From the 22nd October to 26th October I attend a learning programme in Springfield Belfast metropolitan college where I was told I would develop my creative skills and learn a new way of learning.
This was definitely not the case........
Considering I have now left school, which I attended for 14 years, and I'm now at a HND level I would like to think that I am capable and have found a way in which I enjoy and am comfortable to learn in. So first con of this programme was trying to teach student from ages 18 and over how to learn.........FAIL!
In the programme you were put into group of four, one person from each subject, and every table was given a brief of either a company or in my case a uniform in which we had to create. Each brief was informed by the person who runned the busniess or school, but not all of those people showed up showing how much they actually cared about the programme. During the week the was constant rotation around your zone which is when everyone worked on each others brief which was pointless as it took the new people about 10 minutes to get a basic knowledge of the brief and another 10 minutes reading the previous notes then by the time it came to putting notes on yourself it was time to rotate again. I also found it annoy the way once you had actually added the points you could think of your zone leader came round and asked for another 10 more which ended up a total mess as people ended up putting stuff that had nothing to do with the brief.
The programme, to me, was almost as if I was back in primary school. I wasn't allowed to leave my table and interact with others ( which they informed was one of the key points of attending the programme, meeting new people from different subjects), I was putting sticky notes on a whiteboard which actually lead to people drawing funny pictures and making stuff which had nothing to do with the task you were assigned to. I actually saw one boy who had made a mermaid out of clay :-/. The "zone leader" who was assigned to each zone were no help either infact they were annoying. By having someone come over to you every 5 minutes and stand over your shoulder made me feel an even bigger kid and half the time they didn't even have a clue what they were on about themselves!
Another con of the programme was that it had absolute nothing to do with my subject. From this I was definitely not pleased as I don't like the thought of paying so much money to study a certain topic and having to waste a week creating a basic school uniform was could have been done in a few hours and it more than likely didn't even get made therefore pointless. :-/
There was also the matter of getting to the college every morning on time as the location was out of the way and I was only able to get one bus which came every 45minutes and if I missed that then I would have had to get a black taxi to falls road and walk the rest which would have took an extra 15-20 minutes.
One of the things that made my blood boil and almost made me rip my hair out was the constant, POINTLESS announcements because even though the man said at the start of the day "don't worry this will be my only announcement of the day and then you can all work on your briefs....."IT WASN'T! Not by a long shot. And the announcement weren't helpful at all, basically because his animal sounds and crap impressions that were used for countdowns were not only bad but were not needed at all, a simple "right guys time to move to the next brief" would have done. Actually the only useful announcement was when he told me when I was getting a break :-p
The only pro I could say I got from this was that I had to chance to meet a few new and interesting people that were placed in my group and I was able to have a quick look at the new film studio which I hope I get to use next year but other than that the whole thing was a BIG disappointment!
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