Adesola Akinleye

Dyslexic film!!! Power to the dys

2012-02-23T18:26:00.004-05:00

DYSPLAMENTARY OFFICIAL TRAILER from Kazimir Bielecki on Vimeo.

Question(aires)?

2012-02-18T19:58:00.001-05:00

My blog post is a little late this week, sorry. I have been at a conference – “Meaning + Making of Queer Dance: embodied pleasures in History, Representation, and Queer Communities”. It was a great conference and really interesting. Queer theory is an interesting strand of inquiry. For me it responds to and informs the use and expectation of the body that resonates with questions that dance wrestles with. “Trans” informed thinking raises questions about the body, who defines it, how it can change and wider questions about the linear progression of time that heterosexual perspectives take which are not the lived narrative of many peoples lives.

I will write more on the conference maybe next week. This week I wanted to talk about literature reviews and questionnaires. This is particularly relevant to Module 2ers and 3ers. I have notice a trend, which I will describe below, but just to say there is nothing wrong with this trend but I just want you to think deeply about it and be aware of these thoughts on it.

It is clear that if you are going to analyse data the simplest way of understanding that activity is to compare one set of data with another. The second set being a kind of fixed or established idea and the first being looked at in terms of the fixed or established idea.

I have notice a lot of peoples plans for their research involving taking a questionnaire or survey as a first step then using that to inform further collection of data through interviews. What I want to point out here is that the questionnaire / survey is being used here in the way a Literature Review should / could be used. That is to establish that a group of people think a particular thing. I feel that people are seeing the numbers that a questionnaire can gather as a form of justification for the main ideas the questionnaires uncover. As if, if 50 dancers think it, it is validated enough for you to go on to ask questions about it or use the idea as a basis for your interviews, but this a weak position to be in for two reasons.

Firstly, the size of the questionnaire and the quality of the questionnaire is not enough to justify the results being a the foundation of your ideas and inform the rest of your inquiry. Secondly, the time it takes to really analyse the data from the questionnaire itself is prohibitive to getting the interviews done in time too. In other words you run the risk of the questionnaire being so superficial or under analysed that it does not really provide a foundation for rest of your work.

However this process is not wrong it is just that academia has solved the problem by using a Literature Review. A Literature Review looks at ‘all’ the books or ideas about your topic. It is not looking a Key Texts – one or two books that you read and quote – it is about knowing what people think / have published on the subject generally. In other words in the same way the questionnaire gives you an overview of what 50 people think. A literature review also gives you an overview of what 50 people think but these are people who have published their ideas so the ideas have been challenged and defended. This means that using these ideas as the basis of your interview (as you would the questionnaire results) is a stronger foundation. The authors have done the work of rigour and ‘credibility’ for you.

So I would like you to think about what you are using as a foundation for the ideas you have and then what you are comparing them too or using to make them credible: a questionnaire in a way is like you saying if I can get 50 of my friends and colleagues to agree with me then I am going to say that this is a kind of fact that I will interview people about. The literature review is saying I think this and XXX thinks it too but [and here is the most useful part of the literature review] YYY does not think this and challenges this. I will use this site of interaction that the literature revolves around to inform how I approach my interviews.

Does that make sense? What do you think?

I am not saying that a survey or any other method is a replacement for a literature review. I am saying be careful that you use the literature review and data collection methods appropriately and not use them interchangeably. I am making the assumption you do not want your conclusions to be limited to information gather from a few people you loosely know but want to be informed by the wealth of literature and ideas out there.

Module One (1st campus session)

2012-02-08T16:14:00.000-05:00

Module One (First Campus Session)

We had campus sessions this week. The idea of campus sessions is that they instigate ideas, question and thoughts that the whole student body can discuss and think about. The blogs are a good space to do this of course. In the first campus session for Module One we took an over view of the whole module. I felt important points were:

1). The tasks are not assessed; it is your reflection of them in the Critical Review that you hand in at the end of the module that is assessed. The tasks are to guide you through a learning journey, they are tips on how to look at yourself, look at your learning identity and style and start to see how you will move forward as you complete your BA with us.

2). Don’t get bogged down in the first section of the module. There are a lot of task suggestions there and you can get stuck in the comfort of doing things because you have been told to. Don’t get stuck making the perfect blog site (!), throughout the whole course you will be developing your ideas and often coming back to things to develop them further too.

During the session the Advisors introduced themselves, Paula, Rosemary, Alan and myself. Every student has one of us as an advisor. You need to have contacted your advisor by now so if you are not sure who your advisor is check your emails and make contact. Avni also introduced herself she is our administrator and will help you with issues to do with enrolment, etc… Then the students who had come introduced themselves. See Sherminne Seaman’s comment below.

Then we when through the module and underlined what would be assessed. We also looked at the tasks in terms of how they are spread out over the 12 weeks of the module. Following this looked at the steps the first task form. We had a short break and then we looked at the same ideas using movement games (dance).

We discussed in words and we also did some movement (dance game) in order to look at our ideas. After our discussions I asked everyone who attended the campus session to write down a single idea they thought was important that had been generated from what we talked / danced about. Also visit there blogs for further comments.

“I enjoyed how one ‘movement’ game allowed us to share and inspire each other’s new ideas.” - Liam Pentland [Using the interactions within a physical space, the room we were in, taught us something about the dynamic of the interactions within the cyber-space of the blogs also]

We found that sharing ideas with each other help us articulate our own ideas. “I found it was interesting to learn a variety of ways in which our own learning can be strengthened by communication with others. “ – John http://johnnordon.blogspot.com/

“Life is a journey, experience different things but don’t lose yourself throughout your experience, observe, be aware and make progression. Your experiences are your journey.” – Nina Nunes

“A point I found really useful today was working as a team and learning that we all had different aims but still working towards quite similar goals.” – Sherminne Seaman

“Finding the equilibrium between working alone and working as a team. Sharing an idea is more valuable than owning an idea [and not sharing]. We are all on individual journeys; nourish this!’ – Hannah Zapala http://hannahzapala.blogspot.com/

“Even though we are all on this journey together we all have different pathways. Sharing is better as knowledge is doubled. We don’t own the information and often information is improved when discussed with others.” – Nina Standen

[From the Movement game to generalising about the activity of the first module] “we are all in the journey of the course doing the same tasks (moves). However, the interpretation of the taks (moves) is free for us to decide. We learn from each other but there is no right and wrong way of doing it.” Ahmet Ahmet http://mrahmet.blogspot.com/

“[informed] looking at other people’s work as a guide to your own will help you on your own journey” Afi Agyeman http://afiagyeman.blogspot.com/

[movement exercise] “to share ideas – no need for ownership! [I felt an important point was] that you need to have your own journey as well as learning from others. [It’s about] about finding a balance between those two things.” - Hollie Smith

Module Two (1st campus session)

2012-02-08T16:05:00.003-05:00

Module Two (First Campus Session)

In the afternoon on Monday we had a campus session for Module Two. We had talked about starting to think about of a topic to inquire into for your investigation in Module Three. In terms of thinking about topics of interest we thought about who else is involved – who the stakeholders are? – this gives you a way to look at something from a number of perspectives to get a more three-dimensional picture. It also helps you think beyond your direct experience of place or event.

We talked about different kinds of learning and the idea of challenging your ideas and notions. This is described as ‘rigour’. It is about not assuming anything but look further, or beneath the surface of things. We talked about how we acquire information (how do we do an enquiry? & What do we need to do to check it has rigour?)

We talked about field data, and data collected from Literature reviews.

This module is much more intense than the first module because it requires a number of things to be thought about and drawn together by the end of the module. It is the module where you figure out what will do to ‘compliment’ your existing credits in order to complete your BA (Hons). This includes being able summarise your knowledge into the title for your BA. This module also asks you to “sharpen your skills” and teaches you new techniques for research and inquire. These skills are not just so you can complete Module Three but so that you can conduct research within your own Professional Practice. This is so that you have the tools to continue your life long learning journey after you have graduated.

Go to Rosemary’s blog for further comments about the session. http://rosemarymcguinness.blogspot.com/

My important points to share were:

Indulge in a sense of wonder – enjoy the idea of knowing nothing and finding out something new.

Don’t take on the burden of spending 24 weeks planning and executing ways to prove yourself ‘right’.

Module Three (1st campus session)

2012-02-08T16:00:00.002-05:00

Module Three (First Campus Session)

On Tuesday we had a campus session for module three. We looked at an overview of the next 12 weeks (planning your time will be important). Paula will be posting dates for events to remember over the term, for instance: The next campus session dates (March 1^st and 23^rd), also a day for help with writing (March 8^th). There are also dates for sending in drafts of your work for feedback. Across the 12 weeks you are also asked to post at least 6 Blogs there were some suggestions for topics. All the details are in the power point slides on Paula’s blog http://paulanottingham.blogspot.com/.

We also did an exercise for thinking about the whole embodied process of the learning. We looked at what we want to keep, let go off, carry forward, shout about, think more about, the emotions of. Here is a summaries of these from the people who came to the session. It is different for everyone. It might be fun to try answering the categories for yourself.

Things to keep:

- Healthy eating

- Working when the house is free and quiet

- Working for hour a day everyday (small chunks)

- Working for the whole day (it takes me time to get started)

- Scheduling (work and study)

- Using pictures and images to break down text into images)

- Going to the library

- Listening to music

Things to let go off:

- Overtime at work

- Bad eating

- Leaving study work to the last minute

- Studying at break at work

- Panic

- Being negative

Things to move forward with:

- Using interviews

- Observations

- Reflecting

- Learning how to set-up a sound system

- Experiencing new things

- Surveys

- Completing the course

Things to shout about (feel proud of):

- How far I’ve come and not given up

- Sticking to deadlines

- Paying my fees

- Organisation

- The research I’ve done

- My essay and research how to write better

- Not giving-up

Emotional associations:

- relief when deadlines are met

- panic

- stress

- passion

- enjoyment

- Motivated / de-motivated

- being honest with myself

- questioning

- doubting

- anxious

- enthusiasm

Things to keep thinking about (let stew some more):

- maybe access the library more

- better contact with my Advisor

- how I should use my spare time

- Find literature

- Use of interviews (and how to document them)

- Surveys (to use or not to use)

- The path the project is taking

- Observations…

I asked people who attended to write one point they thought was important to share (there were lots more of course).

“Organisation, I think is a key [That worked for me last module was]. I need to have a sort of planning for my study time around everything else that happens in our life. I found that scheduling 1 hour of study / research into my diary and treating it as an hour of work, for instance, really made me stick to it.” – Laura

http://laurasinigaglia.blogspot.com

“I found mapping out where we are like this very useful…[it made me think]

- not to be so harsh on yourself

- allow yourself enough time for deadlines

- reward yourself for things you are proud of

- we all feel anxious and stressed at times / allow yourself to enjoy the process

- Don’t give-up / help is out there” Tanisha http://planyourblogger.blogspot.com/

“For those that were not here today, useful tips:

Organisation and sticking to it.

Support / keeping in contact with others and other students on the blog

Finding some quite time

Letting go of things that didn’t help or blocked you with Module 2 “ - Samantha http://samanthawebber.blogspot.com/

New Term / Campus Sessions

2012-02-03T20:57:00.002-05:00

Well the new term starts Monday. Don’t forget the Campus Sessions kick-off on Monday and Tuesday too.

Monday: Module One (10am-1pm),

Module Two (2pm – 5pm)

Tuesday: Module Three (10am -1pm)

All of these are at Trent Park Campus.

If you are re-doing a module get to know the your new colleagues who are doing it with you. They maybe someone you have blogged with before. Remember that it is the quality you the learning experience you have that is important not a race to the end. Enjoy the company and community we are building.

If you have just finished and will be graduating PLEASE keep blogging, it would be so nice to have a really big network of people who are doing have done (and maybe thinking of doing).

Adesola

Citations

2012-01-27T17:50:00.000-05:00

I am in the middle of marking. It is nice to see everyone’s great work. Here is a quick comment in general about citations:

A quote should be on a separate line, in italics and indented. The quote also needs a ‘lead in’ and ‘lead out’ in your text. You cannot just put it there to make a point by itself.

