journey you have gone through and see the progress you have made.
In your reflection, you could write about:
• what you did,
• what was good and bad about it,
• why you found it good or bad,
• what you found easy or difficult,
• why you found it easy or difficult,
• what you liked about what you did,
• why you felt like that,
• how you might want to follow it up,
• what other people did and why they did it,
• what other information do you need,
• what you are going to do differently in this type of situation next time,
• what steps you are going to take on the basis of what you have learned,
Enjoy!!
After your session remember to select, copy and paste the text chat into a word document and then send it to yourself and also to me (francesca.helm@unipd.it).
Also you have to write your diaries and send them as a comment to this post in the blog. Also read each other's diaries and comment to them too if you like, you may have advice to give!
Why write diaries?
It is not sufficient simply to have an experience in order to learn. Without reflecting upon this experience it may quickly be forgotten, or its learning potential lost. It is from the feelings and thoughts emerging from this reflection that generalisations or concepts can be generated. And it is generalisations that allow new situations to be tackled effectively. (Gibbs, 1988, p. 9)
Reflective writing gives you the chance think about what you are doing more deeply and to learn from your experience. Writing your thoughts down makes it easier for you to think about them and make connections between what you are thinking, what you are being taught and what you are doing. Your written reflection will also serve as a source of reference and evidence for your final paper. It will help you understand the journey you have gone through and see the progress you have made.
In your reflection, you could write about:
• what you did,
• what was good and bad about it,
• why you found it good or bad,
• what you found easy or difficult,
• why you found it easy or difficult,
• what you liked about what you did,
• why you felt like that,
• how you might want to follow it up,
• what other people did and why they did it,
• what other information do you need,
• what you are going to do differently in this type of situation next time,
• what steps you are going to take on the basis of what you have learned,
Enjoy!!
Hi,
RispondiEliminaThis was my first day of Soliya meeting.
We started slowly. Almost everybody had technical problems. And I believe that was a lot of people missing. At the end we just start half hour later.
At first, the facilitators ask us to talk about we selves. Where are we from, where we live. So, it was very interesting to know about one girl that lives in Egypt, in Menofya. And we try to find this city in Google maps, but we didn't have much luck.
The other girls are from Germany, United States and Italy (Marta). There was also this boy from Turkey, but he have technical problems all the time, so he could not hear us or talk to us.
The facilitators were always trying to help or giving some advice, and at the same time they were trying to encourage us to take the lead of the conversations. But I believe we were all a bit shy and not confident enough to talk freely.
They also initiated us to present our place of living, to show the group your house, and what you like about it, and talk about it a bit. I believe it was to give us all a idea what is our places like, and to create some “proximity” bonds.
After that, the facilitators engaged us in a kind of game, in which we have to write words that we feel near to, or identify ourselves to. At the end of the game, was very interesting to realize that we all used words like: international, multicultural, intercultural and others.
At the end, we discuss some ground rules to us all and subject we would like to discuss in the next meetings.
Finally, I can say that was a very interesting begin, we started slow, but I believe that with time we will feel more confident and comfortable to talk freely.
On Monday I had my first meeting. At the beginning we were only three and one facilitator, Juliet. It was really embarrassing, no one was talking but we looked at each other through the webcam. We tried our mic and it was a little bit difficult learn how to talk pressing the Cntrl button but finally we were able to manage it. My group is compose of ten people but we were only six and one of them couldn’t talk with us, maybe because his mic was broken, we didn’t understand very well his problem. Juliet helped us to try to know us better, we presented ourselves, explaining our nationality, our university. Then still nobody said nothing, so she asked us if our name had some special meaning, and at the end we talked about how our room looks likes and we described the place where we’re living. All this was to get more confident with the chat, we were all very shy. After a while arrived also the other facilitator and we could start the activities. It was just an introduction, with not too serious discussion: the first activity consisted in writing seven words that represent the own identity. We were all women and almost everyone wrote that the female identity is one of the more important things, but also was underlined the importance of religion, nation, family. The second activity we had done was to convey our expectation, goals and fear about the Soliya program. It was interesting that most of us was concentrated on fear, in particular fear about technical problems. After that I noticed that we were more secure and we were talking more freely. Finally we talked about topics we want to discuss next time and all agreed that we would like to talk about the Arabian spring, so what is going on in Egypt and Libya. I think it’s an interesting program, but this first meeting was a little bit weird, with too much technical problems and shyness from us. I’m looking forward to the next session to know better other guys.
RispondiEliminaTuesday 18th was my first session. My group and me met online on time but there were about three persons absent. At the beginning I had technical problems with my headphones and my microphone. I couldn't hear anything and they didn't hear me as well. Anyway I had a good support thank to one of soliya team. After about a 20minutes we fixed it.
RispondiEliminaThe two facilitators started encouraging us to talk about ourselves, by describing where we are from, our studies, how it looks the rooms where we were talking (university or house), and about typical food in our respective country. It was a good way to broke the ice.
