Effecting a Matrix Lecture

The nature of a Matrix Lectures stems from an idea within Matrix maths, where multiple columns and rows are multiplied across each other - necessary within algebra and studying geometry.

In effect then multiple calculations are in process; it requires acute diligence and stamina from the executor and observer.

In many ways matrix lectures as a methodology are like a good comedian on a run. He or she uses the personal, abstract, plays with the audience and above all introduces a motif, an icon.

The very best ones, without you seeing it coming, use the motif as the denouement.

Many of you may have engaged in matrix lectures ad hocly or under some other name. But few will have tried it in its performance guise. The performance Lecture was first mentioned to me in its modernists terms by Prof. Wolfgang Kissel of Bauhaus-University Weimar.

Videojournalism in mathematics is the integration of different practices along the XY, and I would contend as yet not much on the Z plane

University teaching tends to be monocausal. It's based on an eventuality - that you may need to know - as a baseline for all. Many are yet to crack a system otherwise and will not want to veer far off from the syllabus.

The matrix then is a sign of the times. In a non-viewed multimedia world, we'd expressively countenance that students would be unable to think about a cluster of different disciplines at the same time.

When radio was just radio, we taught the voice, writing, technology of operating the gear - all geared to the single cause. You rarely have a drum or guitar in the room and say "right then lets make some music, talk poetry, reductive speech patterns and metronomic talk".

But why later you might ask are some accents more geared to the radio and how might we attenuate the voice as an instrument. If you've ever listened to BBC correspondent Fergal Keane you'll know what I'm talking about. Music thus become part of the lecture.

The Internet out of its net- The Outernet from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Made in 2005 - this promo explores ideas

Matrix lecture pulls from different strands, but fundamentally is less about the art of teaching you what to do, but how you might do it differently or not at all. It's not an oxymoron.

In a group work I have noticed individualists gradually assume the identity of the group. If the group is cautious, you will soon taken on those attributes, sometimes temporarily. If the group takes risks, you'll do too in the long run or risk being exposed.

In that vein the idea is to get the individuals within a group to become "illogical rationalist", challenging antecedents in constructs et al.

Birth of a station - Video Journalism revolution from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

How videojournalism looked like in 1994

Here's another one, you might believe the inverted pyramid is ideal for journalism, but remember when that was and the culture is was born out of, and online how it might manifest itself as the truncate- pyramid.

The processor seeks to fit into the system, the artists looks to redefine it, thus wrestling with the very things we take for granted.I have taken various groups including students from the Communications University of China, and all have responded favourably
_______________________

Hi David,

I'm Amanda, a Chinese student in your class that day. I'm Chief Editor of
the GDUFS News Group in London (GDUFS is abbreviation of Guangdong
University of Foreign Studies). Since we plan to report your class, we long
to know your comments and opinions on our 3 ideas made in your class that
day, and we also want to know your comments on us (the 3 groups in your
class). We will be very grateful if you can send these information to us as
soon as possible, for the news cannot wait.

Furthermore, thank you for changing the way I think, for help me to jump out
of most people's prsent behaviour style and to try to shake off
the restriction of stereotype. Your lecture did make the oversea trip
worth.

Amanda

------------------------------
In the coming months I'll talk more about this and how I believe it can go some way in addressing modern teaching methods. Incidentally the blurring of the lines between the science and arts is nothing new, so I'm not being "out there" at all.

Here's a suggest link for you about how students will make up their own curricula in the future and lectures will become curators - from a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Westminster. You'll find it on viewmagazine.tv, once you get past the short pieces called EAT. :)

Generation Next Digital Students in the classroom

This is a superb package with views that will be self evident to many, irrespective whether you're a lecturer or not.

I'm reminded of my own antics, my past which has become part of the school of learning both in and outside my Uni.

Made in 2004 and spotted from the Teachers Tube Network it is inspirational and also motivational and I agree with it more so than I disagree. There are some things I could pick holes.

We might have a philosophical chat on what now constitutes an accepted form of teaching, but yes we live in a visual world, and you have to be on the curve or ahead of it to make sense of the many questions which will be posed.

But after you've watched this I'd like to add my two-bits.

Classrooms can very often mirror society, so the range and diversity of knowledge can be broad. Broad enough to make some students feel inadequate and others to feel under nourished.

Part of the skill is recognising in the compressed time we have, to use Marine talk, "no one is left behind".

Last week I spoke to some of my colleagues about "Learning without Walls" - a world where the Fordisation of module delivery is almost non existent.

Many are gradually inching there, with cross -discipline modules on offer.

So I would hope my lecturer should have broad knowledge of other things. Many experts are looking to the Lecturer pretty soon becoming the "filterer" - much in the same way we speak about the journalist.


EXPERIENCE MATTERS
Experience is thus a good teacher

But there is another thing I would want from my lecturer/ teacher and I have found them in my own sister, who recently was informed by her educational authority in the borough of Kensington they would like to send newly qualified teachers to observe her.

We've seen him in Patch Adams, a mad bonkers, confident tutor looking to do things differently to heighten his students' sense of worth and sensation.

And more recently I heard her on BBC Radio 4, a breathless woman teacher talking about physics, CERN's new particle smasher, as if it were a racy novel.

I want to be inspired. I want to have fun. I want to learn.

My sister teaches young children, 5, 6 years old and on one occasion disappeared from the class in front of an educational expert and returned with flippers, a wig, face mask and tassles all around her.

The inspector was gobsmacked, the class went "wow" and they finished off their whale story in class of intrigue, group participation and at times utter silence.

Ultimately, and with greater transparency now, to quote Dan Gilmor, my audience know more than I do, and as such I confess I may not know about the latest AJAX. It may even deliberately be outside my sphere of knowledge.

But I'd like to know even if my Lecturer/teacher doesn't know, he/she had an idea of how to get somewhere closer to get to know.

That coincidentally is the job of a good researcher. You may not have the contact number for Obama , but you know someone, who knows someone who does and you can get it.

Teaching is often comodified because we serve a system predicated on exams and learning tolls, but it's also a medium to expand our horizons, to teach us to understand, to teach us to learn how to understand, to teach us that the process is a reciprocal one.

Help me to help you said Cruise's character - and for that no one should truly be left behind.

Post script: Incidentally the inspector who observed my sister at her school called some months later to the school and joined her class again, insisting she should not start any of her methods without him. Do you have spare flippers? he asked.