Example:

“Dewey’s Pragmatist perspective further develops the research’s understanding of dance as language. Whereas above phenomenological hermeneutics implies dance could be thought of as dealing with the leftovers of verbal language Dewey reverses this idea:

‘language, signs and significance, come into existence not by intent and mind but by over-flow, by-product, in gestures and sounds. The story of language is the story of the use made of these occurrences; a use that is eventual as well as eventful.’ (Dewey 1958, p.175)

Dewey sees verbal language as an adornment to the act of communicating. He sees communication as the drive to share and collaborate meaning. Effort of doing this can lead to verbal language but communication is not brought into existence by verbal language and the effort of communication could just as well lead to a movement language . ” – Akinleye, unpublished thesis

The citation (Dewey, 1958, p.175) is linked to the following in the bibliography, which should not be separate, but a part of the same document. That means that when you read the above quote you can turn to the back pages and see which book it is. The citation tells us this: to find the book you go to the bibliography and look for the name Dewey. I may have a number of books by Dewey I have quoted from so then you look for the one published in 1958. Now you can locate the full detail example below.

If there were two books by Dewey published in 1958 in my bibliography then I would put

(Dewey, 1958a p.175). Then the bibliography I would put 1958a again so you know which one of the two books by him published in 1958 I was talking about. So the bibliography entry will look like this:

Dewey, J. (1958) Experience and nature, New York: Dover Publications.

This citation format is Harvard:

Surname, initcal of first name. (Year the book you are looking at was published), where it was published: who published it

Note the punctuation as well as the content of the text. Using this method means your work is in line with standard citation formats, which means that anyone who is used to doing research can read your work and find the very text you have copied the quote from. Every book published in UK is in the British Library. That means that someone can find the book you are talking about. That is what citation is for. It is not to prove you know the quote was in a book by X.

Also note that the date is the date of the book you are holding in your hand when you look at the quote. So for instance Dewey did not first publish ‘Experience and Nature’ in 1958, but that is the date of the book I have, so when I put the page number (…, p.175) you can find the page with the quote on it. In a book published earlier or later the print size maybe different or the size of the book pages etc… this means that that quote is not on page 175 of those books. This is why it is important the date is of the publication you have looked at, otherwise the page number is meaningless.

Please think about this….

Does it make sense?

Adesola

Conference

2012-01-21T13:35:00.002-05:00

On Thursday and Friday I went to a conference about Somaesthetics in Florida. It was primarily a Philosophy conference, Somaesthetics looks at the body beyond a vessel for carrying (things like the mind). Dr Richard Shusterman offers the word ‘somaeathetics’ to capture this and it was he that invited me to the conference to give a paper.

I talked about the ‘language of dance’ and the relationship dance as a language has with other ‘languages’. My thesis was that different kinds of languages (like dance as a language) change how we perceive the body of an individual in relation to what is ‘around’ them. In other words the ‘edges’ or ways to define ‘things’ - the gaps between ‘self’ and other are changed by the language used to communicate across it. I think dance creates quite different orientations to the world than verbal based languages. I got everyone up and moving which surprisingly seemed very unexpected to them. There were two other ‘dancers’ there – one from Canada who talked about body awareness work (The Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education) and women with eating disorders. The other ‘dancer’ was from Columbia and talked about work with ex-combatants who were developing new relationships with their bodies after ‘using’ them as weapons of war.

I learnt a lot about the language of people working in philosophy departments. I am still thinking about what I think! I am not sure where the work of dance as a methodology, as a practice beyond tradition staged performances fits into the ‘Academy’ (university). For me dance is philosophy.

There are many prejudices that I encounter being associated with dance. There is an interesting one of body reading. Dancers are used to seeing athletic, ‘young’ looking people who ‘have a career’. When people out side dance look at me they assume I am much younger than I am. They assume that I am beginning... were as dancers do not make that assumption! My contrary nature draws me into antagonising the perceptions of myself that people create, this makes me tend to wear pretty dresses and use ‘Hello Kitty’ pens to write at conferences and campus sessions, construction boots to ballet class and suits to protests and marches!!! But then I come from a performance background and I do belief that ones day-to-day life is a work of art and should challenge whoever decides they are my audience. (Audience as opposed to people who do not observe but attempt to get to know me – the interactive art of living).

We talked about this also at the conference and how there is an opposition between athletic looking people – who it is assumed are not ‘serious academics’. This reflects the mind / body divide we are all dealing with, as if you can either spend time on your body OR your mind and time spent on one is time not spent on the other.

I ended up understanding and hanging out and sharing the same principles as the other ‘dancers’ at the conference and yet all three of us also rejected the confines of the dance world and they way in which many dance techniques places judgement and ‘perfection’ on bodies. All three of us had had problems with the identity of ‘dancer’.

The other interesting thing I found was how people from different fields identify what data are and how they present them. There was a lot that went on and I have not processed the whole experience yet.

Overall it was an interesting time. The trees were amazing and lots of interesting talks and sunshine.

Playing with film

2012-01-10T19:29:00.000-05:00

I am learning stop motion!

What do you think?

Arts and Education

2012-01-07T21:01:00.002-05:00

This is a really good talk to watch. It is especially interesting for people thinking about learning from the practical experience of the arts and linking this to formal learning structures like BA (HON). What do you think of what Sir Ken Robinson says here?

Adesola

Thrive

2011-12-28T15:33:00.000-05:00

Create the conditions for you to thrive. As this module closes you move along the convey-a-belt to the next modules. Sadly that is how the education system works. But you do not have to adopt the linear structure as a kind of truth to who you are or what you are. Some learning in the last modules might kick-in in a couple of months. Some things might change in meaning to you. Some things might loose meaning: it’s a dance. However you think you did or what ever you wished you’d done is not behind you irretrievable because the belt has moved on, it’s a part of the rich tapestry of now.

The point is not to decide if you or something or someone is ‘good’ or not, correct or not. The point is to be a vital part of your own process, to notice and create the conditions in which you thrive and meet your full potential. I have found that there is so much fear involved in attempting to express your ideas within a structure where it will be assessed by others. There is so much hope that what you mean will be understood and what you want to achieve will be granted but the fear clogs up the ability to dance. It sets you on a single straight line afraid to step off or over for fear of missing a step. But I really believe that learning, ideas, the lived experience is not a line it is organic, a rhizome. Rather than predict its shape - predicting what it will be, focus on creating the nutrition for it to thrive. In other words now is the time to have a good laugh and welcome the you that just experienced last year.

Have a good end of the year / new year.

Adesola

Good habits

2011-12-22T16:06:00.000-05:00

It is week !!!! (holidays), but you are probably in writing-up final draft time. As the module ends it is a good idea to reflect on how you organised your time, what good practice you want to adopt and what things did not work for you.

I have just finished writing-up a project, myself. I have thought about what I liked about how I did it. I am going to (try to) keep my habit of waking up early to do two good hours each morning before everything starts. I find I get more work done in the first two hours after a good nights sleep than in four hours later in the day. I want to keep the habit. Some people have talked about coffee shops and places they go to work. Are you going to keep going there just to keep in the practice of having time set aside for reflection or study.

I also had to read a lot I want to keep that too since I don’t exactly ‘read for pleasure’ in the conventional sense. So I want to keep up the habit of making myself read by keeping a time during the week when I sit down and read for a block of time. Things I want to let go of is the mess my computer files are in.

Remember you are inquiring in life long habits for professional practice so think about what works for you to keep don’t just do things because the module made you and then you drop the good practice.

I have planned four days off over Christmas: that’s really exciting; hope you make time to just relax and reflect too.

Adesola

Week 12

2011-12-16T08:50:00.002-05:00

Hi, today is the last day of the term, so you will be in the writing-up stage of the module. As you are working remember not to be blinded by any personal realisations or epiphanies. We really wanted you to reflectively experience the familiar of your professional life differently. We hoped you would find you started to think differently, more widely or more deeply about things. We hoped you would become aware of ideas and find problems with notions you had not noticed before. BUT that was the process; that was the point of the tasks. NOW you need to step back and take an overview of the whole module. Focus on the goals of the assignment (i.e. to write a critical reflection, in terms of what a critical reflection is, or plan a project - PLAN it, or report on research you did ) do not write something to prove the new idea you have found or something that tells the story of finding it.

Make sure what you are doing is going to meet the assessment criteria: that is how it will be marked whether you prove the point or not. The University is look for you show you are at BA(HONS) level a certificate that is recognised beyond you specialty. So just proving you know something about your specialty that nobody else seems to have realised is not meaningful beyond you and your area of the world. Of course your Professional practice is central to you work and this degree but you also need to demonstrate skills that are generic to being at BA (HON) level such as critical thinking, spelling and presentation, use of language and academic writing, structuring presentation of ideas etc...

When ever someone says spelling to me I panic – DO NOT PANIC just be aware that people find it important and do your best. Some one said something to the other day that really put this in perspective. It was that over time the record of your work is less a reflection on you and more a reflection on the University. The University needs to show that their students meet the levels expected. You will grow and do more work but the university is accepting this moment and has the stand behind the decision, therefore your work is also a representation of the institution where you study.

Writing-up work

2011-12-11T14:40:00.000-05:00

Just a short blog to say:
As you write-up your work remain calm and list the things you want to do. Then get through them one by one.
You are writing about your profession, which is more than likely your passion too, don't get caught up in the emotion of talking about things you care about. Right now try to create a space and realise you are fulfilling a requirement not explaining your life's work in 'x' number of words. Figure out what the requirement is asking and address that directly.

Adesola
:)

Clarity

2011-11-23T20:34:00.000-05:00

A few people I have blogged or spoken to seem a little ‘freaked out’ at this point in terms of where their direction should be and how much to do. There are bound to be hundreds of interesting twists and turns you are encountering as you undertake the tasks and reflect on your learning. But at this point you need to familiarise yourself with what exactly you need to hand-in to marked.

As you know it is not the tasks. They are stepping stones to help you in your work. I advise you go back to handbook and review the assignment you are handing-in. What form it takes, how many words, what it is about? We do not what the ‘story’ of your tasks we are looking for you to synthesize all the experiences you have had and address the assignment. Maybe some tasks will be more pertinent than others. Maybe you feel you’d like to re-do something. But now is the time to start writing what you are handing-in so that you can have a draft done in time for feedback, if you want feedback from your advisor, even if you don’t it gives you time to really think about what you have been doing and what relationship it has with the assignment you are handing in.

I keep missing one of my students who wants to talk about the artefact. (I will keep trying). This is something module 3ers are doing but it is learning EVERYONE is in fact doing. The artefact is about what is indicated. In all the modules the assignment you handing-in has something to do with consolidating what you have done to the point where you can articulate what it indicates. With Module 1ers you are looking at all the ways you explored yourself learning and writing about what it indicates in terms of what you have done and what you are interested in.

Module 2ers are looking at all the information in the area of the questions you have been looking at and consolidating this into what it indicates in terms of something that resonates with what you have done and what you are interested in (see the progression from module 1?).

Module 3ers you are consolidating what you have done this term, which was a response to what, you have done and what you are interested in (Module 1 & 2). the artefact is about sharing how this practically manifests considering what you have learnt. It is the meaning behind what the artefact is that is important not the artefacts perfection.

My research has led me to think that understanding something using words only is not as helpful as using a range of mediums. If I write about this I am in fact saying that what I am choosing to share the idea (that you need more than words) is not as helpful than if I had used a range of mediums. So wouldn’t you ask “If you think that why have you written it?” Then I would bring out my artefact - a web-site that has visual elements and sound elements…. Get it? !!

O.K. have a good week

I was having a hard time in class the other day because my injured leg is still not as strong as my other leg. As I was trying to balance I thought of all of you. Thinking if I expect them to step outside their comfort zone and be in the discomfort of challenging themselves; I can challenge myself to stay on balance even if it hurts a bit! So thanks guys for all your inspiring hard work.

Adesola

Planning the end

2011-11-17T09:16:00.000-05:00

Week 8: How is it going? Just to be clear this is a twelve-week term. So the modules finish on December 16^th. But then you have until January 9^th to hand-in your work. Different advisors have different cut of dates for feedback. That is when you have to have work in by in December if you want feedback before you hand-in your work. Check you know when the cut off date is and any other requirements your advisor has. I would leave the last two weeks of the term for writing what I am handing in (December).

Try to do as much as you can, so that drafts are as clear as possible. Make drafts a ‘full-out dress rehearsal’, so that you can see where your problems are.

Think about what will work for you in-terms of your personal and work life over Christmas: so that you give yourself enough time to do what you want to do.

Don’t leave all the nagging things you think you aught to do any longer. Get them done now. If there is a task you really want to do but didn’t get round to do it this week. You need to give yourself time to learn from it.