After, always thanks to the facilitators, we told what do we expect from this program and why do we participate. I found interesting that all of us seems to be curious and interested to know the others. We started to speak about what we would like to handle in our conversations. We have concluded that many of topics we proposed were on the programme. Then someone proposed to talk about global problems like the energy!
During the session there still were connexion problems for someone. In the middle of the session we were only three person and the two facilitators... Then we had to talk about our fears but nobody told anything...I think it's because we were few and ,maybe, only at the end of the session you can understand the difficulty we will face.
So the facilitators asked us to create our own "constitution" meaning the rules for our group. We decided to give a kind of punishment to whom will be late. He or she will have to sing his/her country anthem or to tell us a story about his/her country (like a legend or something strange and interesting). After the facilitator will decide the order of speaking to let anyone tell something. Then if someone will seem to be too silent he/she will be solicited by our facilitators.
Afterwards we tried to describe ourselves by putting in range five categories (Religion, Nationalism, Family, Personality, Favourite activities). It was interesting to find out that we quite all put religion at the end. It was probably because our three comes from Europe. There wasn't a "opposite party" from another point of view (like the Muslim one).
In the end I asked again what they are studying and at what year they are ( at the beginning I didn't heard because of the headphones) and we concluded to be pleasantly surprised: in the group there are also engineers. The facilitators told us that normally there are students from humanistic studies and it is beautiful to have also a more "scientific" point of view. For instance it will be more easy to learn topics about the energy.
By my side, at the beginning I felt enthusiastic but also ashamed because I was surrounded by people in the room and I had technical problems! So at the beginning I lost few of the presentations and I felt a little confused. I had to follow the support tech and also tried to describe myself by writing in the box (because nobody could hear me yet). Fortunately it has lasted only about 20minutes.
After we had described ourselves I felt more comfortable. I am sure that from next time it will go better and better. Maybe we were really too few to understand the entirety of the program. It is normal that we didn't face big issues but that was the first session.
My fear and my challenge too, is to be able to express my opinion. I hope I will be good on shared my thinking. I found out that it is not easy doing it in English!
I wanted to make a last comment: I was surprised when one of our facilitators said he was doing this session at 4:00 a.m.!(I missed the firstly presentation so I did not realise that!) I really appreciate the effort for this program.
First Week
RispondiEliminaHi,
I had my first meeting on Monday 17th. At the beginning I was the only one in the room. I decided to check the connection and to be ready with half an hour early because I was really worried about the first session.
For about ten minutes I was the only participant chatting with the two facilitators, Karrie and Rod, so we started talking about our favorites foods, while people were filtering in. ( I spent almost five minutes explaining how to cook spaghetti, they were really interested about it! )
When everyone came into the meeting room, Karrie and Rod started asking us to introduce ourselves, where we live, what we do.
I was the only participant without technical problems, all the others have passed almost half an hour trying to fix their microphones and web cameras.
I found amazing the fact that we were connected from all over the world, Karrie from USA, Rod from Dubai, Stephanie from Switzerland, Basema and Nermeen from Egypt, Almaha from Qatar, and Remziye from Ankara, Turkey.
Apart from technical problems the conversation was extremely interesting, simple and very well conducted by Karrie and Rod.
After the first step of introduction, the facilitators decided to start an activity, an “Identity Activity”, writing ten words that would define ourselves. After crossing out six of these ten words, the activity was to discuss about the relevance of our top four list.
I really loved it. It was a simple game, but at the end, the differences between Western Countries and Middle East were already clear. Religion, nationality and family, were the most commonly used terms, defined in different ways.
After this first activity Rod and Karrie explained us the main focuses and objectives of Soliya, and the structure of the final project of this year:
“Video project: Soliya has collected footage of a broad selection of sound bites and interviews from ‘people on the street’ in Egypt, in which interviewees respond to questions about their views on the role of religion in governances. Your objective will be to create a short, 90-second "clip reel" from the interviews with "sound bites" from the interviews that best represent the perspectives and sentiments of Egyptians in Cairo. You will be asked to serve as the associate producer for a major international news network and the clip will become a part of the overall news report on the subject.”
I’m really interested about the problems between Christians and Muslims in Egypt, and I hope to have the opportunity to talk and discuss with Basema and Nermeen about this topic.
The second activity was to write down on a paper two truth and a lie about ourselves. It was amusing, I think that the objective was to make us feel at ease.
The third activity was to write down our fears about being a Soliya participant. We all expressed to be scared about not being able to express our feelings and expand our views.
The last one activity was to write four or five issues that we want to discuss during the project. For me it was the cohabitation between different religions in the Middle-east, that seems to be impossible.
That’s how we ended the first session, a lot of technical problems, embarrassing moments, a lot of curiosity. We were extremely happy to be there and to participate in this project. I hope that the second session could be more interactive than the first one, giving us the opportunity to analyze more in deep our differences and, maybe, our shared values. We will see. That’s all for the moment.
