If you're on Twitter you know that at the end of each week people put together "Follow Friday" lists of their favourite people they're following and share them with everybody. I'm flipping the script a little bit on this with this feature on the blog where every Friday I feature somebody who includes our main Twitter account, @VIAwesome, in their #FF, in order to shine a little light back on them and what they do.
Today's featured tweep is @UGSID, otherwise known as SFU's Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue, and it's exactly what it sounds like: a course which consists mostly of an entire semester in dialogue at Simon Fraser University downtown. In their words:
The Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue addresses principal challenges for contemporary education: to inspire students with a sense of civic responsibility, encourage their passion to improve society, and develop innovative intellectual tools for effective problem solving. Each semester we develop an original and intensive learning experience that uses dialogue to focus student education on public issues.
I was invited to come in and speak with the class earlier this week along with my friend Rebecca Bollwitt (aka @Miss604) and we got into a very thoughtful conversation about digital media, our own blogs and our experience with them, politics, the past, the future, and more. For myself it was an incredibly rewarding experience to be able to share my thoughts and engage in real conversation with 20 or so keen students who are spending an entire semester speaking with academics, journalists and other civic-minded individuals.
This semester's class. Photo: courtesy SFU
So far this semester they've brought in the following people to speak with the class:
Lindsay Cole - Greenest City Planner
Olive Dempsey - Planning Analyst
Naomi Steinberg - Storyteller
Michael Kluckner - Artist & Writer
Henry Charles - First Nation Storyteller
Bob Baker - Squamish Elder
Wayde Compton - Writer
Michael Barnholden - Author
Libby Davies - MP
Cornelia Hahn Oberlander - Landscape Architect
Milton Wong - SFU Chancellor
Bing Thom - Architect
Jim McGraw - Historian
Leslie Mobbs - City Archivist
Charles Demeers - Author and Comedian
Joey Hartman - Labour Council President
Andrea Reimer - City Councillor
Crazy, right? It almost makes me want to take a few months off of this job of mine and enroll, but my reality is that I will live vicariously through their Twitter. Follow @UGSID to keep up on their program and click HERE to learn more about it if you're interested.
Have a look at all of our previous #FollowFriday posts HERE.