Overall everyone seems well in the stew of thinking and doing. Just make sure you are not in ‘I must do that mode’ be in ‘I’m doing’. Time is going to go by quickly.

Feedback:

Principle one: only ask for feedback if you are interested in possibly changing what you have created. Do not ask for it as away to engage someone in talking about you work.

I wrote a funny thing about feedback maybe Akin or another graphically gifted person can make it a cartoon. In my head it is a cartoon:

My process for receiving feedback cycle!!

1) Oh, my God that’s right, that’s a much better way to do it than I did!

2) I can’t do it, I can’t change it, maybe I just can’t achieve this.

3) Wait a minute maybe she (the feedbacker) doesn’t really know what she is talking about. I think my work is fine.

4) I feel really sick (fat=cultural / social conditioning , etc… or other excuses for feeling not up to things and just wanting to go back to bed)

5) O.K. that’s better, I think I did, need to develop that etc…

6) Oh my God I’m brilliant; she (the feedbacker) is amazing to be able to see my amazing potential.

7) New feedback

1) Oh, my God that’s right…

2) I can’t do it….

Etc….

!!!!!

Adesola

Courage and Kindness

2011-11-12T11:37:00.002-05:00

Hi, week 7 and I’m a little late with my weekly blog!!

Module 1ers are beginning Network tasks supported by Reader 3 – “The networked professional”. This is about linking things together. Start to think about the module as a whole how things connect.

Module 2ers are starting to try out tools for professional enquiry: see what kind of information piloted tools gives you. Remember that is not what information they give you (i.e. the content, x does x). It’s what kind of information (i.e. general, large quantities, personal, focused etc…)

Module 3ers would be beginning to analyse their data. Starting to think about what it is you’ve found, learnt, re-shaped from your data collection period. I find that this involves a lot of thinking!! And writing is not always thinking. You may need to go on walks, or have conversations with friends about it. What has been working for me is reading all the bits I am trying to make sense of so its in my head, then going to Bikram yoga. Because the poses are all the same each time I can get right into my body, which is, were I find meaning. I find that as I stretch out and realign my muscles and bones my brain (thinking) realigns and stretches out too and I find I have made connections in my research too.

Exciting times, you are probably wanting to make sure your going in the right direction. That is a natural feeling but remember although people can reassure you, YOU have to trust yourself and do your best and be true to what you think you should be doing because its your learning journey not a treasure hunt we have made (where we can say you’re getting cooler or hotter).

“genius is talent exercised with courage’ (– Wittenstein) “and kindness” – me!!

Adesola

CV

2011-11-03T21:57:00.002-04:00

I changed it!
Does it make sense or still to abstract?
Adesola

Location

2011-11-03T21:02:00.000-04:00

Welcome to week 6 people!!! Well I have been thinking about two things:

Firstly, the process of doing something new: There is a really big shift that one must make from “I’m going to do something” to “I am doing something” to “I am finished”. There is just a comforting feeling in being in the process of starting. And there is a really scary feeling when one is in sight of the end – because while you are just starting you have the potential to be as great as you want to imagine yourself to be BUT when you get to the point where you can see the end you are very aware of all the things you haven’t done or got or understood. I think that we tend to stall ourselves in starting but here we are in week six and so soon you will be more than half-way through the term. Even if you aren’t doing everything you feel you should, give yourself permission not to be perfect and allow yourself to keep moving forward. Whatever module you are doing, by now you should have an idea or outline for whatever you are handing in on Jan 9th.

Module 1ers make sure you have not got caught-up in doing ‘the perfect task’ and start to own the module as a whole, in order to synthesize what you are doing – remember the portfolio you are being marked on is a document about what you have learnt. You are not being marked on the tasks. Module 2ers start to see your questions and your title as potential ‘realities’, so interrogate what they mean, what they say, where ‘you’ are in them. Module 3ers you need to start figuring out what it is you are ‘finding’. You need to have collected your data or be almost finished collecting.

Secondly, I have been thinking about the last post and the comments people have made. I hope it was useful in demonstrating the development of an idea / question. But the content of the question itself has raised some really interesting things. I am going to wait and see if there are any more survey responses before I share an analysis.

However, it has made me think there is something missing from my blog. This is a kind of ‘theoretical framework’. A theoretical framework is about showing the context within which you are doing something. In some ways you could argue that your professional practise offers a theoretical framework for much of the work you are doing. It gives you a guideline for how to address things (the ethics section of module 2 is about looking more closely at these).

But the context for which I am teaching is not clear. We know that this course is different and is hoping to encourage you to have a dynamic relationship with learning. A relationship that is possibly not the same as traditional relationship you assume for educational institutes (that is we want you to pull knowledge to you rather than wait to have it pushed at you). The C.V. part of the blog is a way for students to give an idea of their background and in a sense their theoretical context (framework), this is a way to understand how to approach the person. Maybe then my C.V. section should not be so much about what I have done but set out a context for my approach and how I can be approached. I am going to try this. See what you think.

Once again I hope the content of this blog is interesting but what might be most helpful to you is seeing how the ideas resonate with whatever part of the course you are doing. (I’m going to put up my new C.V. over the next few days)

What do you think?

Adesola

Comments / Questions!

2011-10-27T11:22:00.000-04:00

Hopefully all is ticking along in week five. In this weeks blog I thought I would look at a ‘question’, as in Module 2. I think this is useful to everyone regardless what module you are on. In a sense this is an exemplar.

Problem: I find people do not comment much on my blogs especially compared to other students blogs. I always end with ‘what do you think?’ but people don’t tell me! Students leave comments on other students blogs like “thank you for writing this” or “good idea” these comments appear to be to let the person know their blog was read. The sort of comments I get are more if people have a problem and many of my post don’t get any comments. I have started to check the numbers of hits I get in order to see if what I am writing is useful or looked for by students. But what I hope for is a conversation in the comments and links to other people’s posts and comments so we create more of a network. So my question is “Why don’t people leave comments on my blogs”

Then I look at ethical implications (Tasks 5 ) What ethical implications are there.

Ethically First: Am I following the kind of protocols of blogging. Does my writing make it easy for people to comment. What are the other rules of blogging; maybe I am not constructing my blogs in a manor that implies I want comment or on-going conversation? I need to look into this.

Ethically Second: I must be aware that my relationship with students is different from their relationship with each other. I have a different power relationship and their for I am perceived differently. It is expected that I write blogs because I am an advisor on the course. In some ways people have become friends through the course but it is ethically unclear if I can be friends with people or not. Writing ‘thanks’ or ‘good idea’ do not seem appropriate because 1) It’s my job to do it and 2) I am not perceived to be an equal (or a friend) so saying ‘good idea’ might seem weird. Also commenting on from what I write might seem as if a person is doubting me or challenging the ideas which goes against the power relationship.

Ethically Third: it is perceived to be possible that interactions I have with students could affect their grades. Because I am a part of the University (as it were) I appear differently. I might be more difficult to interact with and even perceived as dangerous because I could have a negative affect on a grade or something. It could seem unclear how the blogs work (many people still feel that the blogs are being marked as a task rather than evidence of learning). Maybe people would feel that I would be looking at spelling and grammar in the comments. Maybe people feel what I am writing is the ‘answer’ so all you can think is ‘yes’!!

Ethically Lastly, is it reasonable of me to expect to have conversations when people are busy and really what they want to do is find out what boxes they need to check to pass. Whereas I have a job doing this and maybe more time to ‘shoot the breeze’. Or maybe students don’t have much internet time and need to move quickly across blogs (although that doesn’t explain why they comment on other peoples blogs more than mine).

These ethical considerations change how I think about my initial question. ‘Why’ people don’t leave comments could be a number of reasons. The question now seems really big. It ranges across power dynamics, perceptions of the ‘teacher’ / student relationship, personal identity and how people see their own voice being heard, time constraints, confidence in spelling, social expectations and that’s only why Middlesex people don’t comment. I have tried to include other people (friends, past students, future students general inter-net users too. Why don’t they comment). The question is clearly too big to research in a couple of months.

It is this point that I must realise that the question can no longer be about the incident that made me think about it (my personal problem) because in order to really find out something useful to me I must look at the question for itself or otherwise I will limit the question to being a comment on my problem rather than a way to find out more about something. In other words, I might think “well I don’t need past students to comment anyway. That wasn’t really a part of the problem to start with.’ But if I ask the question ‘why don’t people comment ion my blog’ I need to look at ‘people’. I might find that the reasons past students don’t comment informs why students now don’t, and if I had not considered this I might have missed a big point in terms of the question (although it appeared unimportant in terms of my ‘problem’. That’s why it has to be the question you address not the my ‘problems’). The biggest problem might turn out to be that my blog is hard to find or something like that. So I can’t limit the question to only construct what I expect to find out as an answer. I must look at the question for what it is asking.

Doing this I see that the question is too big because I would not be able to reach out to enough different types of people in a couple of months. So maybe it should be ‘why don’t current BAPP students comment on my blog?’

Again the ethical points I looked at make me see this is also a big question because there are clearly a number of possible reasons and they are all very different. Maybe the implication of my question needs to be changed. I could change the word ‘why’ to ‘what are the reason students give….’ There is a big dynamic change of power in terms of where I see ‘truth’ laying here.

When my question starts with ‘why’ there is an implication I need to study something and then use the evidence to prove something ‘why’ it happens as if ‘why’ is answered outside of the situation itself. If I ask ‘what are the reasons given’ then I assume that the students themselves know ‘why’ the answer or ‘truth’ of the situation is not outside it and needs to be interpreted but is in the people themselves. As a social scientist, narrative inquirer and Pragmatist I feel the second construction of the question evens the ground out more for the inquiry. I feel the ‘why’ assumptions follow more along the line of the specialist in the white coat telling you what you think!!!! If I change the question to start with ‘What are the reasons…’ I can still look at what these reasons mean to me and what I feel they imply about my blog.

So now my question is “what are the reasons current BAPP students give for not leaving comments on my blog”. It still seems a little like I am court up in my own up-set and not genuinely interested in comment leaving. In other words not allowing the question to stand alone but using it to make a point about people leaving comments on my blog when I feel I have tried to encourage them. This limits me. Firstly, because the very people who the question addresses don’t leave comments so I am not communicating with them well in the first place so how do I expect to not just replicate the same problems I have noticed in the blog, in the data collection. Whatever is making them feel uncomfortable or seeing it as unnecessary may also affect the data I collect. (I would think) then all I would be doing is proving my point that they don’t communicate with me well rather than actually finding out why.

Secondly, because there are the people who do comment and it might be as useful and important to find out why they do as why others don’t.

I need to open out my question and not focus on the ‘problem’ that instigated it. It could be “what are the reasons BAPP students give for why the do or don’t leave comments on other BAPP blogs’. Now my question addresses my problem but is open enough for me not to be a mission to prove I’m hard done by the non-commenters, and could be useful to other people who write BAPP blogs. I am not looking for an answer ‘why = because’…. Because I realise the question is too big to answer in a couple of months but I will find out more about it and draw some conclusions that might help me with my blog writing.

I hope this is useful for Module 3ers too because I hope it reminds you what your data collecting and analysing is for.

Tasks 6 etc… so how do I find out? I could try a couple of ways to see which way works in terms of me connecting with people and getting the kind of answers I can find useful. I could try making a survey, maybe I could try interviewing a couple of my advisees. I try out a couple of types of data gathering tools so that when I do the project next term I already know what I am doing. BUT more importantly I realise what kind of answers will help me understand the question in the terms I want to understand it. This is a lot deeper than I am writing about here because I have already gone on for ages. It is also for you to think about. It is about what you consider valuable information in terms of the question you have. In terms of my question here it would be important to really understand the tools I need and how I want to interact with people because that is what my question area is about. To show I understand my question would be to show I understand the implications it raises about how I can collect data. Like the student / teacher perceived power relations, the fact I am looking for information from people would have not communicated with me before etc…

Well what do you think?

Please do my pilot survey:

Click here to take survey

Adesola

Reflections on this week's campus sessions

2011-10-20T02:07:00.002-04:00

Week 4: we had campus sessions this week. The idea of campus sessions is that the experience of the students at the campus session creates a ripple of ideas across the whole student community through students and advisors who attended blogging about the event and then thought he comment you post on their blogs and the questions you ask. Have a look at the blogs below for some of the summaries of the campus session on Module 1 and part of Module 3 then go to the blogs of the students who wrote the summaries for more in depth discussion of the experience.

