Well it’s now the wee hours of Saturday morning as I write this, but I had a wonderful time yesterday (Friday). Class went well, and then after class everyone had lunch together in the school’s canteen and then a few of us went to the “Friday Bar” at the nearby IT University (IT-Universitetet i København). The Friday Bar is a tradition at colleges in Denmark. The schools and dorms have a bar area where they sell a variety of drinks and play music. Students sit and talk over a drink and relax after a long week. Everyone is happy because of the weekend ahead. This week’s Friday bar at our school was only for the new bachelor’s students or something, so we went to the one at the IT University. It’s a gorgeous building, very open, almost all window. I took some photos of it which I will upload later to Flickr!
After that bar we headed over to another bar which was in a somewhat obscure location and spent several hours there, talking about many things (movies, music, dogs, gypsies, languages, cultures and more stuff I can’t remember at the moment). It was really interesting because each of us was from a different country — Finland, Ireland, Denmark and the US! The other people in that bar were quite rowdy to say the least. Lots of laughing and pool playing. A good time had by all. We went to a delicious Italian pizza place afterward. It was a pleasant night.
Tuesday marks the start of Interaction Design class; I’m looking forward to that. I really like how our International Master’s class is so small and intimate. After class is over, we go to to lunch together in the canteen. I know it’s still early in the year and our routine isn’t set yet, but so far I like the intimacy!
This weekend I will be reading my part of the book (3 chapters) for the presentation on Wednesday. We have a third person in our group now. It should go well, I hope. I also hope to do some grocery shopping, tackle the laundry and have a strawberry ice cream cone. The strawberry ice cream (jordbær in Danish) here is amazing. I remember when I went to Spain in ’05 I fell in love with the strawberry ice cream there, too. What is it with me, foreign countries and strawberry ice cream?!
Our School! Danmarks Bibliotesskole - Royal School of Library & Info. Science
Well, I recently got back from my first class ever in Denmark. It went well! The class is called “Knowledge Management.” The definition of Knowledge Management can change depending on who you ask, but generally it’s about how you manage the vast amounts of knowledge — both implicit and explicit — stored in people’s heads, within an organization, culture, etc. There’s going to be a lot of reading. I bought a compendium which is a binder with most of the articles for the class. The rest of the readings are books which we can buy from the bookstore. However the books are very expensive so I may try to order some of them online or make copies of them.
We had to introduce ourselves in class. I guess I did all right, but I am going to prepare a better introduction for the next class so I don’t have to think of what to say on the spot. I was the second person to introduce themselves so I didn’t really have much time to plan out exactly what I was going to say.
Plus, I can’t believe it but I already have a presentation to do next week! The professor passed around a sign-up sheet in class today, and we were to sign up in groups of 4 to present one of the books in our reading list to the class. He started the list on the opposite side of the room from where I was sitting, so while I was among the first to introduce myself, I was second to last to sign up for a group. Of course all of the later presentation dates were filled. So the only date left was next Wednesday. I guess no one wanted to go first. Meep. I am working with a fellow classmate, he is from Ghana. So we have to read a 203-page book and prepare a 15-minute PowerPoint presentation for next Wednesday. I don’t know how fair that is, but whatever. :-)
After class we went to the bookstore (which is located in the nearby University of Copenhagen) to see if we could find the book we have to present in a week. We found it and it’s quite expensive (350 Kroner for a small paperback 203-page book — that’s about $68). So another classmate of ours who already has the book offered to make copies of it for us at his work. It was so nice of him! Then the most logical way to do the presentation will be for one of us to read the first half and the other person to read the second half. Then we can each have about 7 minutes to summarize our half of the book for the class and come up with some open-ended questions for discussion.
My partner for this presentation and I met up with some of our other classmates at the bookstore and we went to the university’s canteen to have some coffee and sit & chat. That was fun. My classmates are all very nice and they seem really interested in hearing each other’s points of view.
So yes, the class is going to be very interesting. It’s discussion-based and highly interactive, and you are expected to talk in class. I normally do not like talking in class, but I decided to jump right in. I contributed to the discussion today, yay! I plan to speak up at least once each day. Maybe more. It depends. I hope that by the end of the semester I’ll be better at class participation and will go back to SILS with new confidence. We’ll see.
The final project for this class is a paper. We can write about whatever topic we want as long as it’s connected to Knowledge Management in some way. I’m still a little unclear on the exact requirements for the paper though, but I’m hoping that it’ll be spelled out in more detail as we go along. At the end of the semester we have to take an oral exam during which we defend our paper. December is far away so I’m not even going to think about that right now, lol.
So, no class until Friday. Normally I would have Interaction Design class tomorrow, but that class doesn’t start til Tuesday. I’m really looking forward to the Interaction Design class because it is closely related to what I’m interested in.
OK, that’s about it for this entry. I will be doing a LOT of reading this weekend. And putting together a presentation. The good thing about going first is that we’ll get it over with right away before the work really starts piling on. Later, folks!