Goodbye.
Paolo
Last Wednesday I had my first meeting. As we have been told, we spent the first half an hour trying to make the webcam or the microphone work. Thanks to the tech support, and a quick computer-switching, I finally managed to enter the chat, and to get to know the others. Besides the two girls who were playing as facilitators, there were another boy from Padova, three people from the States, a girl from Egypt, a couple of people from Jordan, and another one from Palestine. The facilitators were really nice and tried their best to make us feel comfortable, and they do succeeded. The atmosphere was really relaxed, and all of us showed a very serious attitude. We begun presenting each other. This seemed pretty normal to me, but what surprised me is that we were also asked to explain the meaning of our names. I found it a pleasant way to break the ice, and it was really interesting to hear the other replies. Some of them got their name from their families, which I think it’s a nice tradition, and some other –including me- didn’t have a particular explanation to their name, but it was still interesting to learn something more about them. We concluded the first part of the meeting by explaining our expectations and our fears about this experience, and by proposing some topics that we might want to touch during the program. This was a great way to involve us and all of us were pretty clear on the need to avoid miscommunications and being mutually respectful of our opinions.
RispondiEliminaThen we get to the next step of the session, which was to describe ourselves in seven point and to gradually take them off, leaving only the three more significant. This exercise was particularly interesting because it further allowed us to get to know each other, trying to go beyond a basic approach. Most of us gave great importance to aspects like family and religion in describing themselves. In spite of the obvious cultural differences, I think these values can be considered a as a good starting point, just because they are shared by the majority of us. Another common view was the sense of loss arose from cutting off some peculiar aspects of our personality. This exercise proved us how hard is to define ourselves, and therefore that we should pay attention on how we communicate with other people. Moreover, cutting off the aspects also made us consider how these may vary when we get in contact with other realities. Another view shared by all of us was the fear of miscommunication. We all showed the desire of communicate our thoughts in the clearest way possible, however at this point I noticed one a different mindset between us. Those students coming from an Arabic background were mainly focused on concepts like "respect", "politeness" and felt like they have to debunk the cliché that equate Arab (or Muslim) with terrorism. They were really concerned about this aspect, and I think they might fear that we could have prejudice against them. They were particularly worried about how the media portraits the Middle East and the Muslim culture, and they were eager to prove us how this didn't reflect the reality. I think this proactive attitude was a great way to get involved, also because a deep sense of respect was shown by everyone throughout the session, but I found it a little aggressive at the beginning. Overall, I think it has been a brilliant meeting, and all of us showed a great interest and openness in exchanging thoughts and opinion. I really hope that the second meeting will allow us to debate, not limiting us at the lectures but hopefully to touch also current events.
Hi!
RispondiEliminaWednesday, October 10, was my first Soliya on-line discussion. Unlike most of the participants I haven’t had big problems to connect. I think that the first half an hour was a little bit boring because of the technical problems. But in the end we started.
I was excited and curious to know the other students and also the facilitators. In my group there are two Americans from Kentucky, two Europeans (me and Lodovica), three students from Jordan, two from Egypt and one girl from Palestine. The two facilitators, Jo and Jeannine, are from Canada (Toronto) and United States (Missouri).
I was very happy to find so many people from the Middle East in my group. That was one of the reasons why I chose to participate on this project, to meet new people, to share my opinions with them and to widen my horizons. Since last year I came back from Israel, were I was visiting the most important Christian sites, inside of my increased this desire to know better the lifestyle of the Muslims and the problems that exist in the Middle East.
To start, the facilitators proposed us to speak about our day. Most of us, as students, had classes or had just woken up and were enjoying the coffee (for example in the USA were 7 in the morning). After that, Jo told us that we're going to have a "sharing circle" and that we have to make a short introduction: name and meaning of the name, brief biography, where you live, go to school... It was an interesting way to know each other and I liked. For me that was the first step to create a nice atmosphere inside the group and to encourage people to open up to others. I believe that many problems between people occur because we don’t know who is “the other”, where and how he lives, what are his values, his traditions and beliefs… We are living in different “worlds” but this project is a way to bring people closer, help us to understand that at the end the world is small…
I know it is not easy to be a moderator for a group so varied as our, so I am lucky to have Jo and Jeannine with us.
At this point of the discussion Jeannine came with an other idea: speak about our expectations, our fears and topics that we want to talk about. It was nice to hear words like learn about the others and became closer, to create more understanding, to build bridges between different cultures, words that express our wishes…
Another step forward was made when Jeannine came out with this proposal: please write seven aspects of your identity. Then we were asked to remove two of them and then three more. At the end were only three of them left, the most important. I noticed that most of us held words that speak about family, religion, gender and nationality. It was not easy to remove same words that are important to us, but it was a way for us too to become aware of our identity and what define ourselves.
Unfortunately, the two hours of discussion are passed in a hurry and we stopped at this point of the conversation. Would have been nice to talk about such fundamental things that characterize us…maybe next time.