Module 1ers at starting their reflection tasks and as I said in my last weekly blog all modules build on each other if you have ‘done’ module 1 you should still be practicing the things you learnt about using the tool (blogging), reflecting on your process in order to better understand what you are doing, and using / a being a constructive part of your networks.

We started the campus session on Reflection doing an exercise that got someone else to look at we do on a day-to-day basis. We were exploring the idea that in inquiry it is useful to attempt to ‘see the familiar as unfamiliar’ that is look at things a new and notice how you can habitually ‘see’ things. It is also good to be open to ‘see the unfamiliar as familiar’ that is be open to explore ideas you had not considered a part of your ‘world’.

Then we did an exercise where the doing of the exercise was more useful (taught us more) than the product of doing it. The was the process we learnt from. We summaries this as ‘Sometimes the activity is more useful than the story / content. This was appoint about keeping a reflective journal (THIS IS FOR EVERYONE ON ALL MODULES). The actually activity of regularly keeping the reflective journal is useful in itself, even if it appears that you have little to say. When you look back at what you wrote / thought you might find there is more that you noticed. This took us to the idea of noticing.

I believe we notice what we value. As you progress through the course your values might change / widen/ shift you will notice new things in the things you thought and wrote. But you need to have the documented what you thought in order to see the progression you have made. We also made the point that as you doing something you get beyond the initial ideas of it and push yourself beyond the first reaction to something. “You start to be able to think more outside of your box.”

Then we did an exercise that was difficult (this can be anything, we used the activity of balancing sticks on our finger tips). Then we look at how we engaged with learning how to do this. This related to Kolb’s Learning Cycle.

We pointed out we all engage with the cycle but it is at the point in the cycle that we notice we are learning something that we are in our comfort zone. Some people might know all about the plan of something but its not until they actually do it that it becomes meaningful. Or someone might do something but when they see it they get it….

Picture

Putting all the exercises together you get the ideas. That reflection is about looking at thing a new (familiar / unfamiliar), this is supported by a practice of noticing how and when things become meaningful to you and start to be a part of a learning (adding to your knowledge) experience.

What do you think of this?

Students summarised it as;

Reflection – is important to learn from

Familiar as unfamiliar

Notices in order to reflect

Notice when you learn

Learning is knowledge that is to say it is applying knowledge – experience generates knowledge and reflection allows you to capture experiences in order to reflect on them.

Sometimes the action of doing contains more learning that the content it generates.

Notice mistakes too, reflecting on them is how you learn too. (Learn through mistakes)

Listening to other people is a useful way to look at what you think. You can compare how people respond to something with how you respond.

Sometimes you need ‘silence’ or a ‘stillness’ in yourself to allow yourself to observe (notice).

I think these ideas are important for everyone.

In the campus session for Module 2 we looked at Ethics. 2ers should be being the tasks linked to the Reader on Ethics (5a, 5b etc..) it is a good idea to get on with this. If you have a number of questions chose one so that you can use it to do the tasks. You might find that the tasks themselves help you think more deeply about the question. BUT do not get stuck finding the perfect question. This is an example of the activity giving you the learning experience (see above). We also talked about the idea that ethical dilemmas often manifest in controls, and power structures around the physical body. This is to do with individuals’ rights, recognising inequalities and ‘free will’. (This is to do with philosophical debate as the Reader mentions, look at Hobbes, and Kant I also find Foucault and Bourdieu interesting coming from an embodied perspective – as a dance artist for instance). Looking at your interests and questions through an ethical lens really helps you find a deeper understanding of what the questions mean to you and those around you.

We also had a campus session on Module 3 . (See Paula’s blog). We talked about effective writing, planning the remaining activities of your research so that you stay on task. Know when you want your first draft to be done by and if you want Advisor feedback when their cut off date to drafts to be sent. Each advisors deadline might be slightly different. We also talked about the artefacts.

We compared the role of artefacts with the role of the Critical Review. The Critical Review is a formal, structured, and traditional document. It shows the whole process. The Artefact is in a format is more in tune with your professional practice. Its likely to be some that is recognisable in your field of professional practice. Both the Artefact and the Critical Review respond to the Research Question. The Artefact is not an add-on to the critical review. The artefact should be the natural development of the inquiry. So for example if your question is about the singing your Artefact might involve a sound track. Also think about this: when you go to tell someone about this work who is in the field you want to work in they are not going to be that into reading the critical review (I would guess) but when you show them the artefact they would be interest and see how much work you must have done – and how well you understood the question because of the form of artefact. So it’s not just a documentation it is the embodiment of the knowledge.

I thought about three kinds of Artefact or three facets of an artefact.

The “Stones on the edge of the well’. If your inquiry has been talking about a kind of experience or embodied action and your critical review is about it then it would be nice to experience it!!. Like if you theorize about the sounds different ways of dropping stones down a well, it would be nice to have a well and some stones.

“The ‘X’ itself”. This the thing that you have said is needed itself. If you have written that you found that artists need a press-pack then the artefact could be the press-pack itself. Or if it was about what a show reel should look like the show reel itself…or dance or song etc…

Lastly, a “kind of documentation in the style of….” This is a something shows the points you have raised in the style of the field it comes from (the more familiar form or mirroring the forms of things from that area). For instance a big colourful (children’s book style) book that documents the main process and points of a creative project in a school- which is what I made and is used as an example in the reader. It was to be read by parents and they are more familiar with children’s books in the school that ‘reports’.

What do you all think – people that were there…people that were not there?

Adesola

Campus Session , Module 3 (October 19th 2011): Artefacts

2011-10-19T10:40:00.000-04:00

As part of the campus session for module 3 today, we looked at the Artefact. The students who were there wrote three bullet point ideas that they find useful in understanding the role of the Artefact requirement. Go to the blog of the person to read further about their thoughts on the session. I will be writing about this in my weekly blog also.

Artefact is about your inquiry question not the next step
Create something that is in your field
A natural culmination of your inquiry

Mark Iles

The Critical review is the whole story of the research in academic form.
The Artefact is what the research indicated in terms of a creative express in your field of practice.
The artefact is not the start a new question or inquiry: it should address your original question.

Nicole Geddes

The artefact:

Follow the thread to the natural conclusion
3 types of artefact (see Adesola’s next blog also)
It is not additional, its part of the process

Joanna Gunnell

The artefact is not an add on
Follow the thread of the inquiry to a natural product.
A different way of showing your conclusions

Natalie Less

Not letting the artefact be an add on or that it raises another question
Understanding that its OK to not know exactly what your artefact is until your analysis is done.
The artefact should be a conclusion of your findings – it accompanies the critical Review but doesn’t have to show the whole process as the Critical Review does.

Joanna Adeyinka- Burford

Group 1: Kolb's Learning Cycle

2011-10-19T05:03:00.000-04:00

Demonstrating the Kolb Learning Cycle through the action of writing a script.
Demonstrating the 4 stages of engaging with experience as knowledge
Nina Standen, John Nordon, Nick Crowley, Lily Corrigan

Campus Session Module 1 (October 18th)

2011-10-18T13:38:00.000-04:00

Today was a campus session for Module 1. We looked at the reflection section of the Module. I will write more about it on my blog later in the week. The students present at the campus session worked in four groups to share one thing with you, that they felt was value about the session.

These blogs below are a summary from each group. Go to the blogs of the group to get a full explanation and to hear their thoughts. (Give them a chance to write it up so try a couple of times if they haven’t got anything up yet!) Group 1 did a film and I still have to down load it ! see theirs tomorrow!!!

Adesola

Group 2: Noticing as a part of reflection

2011-10-18T13:34:00.000-04:00

Group 2: Noticing as a part of reflection

In order to reflect on something you have to have noticed it. Start to look beyond the obvious and take time to notice

Emma Hatton,Mary Bance, Alice Chambers, Sarah Pearson

Group 3: Key Reflective actions

2011-10-18T13:31:00.000-04:00

Group 3: Key Reflective actions

We’ve taken photos relating to the key reflective points and hope this shows the difference ways of reflecting, observing and noticing

Observing

Noticing

Reflecting

Aïcha Badri, Rozana Ghaffor, Tiffany Newson, Thulani Shuku, Charlotte Bidston

Group 4: Seeing the familiar as unfamiliar

2011-10-18T13:26:00.000-04:00

Group 4: Seeing the familiar as unfamiliar

From the session today, the concept that really stood out for us was trying to

“Seeing the familiar as unfamiliar”

To reflect this we took a series pf photographs that we feel in part illustrate this point.

We would then love you to visit out blogs and take a minute to reflect on the pictures using the concept of ‘seeing’ ‘thinking about’ ‘wondering’

Than compare and what we saw, thought and wondered!

Hannah Kenneally-Muir, Charlotte Ballard, Phil Carroll Rhoda Parker

Reflection, SIGs and Literature!

2011-10-16T12:46:00.000-04:00

This blog was meant to be posted on Thursday according to the system I created for myself this year…! But then there’s life; as the quote above says “life is what happens to our plans”. So how is your schedule going. Don’t get caught up fixating on one task try to keep moving forward with your work.

My big wonder this week is; “is my life just a response to things and if so where am ‘I’ then. Or am ‘I’ in the setting-up / and perception of the situation to which I respond?”

The reflection of Module One (which is what 1er’s should be moving into as we enter week 4) is an on-going activity across the course and your career. So how is it going with reflection? The analysis you need to engage with in Module 3 when you have collected data is basically reflections – reflexivity aims to help you widen your perception. Locate the ‘I’, the 'response', the situation in the data.

Of course talking through your thoughts helps with the process of thinking - finding meaning. Who do you talk to? Well, 1ers will be moving on later to looking at their networks, 2ers and 3ers have looked at networks so use them. 2ers you are just forming SIGs and other groups that are extensions to the networks you identified last module. The SIGs are so you can communicate your ideas and hear others. Dewey says that an idea, once communicated can be looked at and explored because it has a kind of form other than your feeling (which from my perspective is an embodied experience - what he calls 'first state' below).

‘Where communication exists, things in acquiring meaning, thereby acquire representatives, surrogates, signs, and implicates, which are infinitely more amenable to management, more permanent and more accommodating, than events in their first estate’ (Dewey, 1929a)

Module 2ers you need to have joined a SIG by now, and blogged of course. This is the way to have a conversation, interrogate your ideas, to widen your field. Don’t make lots of little SIG groups. If you are thinking along similar lines to a group but a little different join and add your voice, it will widen the thoughts of everyone and challenge you to explain yourself.

Formative feedback on the research questions in Module 2: from me it is to blog more. I have seen some interesting questions but you all need to talk to each other and blog. Some 2ers have not up-dated there blogs recently and it is hard to share in the conversation with them. Keep the questions fluid so you don’t fix yourself into a corner. I will post more feedback in my blog next week also.

Module 3ers: I strongly advise you to have a Literature Review by now and some Key Texts. A Literature Review is an overview of what’s out there and what people think. What the general threads are and who is famous for thinking about them. Key Texts are a few books that you have read cover to cover and that support your research (NOT support your argument - which hopefully you don’t have yet) the Key Texts are books that are known for raising the key issues in your area of research. A metaphor for this is: a Literature Review is like ‘Eagle vision’ seeing an over few of the whole field. Key Texts are like ‘mouse vision’. To know about a part of the field really well.

Another metaphor for this : If I am talking about Dance a Literature Review is like knowing there are a number of kinds of dance – Salsa, Hip Hop, Ballet , Contemporary. As I am talking about dance you would expect me to know that these things exist, however you would not expect me to know all about all of them but I should be able to overview the kinds of dance out there. Key texts are like me knowing about Ballet in more detail, knowing about point work, ballet barr, and people wearing tutus etc…

Hope to see London based people at the campus sessions this coming week.

I am sitting in a Starbucks that is open late on a Sunday, Great!! I think we should start a list of good places to study outside the house, for those on the move, between houses, without internet at home etc... There are some great places to get wi-fi and get on with things. What do you think of all this?

Adesola

First tasks (Feedback on week two)

2011-10-05T14:21:00.000-04:00

Here we are in week two. First modulers have been putting up their C.V.s, youtube films and flickr pictures. There is some great work, often people using the tools for the first time. It’s a great opportunity to get to know new ways to communicate BUT also to observe yourself: see how you learn new skills or build on ones you already knew. You can draw on the memory of this in a week or two when you start the reflection session of the first module. If you’re not on the 1^st module don’t forget the communication tools, still blog and share ideas, make ‘things’ about your thoughts and process, up-date your flickr and think about how the tools can be useful to you in general across the whole course.

