Posting 5

I think it would be fair to say that the criteria we developed did not exactly lead to much more critical thinking. I'm not quite sure why. But we do have a big list for each class of potential issues and I have asked for students to prepare a speech to convince the class of the one they think we should go with. I don't know if this is moving away from the photovoice technique too far or not but it seemed like a good idea and it would be nice to get them writing something. And they are all pretty happy with the suggestion. It will make it easier when it comes to deciding on the final topic. But I think it would also be fair to say that we haven't come up with any burning issue - overall I was disappointed with the way students just took photos of "things" which they didn't really seem that keen on doing a big exploration of. But we'll see what comes of what we have got. Certainly tagging and graffiti is a big theme that has come across. Perhaps it would have helped had I gone out and taken some photos of things that I cared about and wanted to change and put those into a PowerPoint and then annotated them. The selection stage is really crucial and I missed it out due to time for the second round. Maybe that was part of the problem. Here are some of the photos students have taken:







Some example issues raised are graffiti/vandalism, bad use of space, environmental pollution of the town belt, and the possibility the flyover and new tunnel will effect the Basin Reserve area.