Week 4 Reflection

Its week 4 already?? Time is seriously flying by so quickly!! I enjoyed this weeks session, there was an interesting discussion and we also got together in our groups some more to look at our ideas. (We were a little confused by the end in our group...ill explain...)


Communities

We looked into the concept and meaning of 'communities'.

WHAT DOES THE TERM ' COMMUNITY' MEAN?? Is there one definition....

The debate was great and very interesting, it made me think about something that i was so sure about from another perspective, the juices flowed and i soon started to realise that perhaps, before making a definite assumption in my mind, I should perhaps think about it from other angles... It became apparent to me that:

1. There is not one definition of the term 'community'
2. There are thoughts and ideas that surround the concept of what a community could be
3. PEOPLE decide who is excluded from a group; therefore this indicates who is included.

**What decides who or what a Community is??

I would argue that are many things that influence this, which are:

• Language spoken
• Postcode / Residential area you live in
• Ethnicity
• Interests and Hobbies
• Education and Places you study/work

and many more...

Again, this comes down to this issue, that it is still the PEOPLE who decide who is Included and who is Excluded.

There was discussion about the idea a circle within a community too. Theres 3 parts to the circle:

1. THE CORE - These are the people in the community who know everything about everything
2. THE MIDDLE - The people in that community who are part of it and play an active part
3. THE OUTER LAYER / EDGE - Are these people really part of the community? with them being so close to the outside?

Group Work

This week we tried to create a focal point for our group, everyone has generated some great ideas and we have looked into them. Some have failed to take off; which is great as its part of the processing of finding interesting points and narrowing ideas down. We were a little confused after discussing with Nigel, as it jumbles all of our ideas up and made us start to think again! However, maybe that will make us think more in depth about what we want to concentrateon and look into as the focus of our group work... So a little more research and understanding of what we want to do is what i think we need to look at this week.

Motivation thought for week 4:

" Climb a mountain alone and discover your inner strength. Climb a mountain with a friend and discover the strength in each other."

Copyright © 2007 - Samantha Pickreign

Reading / Research for this week:

• Look at some research for the group work and focus on this