Week 1 Reflection – Orientation

In the first week of Galileo, we mostly learnt about the streets in the city of Melbourne. Our first trail was the city grid, where we spent half the day trying to find standout features of the streets in the city of Melbourne. Before we went, we did a quiz on the way the streets were set out, so we would at least have an idea of where we would be going. We had to get into groups of 4, and we were given about 6 (?) places we had to visit and take photos of, such as the County Court, a flower shop, and some other places i really don’t remember. We managed to get to all of them with heaps of time to spare. Thank god we were given a map though, otherwise i would’ve had no idea where we were going.

The trail at the end of the week was basically the same thing, except this time we were given ambiguous clues (that were surprisingly easy to crack) as to where we were supposed to go, and we were made to go in our team project groups. Some of the places we had to go to were the Comedy Theatre, the NAB building, the Immigration Museum… Quite often we would get on a tram going the wrong way, getting off only to find ourselves running onto another taking us in another completely wrong direction. But we managed to get to all the spots we needed to be, and overall it was a success. I feel like a know the streets of Melbourne a little better, although I’m going to need a lot more exposure if I’m going to know them as well as i want to.

LEARNING GOALS

SKILLS

Communication

I’d like to work on my communication skills because when working in groups, i tend to jump between the two extremes. Sometime I enjoy working alone, and while everyone else is working together, ill just be doodling in my book, or doing work by myself. And sometimes I’ll be the sheep in the group, and just do what everyone else says and not really contribute much to the group, and I think it would be great to learn how to cooperate well.

 

Leadership

Basically for the same reasons as above, I’m still a bit of a novice at working in groups productively, and I’d like to learn  how to be a good leader.

 

Listening

I’m the sort of person who is extremely easily distracted. If I’m listening to a someone talk about something that im not extremely enthusiastic about, or if I’m not really in the mood for listening, I  will take any opportunity to focus on something more entertaining, such as anything going on outside windows, drawing on my hands/arms, tapping on the table etc. I’d really love to be a good listener because I find that sometimes I miss out on important information and then pay the price later.

 

KNOWLEDGE

Divergent thinking

This subject was touched on in the video that we watched in one of the first lessons in Galileo, along with different teaching standards and dividing society into groups, and I just thought it was really interesting and wanted to find out more on the subject.

 

Justice & The Law

I’d like to learn more about this subject just because I’ve never really been interested in the law and classified it as boring and uninteresting, but when I think about it I’d actually quite like to know about how the law works and the borders of what’s legal and illegal.

 

Sustainable Living

The subject of sustainable living really intrigues me because I’ve never really been one to have the patience to try to save water or electricity, I just leave the lights on everywhere, leave my laptop charging for hours after the battery is full, take extremely long showers… but I think if I could learn how to sustain my water, electricity etc. I might be able to actually carry out some precautions, and it would also be interesting to learn about which precautions to carry out.

 

 

PERSONAL QUALITIES

Focus

As I said in listening, I’m very bad at keeping focused. I think if I could learn to keep focused, it would benefit many different aspects of my life.

 

Confidence

When I’m with people I’m familiar with, i can be loud and outgoing, but most of the time I’m with people I don’t know, I am extremely shy.  A lot of the time i just cant be bothered striking up a conversation with a stranger, because it just requires too much effort. Maybe if i was more confident I could work better in groups, and I may be able to become a better leader.

 

Organisation
Organisation is definitely the personal quality I need to work on the most. I can’t keep anything tidy and I can’t even keep a page in my workbook clean because I just feel the need to scribble all over it. And I’m going to tie in forgetfulness into this quality because I think it contributes a lot to organisation, and I am also extremely forgetful so I think that would help a lot.

 

ABOUT ME

 

My earliest memory of school is walking into my first class of grade prep, and seeing all my friends that I already knew from kindergarten, and feeling about ten times less nervous about the first day of school.

I learn best while listening to music with headphones in a quiet room that i’m comfortable in and accustomed to.

My worst trait is definitely disorganisation. I cant keep anything tidy and I forget almost everything.

My best trait is … ?

I’ve got no idea what the hardest thing I’ve ever done is. I’m not exactly a very reckless person, so I don’t try very many new things. I’ve done quite a lot of performances in front of people for music/drama in Primary school which seemed extremely hard at the time, but thinking back I’m not sure if I would classify any of them as actually hard to do.

The last possession I would ever give up is my netbook. Sometime I really hate it because it freezes all the time, turns off randomly, closes tabs when I don’t want it to etc. But it’s the only computer that I own and ive become so attatched to it I have no idea what i’d do without it.

This term I am looking forward to trails mostly, because I like the idea of being able to have independence and not having to be supervised on ‘excursions’

The image I would put on a postcard of Melbourne is Federation Square because it is a really great example of Australian architecture and creativity.

I don’t know which person from Melbourne I would most like to sit next to on a tram, because there are not very many people from Melbourne that I am particularly interested in, but I guess it would be nice to meet Missy Higgins, because I used to love her music when I was little, and I think its great that her style hasn’t completely changed to match the trends today like most other artists.  

If I could invite 3 people from history to dinner I would invite Albert Einstein, William Shakespeare, and Vincent Van Gogh, because they were all extremely inspiring people, and I would to know about what sort of people they really were, and how their minds worked.