To start off, I really enjoyed watching the episode of Daria and everyone’s videos in English today! All the videos were really different from each other in production and style, and I liked the background music of each one a lot. But moving onto the debate, I really don’t know what I was expecting from it, but it certainly was interesting. Like Vicky, the fact that Anya was the only woman on the podium piqued my interest. From what I gathered, Anya was on a side where she believed that you don’t necessarily need to be in a lecture hall setting with a professor lecturing or in a classroom discussion to be learning. One thing she mentioned that stood out to me was the site LinkedIn, where I think she was trying to argue that people would use and learn from the information posted there, and post there themselves. She pointed out that ideas and creative discussions can happen anywhere, not just inside a classroom. Siva, on the other hand, believed in the classroom setting and in a “tried and true” way of learning and teaching. I actually didn’t find myself agreeing entirely with either one of them, but I felt that Siva did present himself and his ideas in a more calm and composed way. I feel like at times, Anya lost her cool and became sort unreasonable in her answers, if that  makes any sense.

Props to the woman who pointed out that not everyone could understand everything people said (i.e. the undergrads), who I now know is Professor Gaunt after reading Vicky’s post. She made good points, but I just can’t help remembering that before she spoke into the microphone, I made eye contact with her at one point when she was on the line and smiled, but I didn’t think she’d say anything remotely close to what she actually said. But after she spoke, all I could think was “Damn, she’s fierce!”.

Overall, I enjoyed the debate and I loved the fact that there were so many people passionate about this topic and asked really thought invoking questions. 🙂