Interdisciplinary Practical Thinking - Reflection (Group 1 - Practical)
The interdisciplinary-thinking project has just come to a close, and with that I’m left to reflect on how the whole thing went. Our final artifact, a pseudo-faux-classroom study on Quantum mechanics and superpositioning, involved us actually going out of our way to enlighten the audience about something they otherwise didn’t know, and due to that and the fact that I’m the group’s designated practical thinker (DPT), I’m inherently happy with this outcome. Whether or not the audience actually took anything away from the thing, I have no idea. All I know is that my fellow group-members definitely gained some new knowledge about the subject throughout this project.
And I like to think I helped with that. Since my duty was to bring about new knowledge and ways of thinking, I decided I’d take in some of the methods absorbed through my old high-school teachers and plan out a crash-course lesson. Since this was shortly before our first real group meeting, and thus before we had nailed down a specific field in Quantum mechanics to focus on, this meant I was slowly going through all the bare-bones basics of the science and preparing to add each and every one to the ensuing lesson, so as to cover all the bases and not weight the group’s subsequent decisions. Come the next day, I had grabbed the Colab whiteboard and begun to lead a lesson that, from what I gathered, was actually helpful for the group (and was probably the closest I’ll ever be to being a teacher). I’ll admit that after that meeting, I stepped back and let the rest of the group play out their roles, only stepping in when something needed to be explained. I think that fit my modus operandi pretty well.
This half-carried over to our actual presentation, since by then everyone in the group was up to speed with the actual hard-science facts. Thus, we decided that since the practical thinker is meant to do things and go out of his/her way to generate new understanding, I should be the one setting up all the physical, tangible demonstrations during the presentation, leaving the explaining to the people who were meant to care about the cold facts. Thus, I went and set up (read: made) all the components necessary for a double-slit experiment, which as I had explained to the group previously, was a physical demonstration of wave-particle duality that you can actually see. On the recommendation of the group, I also was tasked with setting up a box that was meant to demonstrate the idea that whatever was inside the box was simultaneously “everything” and “nothing”, since nobody could gain anything about the inside of the box by looking at it alone.
So as I stated previously, I was the designated practical thinker for this group project. I won’t say the thought processes involved were completely alien to me, since I naturally try and explain things to the best of my ability whenever I need to. But despite being something of a pragmatist, I’m not normally one to jump in and just do things in order to understand them. In that sense, I’m more of a theoretical thinker. So being forced to jump in and do some physical work gave me something of a new perspective on how to operate. If I had to take something away from this whole project, I’d say that I’m far more likely to go out of my way to generate understanding in everyday situations now. When the situation calls for it though, naturally.
I’m not one to lie, so I won’t say I thoroughly enjoyed this project 100% of the time, but I’ll admit I had a little fun with it. Always wondered what it’d be like as a schoolteacher, and thanks to this project, I think I’ve got a glimpse. Of something I hopefully will never have to do as a job.