Module two-ers and threes are working with questions (!). task 4a is thinking about questions relevant to your practice. The thing about questions is whether you can engage with them as questions or whether you are engaged with them in terms of answers. I don’t believe in answers per say. Rather than looking at questions in terms of what the answer will be or how you think they should be answered, look at them in terms of better understanding the question. So instead of a goal of an answer have a goal of better understanding the question, better understanding the question gives you an answer of a sort.

This is a fundamental issue about where you see ‘truth’ residing. Is it out there to be found. That is it’s fixed and needs to be discovered. This is a positivist view that things are there whether you are there or not, whether you understand them or not. Or do you think that truth is not fixed but depends on how you perceive things.

Dewey talks about a frightening sound on a window, on investigation it turns out to be a branch knocking against the window. His view is that it is not that a mistaken truth has given way to a real truth. It is that it is true there was a frightening sound and it is true that was a branch. As your perception changes so does the answer. This is more of a non-positivist view: things are changed by your perception of them. So you can see how looking for a fixed answer to a question would mean that you are assuming you totally understand the question and that there is some fixed answer out there to discover.

Of course some questions are easier to find a fixed answer to. These are usually ones that involve quantitative data; like “how many fingers does your grandmother have?”, questions that involve numbers. From the popular media we are most used to research being presented this way. But many of your questions are qualitative – about how people feel, or what they think, this is not something you can count it is about the quality not the quantity of something. So can you see my point… that questions can be thought about outside of the context of what their answer will be and more about the inquiry into the question itself. What do you think??

Have a look at the funny video on my blog post:

THURSDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER 2009: Why research analysis is so important; it's not all data collection! - http://adesolaa.blogspot.com/2009/09/why-research-analysis-is-so-important.html

Module three-ers have you thought about writing rough drafts of some of the parts of your critical reflection NOW!!!! For instance your ‘Introduction’ (section/chapter); it is about what you planned to do, the context of the work and the original idea. You could write that down now even if you know things are changing… the change is part of the process of inquiry. If you’ve got it down than when you come back to it in November you’ll have your starting point. It might also help you to have a clearer focus as you move forward into field work (data collection) your own notes and reflections are also data remember. You could also think about a draft of lit. review section too. Again it might help you consolidate your ideas as your thinking might be changing quite fast. It is also psychologically nice to feel you have something to work off of when you come to your final writing-up period.

What do you think?

Using interviews anyone?? Do you have / have you made your consent forms for the people you are interviewing?

A really good book to look at is

“Learning from Strangers: the art and method of qualitative interview studies’ – Robert S. Weiss

Anyone recommend any other good books on interviews?

What do you think about all this – please comment

Adesola

Mapping

2011-09-29T09:02:00.000-04:00

This is the first week. There is a sense of anticipation that is always really exciting when you begin things. One makes promises to oneself and it feels like there is a clear goal (at this point). It’s the journey that is where the learning lies and therefore it is also the journey that can be changeable and sometimes distracting. Planning is a way of mapping the journey you will take even if you decide to change your goal or the journey takes you to an unexpected place your planning /map helps you locate where you are, how far you are from your original goal etc…

There is an interesting set of BBC documentaries about the ‘Beauty of maps’. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s2w83

Mapping how you plan to proceed especially in terms of time (when you want to get tasks and writing done by) is really useful.

Also look at how you are presenting your work. Blogs have been made most famous by people who have used them in ways so that they seem to be sharing the details of their life with the world. The film ‘Julie and Julia’ is based on a blog that became very popular but was basically someone writing about the meals they cooked each night. BUT that’s not the only way to write or use blogs.

Our blogs come out of the idea that informal conversations at the door of the lecture room or in the changing rooms or exchanges in discussion in the classroom are in fact when most learning goes on. ‘Round the water fountain’ conversations are a way to get ideas clear by talking to others or to listen to another person’s way of thinking and maybe find that helps you with your own ideas. But we don’t have a place we are all gathering to have these kinds of informal conversations so…what about having them around a virtual doorway – in the blog world. So we thought the blogs could be away to have those important informal conversations without being limited by the places we are in. What’s more because we are all in different places and spaces we bring even more to the conversations. So think about what that means in terms of your blog and writing style.

The importance is not on writing in the ‘welcome to my inner thoughts / world style’ , the importance is in the interaction. Writing things that are clear and to the point and share how and why your thinking that way – the experiences you are having is important in terms of the interaction of sharing them. It also explains why commenting is so important. Commenting is having the conversation via the blogs.

Task 1a / 1^st Module: Please, DO NOT put your address on anything (for instance the C.V.) and I recommend not putting your phone number either if you want a contact info part use an email anywhere.

This whole 1^st module is about positioning yourself looking at what you have done, what you have around you (your networks), how you see yourself (general reflection), so that you can move on to the next modules to work out what you can add to / work on further to complete your foundation in Professional Practice in a BA (Hons). The tasks in the first module are about looking at yourself - so see how it is best to present that past professionally.

Read my past blogs:

Positioning of Self – Saturday 16 October 2010

Adesola Akinleye: Positioning of Self

Positioning of Self – Thursday 25 March 2010

Adesola Akinleye: Positioning of Self

This is good to remember for people in Modules 2 & 3 each module is part of a progression: look back to work out your trajectory. You might have changed your ideas about some of the things you did in Module 1 (& 2), now you’ve experienced doing them. So don’t hang on to things just ‘because’ that was how you first thought about it. Let them develop, Use the blogs to share where your developing is taking you. The blogs can end up as a map of your journey made even more meaningful by the input of others.

Hope to have some comments soon I’m wondering if my comments settings are broken!!! Email me if they are.

Adesola

Welcome (back)

2011-09-22T15:06:00.000-04:00

Hi welcome (back)

Here are some starting back conversation starters.

First, if I am your advisor and haven’t already emailed you I will be next week. There are a number of advisors on the course we all have blogs and they are all useful because different people have different ways to explain and share things. I am going to be writing blogs that are across all three modules. So sometimes my post might be more useful to someone on Module (3) than Module (1) but it is useful to think of the WHOLE course as one thing. Not to think of each module as a closed set of activities we are making you do!! By thinking about what people are doing at other points in the course you might find something really useful for your current study. Also don’t feel if you have finished a module there is nothing more to get out of it. Keep looking backward and forward (its how you locate yourself).

So… for people beginning the last module (3760) (that is Module (3), the research project) a couple of things:

1) the last module you did was to plan what you are doing now – but its not written in stone, look at the feedback you had on your grading form, think about it now you have had the summer to let the idea settle.

2) Adapting your method, addressing questions your advisor highlighted is all part of the process. DO NOT think the whole thing is just about gathering data. You can get all the data in the world but it is only as useful as the questions you ask of it.

3) The module is about the process (as is pretty much everything we are doing) NOT ABOUT you finding an answer to some problem – Let the PhD students save the world and publish stuff. Believe me you don’t need the headache! Just focus on your process, your artistic development, what you can LEARN. We are looking for you to show us what you learn from the experience that is all (and that is a lot).

So get chatting talk to people about what you think blog, email, don’t hide away trying to get a perfect answer for your project.

For people beginning Module (2) (3630). Have a look at what happen last year. Look at the blogs see what you can learn from observing what other people thought about. This module is quite extensive. Start to get on with things get the reading done its more intense than the first module because we are asking you apply some of the principles you are learning about.

For people beginning the first Module (1) (3730) and everyone else remember this is not a set of hoops we want you to jump through. We have planned something that we hope will be useful and meaningful to you in YOUR situation. Try not to see the module as something to critique, or on the other hand something God ordained. Try and apply the ideas to your life. See if they are useful and in doing that see what you learn from them. Do not be put off by starting to blog just get on with doing it.

If you are re-doing a module have a look at what you did last time but also let go of some of the things that seemed like obstacles. Move forward, work out what helped you last time and what hindered you.

Get advice from your advisor if you got an unexpected mark. It was higher than you expected work out what you did to get that response, if it was lower work out what you did to get that response.

For everyone MAKE a timeline for yourself, work backwards from the hand-in date Jan 9^th 2012. Work out what you need to hand in to be marked. This is different from what you will be doing as tasks. Work out when you need to have a final draft by in order to get feedback from your advisor if you want it. Work out all the things you want to do right up to today. Make a plan and be kind enough to yourself to stick to it.

OK these moments, these people on the course are all unique; make the most of all the interesting people who in the course. If you find it’s a lot to do especially with work etc… FIGURE OUT how it can help you AT work. IT IS WORK BASED LEARNING, it should be apart of what you are already doing not something separate from you.

Have fun

Adesola

Dance education

2011-08-18T10:25:00.000-04:00

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/8707656/A-level-results-tough-subjects-should-carry-more-Ucas-points-says-David-Willetts.html

A comment I wrote in response to the Daily Telegraph article. What do you think?

The implications of David Willetts comments in the Daily Telegraph values a system that privileges a form of study that is no longer viable in a globalised world. The internet has happened!! And this has changed the shape of knowledge by calling for a differentiation between information and application. Knowledge is no longer about an access to information that the Academy offered because ‘you can Google it’ now. Knowledge is about how that information is contextualise in terms of application – what does it mean, what action does it initiate. It is here that the globalisation of the internet has spawned a most interesting dichotomy because the disembodied realm of cyber-space has entered us into a 21^st century where value is no longer in knowing the theory – the information - it is in the practical, embodied action of application – what you do with it. We can no longer justify the divide between theory and practice.

We live in a Western world that has the experience of modernism, and post-modernism and yet the sum of Willett’s comments seems to reveal a reversion to ‘I think therefore, I am’ as if the body were an unnecessary adornment to the brain muscle. If this was so the internet would be all we needed in order to be educated, we wouldn’t need to go to University, anyway, just sit at our computer screens but we know that in order to understand we need to experience. We are embodied beings not thoughts. Knowledge is derived from information that is made meaningful through experiences.

At the very least we must not fertilize the misconception of a divide between mind and body by sentencing the mind to an education that is experienceless because it is bodiless. By privileging a static theoretical approach we could make it impossible to have a fully rounded education. At a basic level Willets comments indicate an education that will disadvantage UK students by locking them into a system that is not fit for the purpose of being productive in a 21^st century globalised world but instead hangs to the simplification of ideals and languages that were current hundreds of years ago.

But there is a further point here that the potential for knowledgeable understanding is actually denied when it is channelled into one way of perceiving the academic experience. There is no argument that dance at ‘A’ level needs to prove its worth within the context of theoretical math ‘A’ level. Any more than theoretical Math should have to prove itself within the context of the embodied understanding of dance. The point is the place these two have in the development of higher understanding. Dance ‘A’ level is the beginning of the road to physical literacy (Whitehead) and embodied cognition that are as vital to knowledge as a basic level of understanding the concept of calculus because ultimately we are in a lived world where knowledge will be acted upon, performed by us. The mind is the reflective action of the body, a knowledge across these is vital.

To condemn UK students to a hierarchy of subjects, as is suggested, is to impose limited access to whole swaths of well established academic themes, theories, literature, embodied practise and ‘knowledge’, that almost becomes a form of censorship and certainly will isolate UK educated students within the wider academic arena of the world.

- Adesola Akinley

What's happening

2011-06-06T16:48:00.000-04:00

Well, your work is in, now what's going on? It is looked at, then it is brought to a panel to moderate so the whole BAPP team decides on a mark. Then it is brought to another panel outside in the wider University who check the mark, then some peoples work and marks are sent to an external examiner to check the marks. All this takes time which is why you have not heard anything. BUT we hope the course is something you can be engaged with wherever or whenever you are. Before you get your mark you can not know if you are moving on to the next module. However, while you don't know what's next for you, you could be looking back over the modules you have done: trying out some of the tasks for a second time. See if anything seems different now you have done them once already. Or you could be reading past blogs (see what happened and what people thought way back when!).

If you past the module you will have received a grade between 1 and 16. [17 to 20 is a fail:(]
1 to 4 is a Distinction a 1st ,
5 to 8 is a merit a 2/1
9 to 12 is a pass a 2/2
13 to 16 is a pass a 3rd
If you got 17 you failed but you can re-take the module.
You get a grade for each module, obviously if you keep getting a 1st you will end up with an overall grade of a 1st for your Degree and so on.
Whatever you got check what your comments / feedback is for the module.

