Notes for the Final: Maddie

FOLK KNOWLEDGE:

Through my self-directed learning I seemed to focus on cultural folk knowledge, as opposed to things you would learn at home. I discovered that traditions are a huge part or folk knowledge.

What I learned from other’s blog posts was that not all folk knowledge is something that you would necessarily guess. Through Emily’s post on manners, we can start to see that not all knowledge is though a “learning institution” or part of the category of “classical learning” (literature, arithmetic, etc.)

During the project where we had to teach another person something that we know and when they taught us something, I taught a friend to play the harp and a friend taught me to do a French manicure at home. I learned that we don’t realize many of the things we have to teach others. It doesn’t seem like a skill to us.

These projects taught me to collaborate, which was an essential principal to learning folk knowledge.

ORAL KNOWLEDGE:

Through my self-directed, I learned that although myths are a huge part of oral knowledge, there are certain themes, such as water in the beginning of the story, that reoccur.

Through other’s blog posts I noticed that, even more broadly than the water/creation theme, the origin theme in general was very prevalent. Our group theorized that this was because no one really knew how humans came to be, so they created ideas that became stories (oral stories mostly).

We would not have been able to notice many of these ideas without the collaboration of our group. Especially when we got together for the group video to talk it up about our past oral knowledge blog posts.

WRITTEN KNOWLEDGE

My self-directed learning came highly in handy. I discovered that the Romans used wax tablets to take notes or scribble down other things that did not need to be permanent.

From my group I learned that written artifacts were considered art in many cultures.

Because we were sectioned off into new groups according to geographical area, we got the chance to learn more in depth about our area. I learned that the Roman probably knew best and that although modern technology is readily available, it does not mean that we should go that route.

Through the group project of replicating a roman wax tablet I learned, from experience, that the font and ways of writing changed depending on the medium used.

PRINTED KNOWLEDGE

During my self-directed learning in the print knowledge unit I learned that through print there was the major spread of classical knowledge and stories. Simultaneously, my group’s collaborative learning helped me realize what a huge effect print had on the spread of the Bible.

I didn’t necessarily get as many responses as I would have liked though posting blogs about my paper but I tried for feedback. The one response I got to a blog about my thesis was helpful though.

During this unit, we wrote a paper and I realized so much about a topic I wouldn’t have guessed would be as correlated with the spread of knowledge as it is. I learned that bookbinding had a huge impact on the spread of the Bible and knowledge it contained through it being in codex form.