Course Reflection/Overview

My last NCT blog.....it has been fun. The course on the whole has been very enjoyable, better than the other courses I've done. In this blog I'll just go over some general thoughts about the course.

The lectures were very informative. Steve has a good energy out front of the lecture theater which makes his lectures entertaining. Adam also was very good at giving lectures. The guest lectures were pretty good, Jason Nelson's lecture was hilarious and thoroughly entertaining. While Debra's lecture was a bit on the boring side but I'm sure if there was more stimulants to the topic of cybertherapy it would be a better lecture.
The topics were all interesting in there own way, cyberpolitics & virtual reality was fairly difficult to get my head around but I got them after extended reading, while the topics of games theory, cyberpunk & open source was very easy to understand as I had prior knowledge and had a interest in the topic.

The screenings during the second half of the lectures were very entertaining. La Jatee was my first experience with french new wave cinema and was quite a different experience. The use of a slideshow like form and the french voiceover made it an interesting film. Alphaville was also strange with flashs of E=mC2 all over the place. The story was also very dystopic which was good. eXistenZ was one of the strangest movies I've ever seen, the twists involved in that film were crazy and the wondering of whether it was real or virtual is quite fun. Primer was also good but I might have to watch another 2-3 times to understand what they were talking about.

The tutorials were also very informative and good. Chris was very helpful during the whole experience. The tutorial tasks were good but they could probably be structured better, with maybe reporting in the blog about the lecture, screening & textbook so that the revision is getting done during the course. Other than that the tasks were helpful and helped me during the course.

The textbook was a good read, the topics were all interesting. I especially enjoyed the histories of print, radio, screen & computers. The surveillance chapters were also very stimulating. The only problem was with the political economy chapter which was hard to read and to wrap my head around.

So in closing, NCT was a enjoyable subject which was very informative. All the texts, readings & staff were very helpful & the assessments were challenging while being very do-able.