I hope that helps to make it a bit clearer I get quite a few people asking me what is going on and what it means. And remember the answer to most questions about the University procedure are in the hand-book or on Lib-guides or on the student web-site 24/7

Use the summer to organise yourself for what you are doing next. Do those things you keep thinking 'I really must...find a good internet cafe.... find a good quiet place to work...read that book...blog more...join the library...take that free computer literacy course at the library...work on my writing skills.'
Keep-on-keeping-on

2011-04-28T06:26:00.000-04:00

For 3002s

2011-04-22T09:41:00.000-04:00

I wrote this at this stage of 3002 last round. have a look, see what you think.
http://adesolaa.blogspot.com/2010/11/assessment-portfolio.html

(November 21st 2010 blog)

Adesola

Respect

2011-04-21T09:19:00.000-04:00

Respect

I don’t know what you all think of us – making you do tasks and then making you write 750 words or 3000 words telling us you did it. It is such a power, control thing to do. Especially when most of the words just tell us, we were right to make you do it. It’s like having your own set of groupies. Do you really think that’s what we want? Because I can stare at my own navel in the mirror. And what do you think of us if that is what you think I spend my time getting people to do?

The internet is a good example that knowledge is out there it does not belong to someone – there was a time when you did have to rub your ‘teachers’ the right way to get them to share their pearls of wisdom but now you can Google it!

What do you do with it then? All that information: how can it be useful to you? What value is it? What relevance is it? We are saying that in your Professional Practise there is knowledge ‘out there’ both in the day-to-day activities you undertake and in the literature and conversations and in the networks of people and we want to help you find a way to value it. We don’t know what it is you tell us!!! It is not my value of it, it is yours, your voice.

A respectful voice, no body is asking you to critic Dewey or Kolb and decide they are wrong! Just respectfully find a starting place for yourself because what you do has an effect. You are part of the community of people you work and live and internet with.

What has it meant? How do you see it and who else sees it like that? What do you know you don’t know? Can you surprise yourself and completely change your mind? What do you love to learn about and do? Dare your self to step beyond your schooling, class, culture, gender, time!!

Respect for your work: As always PLEASE put your name on things, page numbers, name documents with your name plus what they are. See my past blogs.

What do you think?

Adesola

Q & A

2011-04-03T06:19:00.000-04:00

The 750 words and what is to actually go into it? (3002)
This what you will be assessed on NOT the tasks themselves. It is a summary of your learning, your experience over this module. You should be able to talk about your learning in terms of your reflections on your experiences and in terms of the theories we have introduced in the readers and be able to link these two. You should cite or refer to blogs and things that have happened around the tasks. And you should cite published work by others. It is a very short amount of text (750 words) because we want you to spend time distilling the experience of the whole term. Does that make sense?

Also when I've completed it am I able to send it you to have a look at? (3002)
Yes, I think you should aim to send your advisor a draft for comments by mid-April (or whenever they have indicated). Then You will have time to work on feedback. You do not have to do this but I think it helps.

I'm back in England on May 7th, although I don't know what stage of the course that'll be at? (All)
Important point: May 6th is the hand-in date for your assessed work.

I'm a little stuck for idea's on what my award title could be. (3835)
You should try to make your title about what you've done rather than what you plan to do. It is meant to reflect the knowledge you have gained in your experiences. Experiences are not always recognised as legitimate knowledge and the title is a way for you to show that you learnt something even though it may not have been through formal education. (i.e. it was through formal education but also through work based learning.) The title will be awarded because you prove you have the knowledge not as something to point you into a direction for the future.

What do you think? By now you should be feeling some ownership of the module you are on. Leaps of faith are great but you also need to fight to make things work for you. Trust that the modules have something to say and take the time to find the questions you need to ask to help you better understand. The right questions are often more valuable than answers, the art is in asking them and making sure they are not just ways you handover ownership of your process to someone else. If you do not trust that the course has something of value then either find a way to get your advisor to explain it or consider if it is for you BUT do not do nothing and find excuses for why you are not getting on with things.

....comments?
Adesola

Lines-of-enquiry

2011-03-09T10:49:00.000-05:00

I have been watching a DVD of the Rockford Files. I used to watch it when I was really young! It was on in 1977-78. The interesting thing is that the story-lines cover: identity theft and a person hacking computer systems. I would never have noticed these topics back in 1970's but these stories raise questions that are still valid today even with so much development in those areas.

What it made me think was that lines of inquiry are often quite hidden until they are given meaning by your experience.

The identity theft is recognisable to me as something interesting now because I understand it but back in 1977 it was not contextualised by my experience, so I missed the idea. When I learnt about identity theft maybe ten years ago, I did not refer back to Jim Rockford. I felt as if I was learning about it for the first time! I did not remember the Rockford Files story-line because I did not have a way to give it meaning at that time. In this way you can feel you have discovered something new when actually you have noticed something that was already out there.

When I watched the episode about computer hacking (the computer fills a whole room) I thought wow that's so forward thinking of them. This is because I am fixing the idea of computer hacking in the future at the time I finally became aware of it. It is only "forward thinking of them" if I place it as an idea that happened when I became aware of it myself, rather than an idea in itself.

This can happen in dance class too. You are told a correction again and again and then one day it makes sense, has meaning and it appears to be a new idea, often one you want to share, spread the word about.

I am talking about being aware of your own ability to see. We see what we value.
1) So look at your experience and the things you value as a doorway to finding MEANING in a line of inquiry.
2) If we are so limited by our own value systems then it makes sense why ethics is a part of this picture here. We need structures to check we look beyond our own values and practical ways to measure or be aware of the impact we are having on others.
3) Its good to laugh a little at our own conceit at 'discovering' things!! This allows us to let go of ideas as our experience changes our perspective.
4) You can see how looking at what other people have written about it, the Literature, can help you avoid telling everyone you have just discovered the wheel!
What are you finding?
Adesola

Ownership and Personal Revolutions

2011-02-23T09:03:00.000-05:00

Here are some thoughts about ownership. I think that there is a different kind of ownership when working on the web as we are doing in this course. By ownership I mean feeling like you belong or are involved. (Part of my Research interest is in how experiential learning is valued.) The course sets up a number of tasks for you to engage in doing. We are hoping you will learn from the experience. You would do this by reflecting on the experience of the task and adding that to other experiences you have (particularly in your Professional Practise) in order to widen your knowledge.

When you are in a traditional classroom-setting you feel that ownership, that is feeling you are a part of it all, seems to be held in the teachers hands. You go to the teacher and develop a relationship with them, with the other students and with the activities themselves and you see yourself fitting in. As this happens you start to take ownership of the experience from the teachers hands into your own. Its like when you first go to a place you feel everyone around you in that place must know what is going on, you give ownership to the people around you (like Alice in Wonderland). But when you keep returning to a place you become familiar with it and you start to feel you know what's going on more than the people around you. In more traditional Distant Learning there is the image of someone somewhere receiving your mailed in work. There still seems to be a place that is the central hub as it were of which you are on a long string from. It was as if everyone on the course is on long strings all connected to the hub. (This is why some people feel the campus sessions are useful. "put a face to a name", "put a place to a string".) But we have changed this dynamic through the set-up of this course.

By having a course like this using blogs we changed this central hub. In the classroom example above the students connect but under the eye of the teacher, in the distance example the students are single extensions from the teacher (although they might bump into each other like tethered balloons). In both examples the teacher can be used as a central owner of the knowledge, the sense of belonging, the feeling of being a part of things.

Many social scientist have pointed out how knowledge ownership can be used as power, as can communication be used as power. We at BAPP are aware of how the internet has an impact on the teacher holding the knowledge, the ownership because of the simple fact you can go look-up (x) on the internet. We feel that this is a dynamic shift in knowledge and in power. The connections that the internet gives across people regardless of place and authority has massive implications. It is making history at this moment in the Middle-east. It is a shift in the rhetoric of Power of knowledge and connection

The way we are using the blogs and web 2.0 is a part of a shift in power and a shift in ownership. Your own personal revolution is dealing with that. The ownership of this course is not in the hands of the teachers. (Which we think it never truly was in the classroom setting either) It is just out there and you need to grab it for yourself. It is not in someone else's blog who looks like they know what they are doing. It is not in waiting until people arrive in your life that make it seem more interesting, like getting a job. It is not taken away from you by anyone, people asking you to work, being too busy. Ownership, being a part of the course is in You. (We have tried to say that the task experiences can be put with whatever you are doing in your day-to-day professional life so there is no need to wait for something.)

We feel that being aware of this ownership is a big part of what we all learnt as we became professional workers. We feel it is a lesson in professional practice as much as it is a lesson in the changes the internet brings. In fact it is a lesson that goes beyond the internet. The internet just exemplifies it. You do not have to be all over the blogs to engage with a core lesson which is you do not need permission to blossom, if you make a mistake you can survive, (just try to be kind to yourself and others), you just need to own your own engagement.

People in 3002 are getting into Reflection task by now and 3835 are getting into Ethical thinking tasks. These things are about you. You need to own the tasks. You need to decide to move through the tasks 'get on with it'. Do not get caught-up with the tools. Blogging about blogging or blogging to be heard saying something can be a distraction. Blog to engage further with the thinking you are doing.
What are you finding? What interests you? How do you own your learning?

This is what I think. What do you think?
Adesola

What's going on / what was 3002?

2011-02-16T13:18:00.000-05:00

Think of the blogs like a campus. If we were all on campus we would meet and chat. You might listen to a lecture or chat to a friend to learn more about the course. But we are all around the world so we have the blogs instead. When you put things on your blog people will visit and chat about what you said, likewise you should go to other peoples blogs and comment. At first all we are doing is taking stock of how the Web 2.0 works and what role it plays in our lives already. We (the tutors) feel Web 2.0 is an important tool in Professional practise today.

Follow the tasks in the module handbook. Each one is an activity that will give you an experience. We want you to think about (reflect on) the experiences. Think about them in terms of your normal working week too. See if any of the task activities affect, help resonate with your normal professional practises. At the end of the module we will be asking you to summarise what you have learnt from doing the task activities. We will ask you to point us to the places and conversations (blogs) where you learnt something. The biggest thing is to get going with the blog and visiting other people.

Hey, old 3002ers can you make any comments. Does that sound like what you did last session or is it more complicated, or easier that I make it sound? How are you all doing new 3002ers?

Adesola

Welcome back

2011-02-08T02:46:00.000-05:00

Hi Guys
I hope you had a good winter break and welcome to the new 3002 people. I am going to be posting things and sometimes they will be more relevant to 3002 and sometimes to 3865 BUT the point is I hope they will be informative in general and we want to comment and talk across the course so please read them all. If its super boring to do with one module I will mark it '3002 only' or something. But even then you old 3002's comments would be great and /or maybe it will make you twig something that you missed last term.

So what what do you think of my twitter idea below. Not one person interested!!!!!?
Adesola

Twitter

2010-12-19T11:33:00.000-05:00

In January I am going to try to tweet more often. I was thinking of sending useful ideas (!) and reflections. If you want to follow I am adesolaa

Presentation of your work

2010-12-16T15:36:00.000-05:00

Presentation of your work, (is often) presentation of you: I wrote in blog some time ago about sending your CV to people. If you are sending information to someone for an audition for instance, do not send a document call ‘CV.doc’ or ‘Swanlakeaudition.doc’ The person receiving it is getting hundreds of CVs and if they are call ‘CV.doc’ it is really annoying because if they need to check something or contact you or something they have to open each one them to find one they want at best, and at worst one ‘cv.doc’ replaces another ‘cv.doc’ because it is the same the name and then your CV maybe lost altogether. Call it “yournameCV.doc” then it is easy to find for the person receiving it.

Likewise when sending in your work, maybe as a draft for feedback, call it “yournamexxxxx.doc” Otherwise if it gets separated from the email you sent it in it is really hard to find who wrote it.

Also ALWAYS page number everything – I like to use 1 of 6, 2 of 6 option because then if it printed and a page is missing the person reading it can see they have mislaid a page. Put the page number in the footer along with YOUR NAME, ID NUMBER (IN THIS CASE YOU STUDENT NUMBER), and the date.

This is about thinking about the person receiving what you sent and acknowledging you are not the only person in the world in contact with them. This is a professional way to behave I think.

Another tip is: if you are sending something to someone right at a deadline or after the deadline do not asked for feedback “as soon as possible” because you were so late sending it in! For instance some grant applications allow you to send in a draft to receive feedback before you send in the application. This is always a good idea for one thing you get to see what angle they are looking for from the feedback they give and it also means your idea maybe to talked about so people are already thinking about it. But if you, then, give the person ‘helping you’ an instruction Like “please get back to me as soon as possible so I can work on this”, it feels as if you are giving them another job to do. It can mean that the person feels they are being taken advantage of rather than extending a helping hand to you. The deadline was probably in place for THEM, so that they could mange the work NOT as a deadline for YOU.

