Dragon’s Den
This Tuesday I attended the Dragon’s Den presentation where I shared my current state of not making much progress on my project and sought some advice.
- Narrow down exactly what FOMO (e.g. grades, money, etc.)
- Based on my current process, the education system is a good direction
- Narrowing down stakeholder to only 18 years old
- Presentation skills advice: include data points, have eye contacts
I think my next step is to narrow down my research anyway, and I also think that the education system is a better direction.
Participation in interventions
Recently I have also participated in interventions initiated by Lu and Mingen, and I feel that they have been very inspiring to me. They both quickly brought people into the context of their issues through video and light, which helped me to better understand and participate. I also had the opportunity to talk to many of my classmates about the process of each other’s projects through their events, and the chats helped me to bounce off more ideas. I realised that it is important to visualise data and emotions in order to better present my ideas, and I hope that my project can bring and show emotion in a visual way and that I should seek out stakeholders in London so that I can communicate more effectively face-to-face.
Reading
This week I continued to read some books about education and schools.
‘A Child in the County’ by Xiaoying Lin describes the current situation and challenges of education in different districts in the eastern, central and western parts of China. The book presents in detail the living conditions and educational dilemmas of schools, classrooms, teachers, students, parents, and headmasters. Through documentary-style subplots, it provides an in-depth analysis of the dilemmas facing China’s education management system and their consequences. The author demonstrates through a large number of cases and data the difficulties and frustrations that children experience in pursuing their educational dreams, including the pressure of expectations from family and society, as well as the pressure of test-taking and psychological pressure in school education. This book helped me to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the state of learning of students in various regions of China, in case my perspective was too one-sided.
I also read excerpts from two Chinese books ‘The Gold List’ and ‘China’s Education Makeover’, both of which use in-depth interviews to explore some of the dilemmas facing the Chinese education system and Chinese students.