My Personal Reflection

Log entry March 16th

Today is first lecture of ICT Scenario Planning. When I was cycling to Liacs, there is only one sound in my head: Oh, my God, a lecture for the whole day, there cannot be any more boring thing in the world than this.

To my surprise, the lecture and the lecturer are really more interesting than I expected. :-)Before the lecture, I really have no idea about what "Scenario Planning" is. Kind of imagination, maybe. You just sit down (standing, perhaps, if you like), and brainstorming. Simply like a fortune teller, or put it a better way, futurist. However, after a few minutes of story telling, I should say, I really get very interested in this way of lecturing. Learning from stories.

From the elaboration of the story, you understand the situation in the real world, and therefore, a better understanding of how theory can be applied in the real world. It is just like the case analysis, however, normally, we need to read articles full of terminologies and analyze the complicated theories before we come to the real case study, and only after the case study, we can understand the situation better. However, with story telling, after the story, you can already realize some problem/theory underlying, and you may think, humm, maybe the it should be like this or this way should be better, or ever: wow, the logic is blabla, you don’t realize that in that way of thinking, actually you are coming out with the simple form of theory by yourself. Hence, you get better understanding of the theory because of the vivid exploration you got and you can apply it as free as you can like wave your hand or rise up you leg.

Most important of all, the story way of teaching makes me more interested in the lecture, and it made the whole day lecture more interesting and attractive than a half day lecture, and I know, next time, when I cycle to LIACS, on the way, I will expect the story and lecture instead of thinking “oh, another boring day, boring lecture”.