Hope this helps!!

Portfolio and tasks

2010-12-12T17:08:00.000-05:00

Hi, just a thought about the Portfolio (and the tasks). Please remember it is the Portfolio that is being assessed NOT the tasks. A word about guilt: some people feel they did not do the tasks completely. There is no point trying to back-fill the tasks before you start the portfolio. That is your guilt trip only. The assessed work is about you summarising your learning this module. Whatever happen is learning. What you do with the experience shows what you have learnt. If your experience was finding it hard to get started, or not wanting to blog that is your learning journey. NOW what does that mean, why did that happen? Use the module to explain this.

So it’s like a dance performance. You are being assessed on the portfolio you submit that is like the dance performance. To help you to do the performance has been like doing the tasks. The tasks are like ballet classes. You could have done a ballet class each day in order to prepare for the performance. (Done the tasks which would have guided you through a learning experience) BUT if you missed some of the ballet classes, there is no point coming on the stage and doing the 52 plies you missed over the term!!! Its time for the performance… What have you learnt?

This is also a nod to the professional arena we are not here to tell you what boxes to tick in order to pass. We want to empower you, you tell us what you have learnt and use the language and ideas in the module to explain to us. It is not a case of us knowing and you having to find out. We really do not know what you have learnt because we are not you! What you put in is what you will get out. So let go of thinking you have ‘not done enough’ and ‘do now’, get drafts done, get feedback. (Then if you are feeling you did not get ‘your blog on’, blog about it too.

What do you think?

Rhizome

2010-12-01T17:50:00.000-05:00

Hi
I don't want to confuse things but I read about a really interesting idea this week. It is in a book about Deleuze & Guattari (Post-modern): Rhizome structures. That is like grass lots of shoots that are connected running along them as a posed to the tree model where things develop and branch off from one thing. The Rhizome (grass) has an interesting implication on the connectivity we have all talked about. Also makes you think more about all the odds and ends that may be sticking out in your mind as you start to write the assessed work. Things may not connect in a linear straight way. Ideas (blades of grass) from one end of the field may connect to ideas (grass) at the other end but you just need to look carefully at the structure through which you are looking for connections.

Assessment portfolio

2010-11-21T07:31:00.000-05:00

Assessment portfolio

2010-11-21T07:23:00.000-05:00

The deadline for the assessed work for 3002 is quickly heading our way. It would be good if you had started draft copies of what you are planning to hand-in.

The portfolio of work that is asked for is like a summary or overview of the learning you have experienced this module. Everyone is learning things all the time, so some learning has happened!!! It is just you might not recognise the full scope of it or the value or it might not feel it is within the context of the course.

This assignment is about you reflecting on what has been happening and what you have been doing. To do this you need all the skills and ideas in the three sections of the module. The tools and web-based ideas because this is how we have been exchanging ideas and a lot of the initial learning experience was about understanding the range and uses of web-based technology.

To think back over the module you use the reflection tools and ideas (hopefully you have also left yourself a breadcrumb trail in the form of a reflective diary – if not start one you will find it very, very helpful through the lifetime of the course, and beyond we hope).

Lastly you need to contextualise the information and learning into your own professional practise. In other words it is no use learning something you will never use or rather I should say something you an never understand using or see the value of in your life. The last part of the module helps you to look more closely at your Professional Practice what resources you have, how you are connected so that you can give a context to the new ideas and learning you have experienced so far.

We have also looked at how the learning might have happened for you when we looked at research that explores different way to understand the process of learning like Kolb’s cycle or Gardner’s intelligences.

Part 1

I think you need to find something to hang your portfolio on. This is like a clothes hanger to hang your ideas and experience on. This is like the ‘hook’ of a song or the theme movements of a piece of choreography. Find something to give your portfolio structure. Common structures are:

A timeline – starting at the beginning (September) and working to the end. This gives your work a story like feel. It can become very narrative. There maybe danger of getting lost in the story and ignore the meet and bones of the learning also remember you do not have a lot of words.

Theme based - finding two or three key ideas and gathering the learning and experience that happened around them.

Concrete evidence based – giving concrete examples of things and elaborating on the ideas and learning that manifested them.

A representational object – making something that sums up the learning both in its content and in its own form. This might be useful if you need to make something to understand what you think. That is for people who do not think in words. Like myself. I make or do things to understand what I think and then explain it back in words once I know what I think! This is something that I have found takes quite sometime to master because at first you can make something you and other people who think that way can understand but that everyone else finds “too abstract”. So it is important you support your work by using the written summary to explain your process and what it means to you.

Either way ~I think it will be really important to get started and then you will have time to get feedback.

Part 2

Supports and gives example of the learning and ideas drawing from things you have done over the course. It is way to show how you have come to where you are. It also allows you to show you didn’t just make something up overnight. You can show is the pathway that has got you to the clearing where you are now.

What if you don’t feel you are in a clearing!!!! Maybe you don’t feel you are a point where you can summarise. This is the hardest thing because of course learning is on-going. I always feel I am almost there!!! And is not always on schedule that I get an ‘Ahh moment’. But this does not have to be the end point just let us know where you are at. By trying to summarise and talking it through with people you will find you start to consolidate ideas and experiences.

What do you think?

Poem 5

2010-11-08T18:02:00.002-05:00

Rain

Wet drops down from ceiling on to commuters,

Making dark grey ovals on newspapers

Dripping down necks

And seeping into socks.

Grey silver sky

And spongy trees

Big puddles

I love England

Poem (4)

2010-11-07T03:56:00.000-05:00

Call in times

I met an old friend in the mirror

And promised her I would not let her disappear.

Then looked at my diary and tried to fit her in again sometime soon…

Our loving meeting: where she moved across the floor timid and still quite hurt

Left me with promises of salads and time

I wonder how good a friend I am to all the work she did when she was younger.

I met old friends who appeared out of the crowd

And hugged me

“Oh my god 16 years, where did it go!”

Then we sat together and I felt the joy of just being with someone who knows me

All the things I think at times I must have imagined: they talk about memories Tripping off the tongue

They are so beautiful and alive

I promise I will email

Left me with a feeling I do belong to the person in the mirror.

Poem 3 (!)

2010-11-06T03:14:00.000-04:00

The knowledge of children

Would you like to disappear

Time holds you

Light find you

A faint mist gives away where breath has been

- ............ listen

I had a bit of a block with my poem task because the poems all seem to be coming out with teenage anxed and sad. Maybe because I have been attending difficult meetings and not enough dance classes! But rather than fall behind here is yesterdays … Ballet today maybe the poem tonight will be a bit warmer!!

Poem 2 (!)

2010-11-03T13:09:00.000-04:00

Rush

I’m like a bullet

Piercing the street

Parting the crowd

Mouthing obscenities to people who don’t move.

My mantra :“Start the day ten minutes late

And that lost time shadows you”

Heavy bag.

I don’t feel I am in my head

In my body, in this place.

I make promises with God

To get there on time.

Then the sun jingles an Autumn leaf

And cuts my eye with hope.

Poem one (!)

2010-11-02T17:34:00.000-04:00

Lost for words

One word,

two breaths,

ice dances through my thoughts.

No words,

three breaths,

I reach up,

out,

down.

In my own space

Sitting there, scraping explanations off the roof of my mouth

Playing with ways to reflect

2010-11-01T16:06:00.000-04:00

Hi Guys
Some people have said they haven't got much to reflect on or put in their journal and they are waiting for rehearsal or something scheduled to happen to start (and feel there is something to write about). But this is about teasing out from the every day. In research it is making the familiar unfamiliar (looking at 'everyday' things in new ways) and / or making the unfamiliar familiar (exploring new things and ideas). Here is an idea....
Ten minute poem each night. Take ten minutes to write a poem about anything from your day. These will be good starting points for realising what has effected you or what resonates with you. I am going to try it. Anyone want to join me. I am going to take ten minutes each night for a week to write a poem about my day. Lets see what comes out!!!

Another thing you could do if the poem doesn't sound like something you want to do. Choose a random time at the beginning of the day and when it gets to that time wherever you are or whatever you are doing stop and reflect on where you are. Write something as part of the reflection and then carry on. Again this might help to start to find things in everyday. There is Learning, Live, Love in every minute reflection is about finding meaning.

Can action be reflection?

2010-10-30T20:19:00.000-04:00

Melissa wrote an interesting blog about reflection and the reader

More research on Reflective Practice

I commented on her blog as below. I putting it on my blog because I think it would be interesting to get others peoples take too

The first part of your blog about Kolb is really interesting. I too, find it hard to understand each part when I think of them out context of the cycle. That is as a lone activity. I think it helps to remember thinks can be focus on a larger whole. The whole is the cycle the entry points are just ways to understand the movement of the cycle. BUT if you really want to see where you enter I think it helps to think of ... if you have a plat-pack cupboard kit in front of you what do you do. 1) Just start making it, 2) read all the instructions first, 3) check-out one that's already made or someone else making it, 4) plan out all the stages by putting the parts in order of use. I have trained myself to look at all the parts. BUT the 'real' me would sooner just start and learn as aI do it even if it takes longer than reading the instruction or I end up making something else and have bits left over!!!!!
Anyway the flat-pack question helps me think about the points of the cycle more easily.

Then I want to say a quick word about what you say about reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action, Schon and Kottcamp. It is important to check-out what you consider thinking and what you think with. These are not a 'facts'. There are many arguments that define thinking. Your blog implies that thinking and learning are mental / mind activities. I think That the brush strokes of the painter. They are meaningful movements. When I go to look at Van Goth's paintings at the National Gallery I see his brush stroke and they talk to me as deeply as him talking to me would. The movement of the brush strokes have emotion, knowledge, sensitivity, understanding of the flower or chair they create in my eye. I believe reflection-in-action or on-action is also to do with what you value as reflection. Remember not everything, thoughts or ideas has to have words to it. In dance think of contact improv. there is a physical conversation without words but you know and you exchange ideas.

In answer to the question I pose "Can action be reflection?" I passionately believe that action is reflection. Dewey points out its all very well working out the best way (theory) to do something but to be part of a community (network) it is only useful if you actually do something about it. This is also important to me as a woman because so many western women philosophers did rather than wrote about it and the importance put on words rather than action have led us to loose much of the meaning behind their work. But I am sure I also feel like this because I am dyslexic and constantly justifying my bad relationship with words!!! What do you think?
Adesola

Task 2c

2010-10-26T09:53:00.000-04:00

E-mailed question: “I wonder if you could explain what exactly I need to do for task 2c...”
Answer: Write an short ‘essay’ (aprox.1 000- 1500 words) about your relationship with Reflective Practise

This means write about reflective practises that you have experienced, tried-out, and /or see in others. Maybe use the experience of keeping your reflective diary or blogging to frame the essay. But don’t just tell the story of your experience look at it through the theory of some the Thinkers mentioned in the reader (like Dewey, Schön; Kolb, Moon). Critically look at the theory. Try to quote from some of the people you reference. Try to use proper referencing techniques. Discuss whether the theory resonates with you and your experience; see if you can extend your reading beyond the books and Thinkers mentioned in the reader. (There are not many voices of women or non-white Thinkers in the reader see if you can find these voices too.)

It is a very short essay 1000-1500 word. I would post it on my blog to get feedback. Use this as an opportunity to learn about and practise academic style techniques, (language, citations) for writing. Does that all make sense? How are the tasks going for you all?

Iggy

2010-10-21T20:18:00.001-04:00

I just looked at Ruby's Flicker page she is a make up artist. She has some great shots. I am posting pictures of my good friend Iggy. We have know each other for years, from when I lived in New York with him. He is well established in his field. He does all his make-up and costumes and as well sometimes working as a make-up artist for other people. I think he makes beautiful work, very detailed. What do you think, Ruby?

Campus session, Reflection

2010-10-19T21:23:00.000-04:00

Hi guys how was campus session. I couldn't go!!!! :(
Reflection comments PLEASE :)
This is my first time using faces. I never thought I would ;)

A

Positioning of Self

2010-10-16T04:32:00.000-04:00

Positioning.

Thinking about the whole semester, that is the three sections of the WBS 3002. You may be starting the next section (Reflective practise) having worked through the technologies section. It is important that you think of the work as joined up. There are many threads in this module that continue across the whole course. So there are many ways that the three sections join up. It is important not to think of the modules as a long set of tasks to complete.

The module is not written from a positivist perspective. Positivism values the idea that there is one truth, one thing that is out there to find. This is what a lot of ‘science’ based ‘learning’ (research) assumes. That something is out there and it is up to us to find it. This kind of work would mean it made sense for someone to tell you what to do, where to go to get that truth. You would follow the instructions and find it! But we are not doing that. Simply ‘doing’ the tasks will not mean you will trip over some answer. This is not like ‘hide and seek’ or a ‘treasure hunt’, we hide the answer and you find it and get a BA (Hons) as the prize!!!

The tasks are ‘experiences’ / activities that we think will help you. It is not only ‘doing’ the task it is thinking about the experience of doing them and it is looking at how other people have done them that will give you the information we hope you derive from the module. This is why I think you should think of the whole module as one episode (not a linear progression through time). Each section looks at the same ‘thing’ but from a different perspective. Like walking around the edge of a big circle looking into the middle, different parts of the circle will give you different views. The module is the circle and each section is a different point on the circle. What we are looking at is YOU. At the end of this episode (module) we want you do be able to know more about what is in the middle … that is YOU.

First we look at YOU from the perspective of what you do and what you have done, and how you present the ‘working you’. Then we look at YOU from the perspective of how you think about the meaning of what happens to you, and how you make sense of YOU!!! This is reflection, your inner conversations, looking at how they are a part of your journey. Lastly we look at YOU from the perspective of how you fit into the community, population around you. How you are connected to your world. By the end we want you to feel you have a clearer picture of YOU and have a clear way to continue to question and look at YOU.

Why are we looking at YOU? Because it is YOU who is doing the course. You are the vehicle being used to go on the journey of the course. This first module is to find out how the vehicle works, giving yourself a little MOT to see where you have strengths where you want to develop. Getting yourself a picture of YOU!!!

As a way to help underline the idea we are looking at the same thing in different ways in order to understand it, we have identified three perspectives. As you have read in the handbooks. 1) From the perspective of the tools (actions) technologies. 2) from the perspective of what you think, your inner conversations 3) from the perspective of what other people have said, referencing other people (importantly people who have published work or have their work recognised by a large group of people). The first part of the module was technologies based, it looked and had a number of tasks that meant practise using different tools like Web 2.0 to get you started but it is not completing the tasks that is important, it is what you can (articulate you) get out of doing the tasks that is important. You can’t know what you can get out of them with out doing them but it does not stop at just doing them. The task is an experience you need to go on to make the experience meaningful and connected to what you want to achieve. That is where the work lays.

So I see this module as you finding the place you are at. This is called positioning. You can then go on to interact with the ideas the course will introduce. I might know I am interested in XXXX from my reflections, (I noticed all my diary enters mentioned this, it makes sense because when I look back I always felt I did better in XXXX, I tend to read better when things are paper but I enjoy the free flow of drawing I can use this to take notes. I work best at night I realised this when I started to notice I wrote better blogs at night. Etc….. So when I read Hegel next semester I might be aware I will be more willing to accept his ideas because I know I like…..I should question my dislike of Goffman because it might be because I think he is racist rather than the ideas he has about identity. I may not be sure what I think but now I know if I go for a long walk and write something that evening I might get through the block etc, etc…

OK reader I am really interested to know if this makes sense please let know (in a nice way!!!)

Research

2010-10-12T08:08:00.000-04:00

Hi
I am looking for 7 to 8 dancers (BUT not for any body on the BAPP course at the moment, graduate students welcome!) to be apart of an initial Research and Development project to do with site-specific work. Dancers are required for four days across November and December (November 30th, December 6th, 9th and 14th). Part of the four days will be spent working with children to choreograph dances in sites in their school. This should be a fun and interesting project. It is part of the final year of my PhD. If you are on BAPP maybe you could forward this information to someone you think might be interested.

Due to funding there is only travel paid for this initial stage. Dancers interested are asked to send CV to Adesola at adesola@dancingstrong.com as soon as possible. Please also indicate if you have a current CRB check.

To find out more about Adesola's work please visit www.dancingstrong.com

Validity and CVs

2010-10-10T19:36:00.002-04:00

Looking at the CV task. Here are some things I think are important:
DO NOT put your physical address or phone number on your Blog, people can contact you through comments or email if they want to. Not everyone who reads your blog maybe from BAPP.

I think it is good to have an overview of their CV, many people have done a great job of giving us some idea of their work in the description and photo area. But I do not think having a formal stage type CV (ie just copied from your paper CV) just as a blog entry is useful.

What I did on my web-site which I use as my professional blog is have a pdf of my CV and a pdf of my Biog. This is so people can download it if they need to. But I do not have it as a page I think it can look as if I am selling myself as a product (which is what we are doing in the performance industry but not everyone reading through blogs and web-sites is in the performing industry). For non-performers seeing a beautiful photo of you and then reading your dress size etc... is unexpected. Please remember that our blogs are completely public. As I said in my last blog (half and hour ago!!!) Think about whether anyone is completely themselves either on-line or in person, we all need each other to shape ourselves somewhat. Like when you ask someone how are you? Very few people really want to know all the details of how you are!

This is looking at the validity of the WEB not just as a way for you to find meaningful information but also how much validity is there in your ability to manage what people think of you (even if there is no-body purposely trying to present you in a bad light, see conversations previously). Part of this module is about you starting to think about who you are. You may feel you are the sum of all your experiences but (for us) are you the sum of all the experiences other people have of you?

more thoughts on WEB 2.0

2010-10-10T18:56:00.000-04:00

Commenting on Melissa G blog I wrote:
Some great comments about the practicalities of WEB 2.0 and professional practise. But what about wider implications?

For instance I think avatars are really interesting. The whole idea of people who design themselves quite differently from their physical body or gender. Performers are used to designing themselves physically. There is a kind of consumerism of image we are all involved with. We come from a very 'beautiful' world as performers. What do you think? Is the platform of 'equality' on the Web effected by this. Have you noticed any techniques you use to edit, sculpt create yourself in print / on the net?

On a superficial level I hate to appear as someone who does not spell well. It takes me ages to write short comments that if I spoke them I would spend much less thinking time on. (If I spelt well I think I would write more often!)

On another level I have found that in fact one starts to have the persona that people create through not knowing you just seeing your work / images and a persona that is created from working directly with you. In fact this two are different and it is important to honour the fact people want / need an image to hang their ideas of you on. This can be as simple as looking the part... dressing like an artist etc...
What do you think?

Interesting conference

2010-10-07T17:03:00.000-04:00

Validity

2010-10-06T12:03:00.000-04:00

Mark, wrote a comment on my last blog, some of the comment said

"(this) has made me realise that there is till hierarchy because sites like Google control what information is most available to you and they are given vast amounts of money to promote particular companies or pieces if information. In terms of professional practice it has made me aware that I should be much more cautious and also more thorough when looking for information, to make sure I get a balanced view"

Yes, this is really interesting because we have come to feel that things in print are true. Sites like wikipedia are really useful but also can be quite misleading if they are used as a sole source of information. On another note however being aware of the motive (or drive) behind a source of information can allow you to find information in unexpected places. For instance I look for books in on-line libraries but sometimes I only have part of the information I need to find the book. However if I look on Amazon (whose motive is to find it for me so I can buy it) I can type in half bits of information and Amazon finds an assortment of possibilities. Then I can find the book and get all the details and sometimes read a part of it on Amazon then find it in the on-line library of the university or where ever I was looking before.

I come from a school of thought where your feelings and sense are also important in assotaining what is 'true' or 'real'. As a dancer 'knowing' is more than a set of thoughts, I need to interact with environment to find meaning. I am writing about this because I think it is important to have your own personal way of 'knowing'. This course is saying it is not about finding someone else's 'right' answer (out there). As a professional person how are you going to decide when you are doing 'good' work? In my career I have not been able to rely on other people to decide this for me. (I got told to give up dancing on a daily basis at school!!! but I turned out ok) Then this became less about a fight to do the thing I loved and more about how I become the artist I want to be. Then it is not fighting to carve a place for yourself but about see who you are. What is your artistic vision?

During the campus session I told one group that its ok not to know, but to keep going and find yourself in process of finding rather than a process of knowing.

Frogs in a bucket -
Two frogs fell in a bucket of milk. One couldn't see how to get out and slowly sank to the bottom. The other one swam round and round waiting hoping to come to an answer. By the morning that frog's swimming round and round had churned the milk into butter and he was able to hop out of the bucket.
My friend Suzanne told me that story I often tell myself it when I feel like I'm going round in circles.

Circles
Adesola

BAPP first Campus Session

2010-10-03T17:43:00.000-04:00

Campus session was fun. It was nice to meet some people starting the course. We looked at the technologies being used during this course. Throughout you will notice we are looking at ideas from three different perspectives. 1) The tools (technologies), 2) your experiences and ideas, and 3) the experiences and ideas of others. This first part of the module is very much about the tools you will be using (and already use). But we are looking at them in terms of professional practise, what they do to support or be un-supportive to your professional practise and what how you can engage with them to further your learning. We looked at the difference between web 2.0 and web 1.0 and focused on 2.0. The people who attended divided into three small groups and researched ideas about web 2.0 and how it is used and can be used.

There were some important points all the groups raised.

The interaction (I am very interested in the idea of Interaction and Transaction these are ideas that Dewey, James and Pierce talk about all of whom I am studying at the moment). The Interaction that web 2.0 encourages.
The reliability of information and /or the reliability of the person who is posting information.
The appearance of a level playing field but in fact some information on the web is more hidden than other information.
The importance of maintaining and actively managing your own identity and your own thinking.

All the presentations were really good. Some people started using citations and quotes these link to the 'experiences and ideas of others' I mentioned above.

Most important at this stage is just to get going using the technologies, starting your blog and visiting other peoples.

It is also important for me to share that learning (for me) is a process of being confused, feeling like I have no idea and then getting a clue!!!! It is not being really sure all the time. I am not saying try to be confused, just that is a part of the process so don't be afraid of not knowing. Before you can learn something new or grow you have to realise you don't know or you have room to grow first. This does entail a certain amount of trust in the guides you have (in this case the advisors). Luckily we are all a bit different so you can get a number of ways to look at something. The big idea is getting you thinking and doing.

Adesola

Getting Ready

2010-09-26T05:14:00.000-04:00

Hi
Welcome new students and old! I am just sorting myself out, making files and organising ready for the year head. I am looking forward to a great year of study. This summer I read a lot about Pragmatism. I found that philosophy really interesting particularly with my embodied (dance) background. The show I choreographed before the summer is on tour and I am just finishing shipping some stuff to USA so I will have a lot more space in the house!! Look forward to all our conversations
Adesola

Summer

2010-09-06T07:45:00.000-04:00

Hi
I lost my password and it has taken me a long time to work out how to get back in again!!!!!! Now I do have an equation for remembering it as suggested, that really works.

Opportunity for conversation

2010-04-24T10:26:00.000-04:00

This Monday (April 26th) there is an opportunity for BAPP students to meet some artists working in Education. We are meeting at Cat Hill. If any of you want to come and ask questions or comment about arts-in-education, etc... you are well to come along for 45 mins starting at 3pm. This will be room G.097 which is in the Peter Green building just on the downward ramp from the coffee shop.

All so I will be having rehearsals for a show I am choreographing through May. If people are interested in this kind of process, I am thinking of having and open rehearsal... would anyone be interested??

Conference second day

2010-04-15T04:49:00.002-04:00

Second day: Alan, Peter and I began with our presentation. We shared about the curriculum at BAPP and got some good feedback. A lot of people were really excited about the programme. The other paper that was presented with ours was a case study of a programme for Design students to work with companies to help create real products. It was very interesting.

After this I went to a seminar that looked at the role of ‘threshold concepts’. Ideas that completely change your point of view and mean you never go back to think the way you did before you absorbed the concept. During the talk about the paper we also talked about the ‘pedagogy of Ambiguity’ (the importance of confusion and NOT understanding to the process of constructing (understanding)). In the Arts particularly it is important for some peoples practise not to know what they will create but to set up a process by which creation will happen. For many learning is the same if you know what you are going to learn from the start how will you ever learn something new? If your way to recognising learning is to need it to be ‘clear’ ‘true’ &/or ‘right’ how do you ever understand about things you did not understand to begin with. It goes back to the words in the seminar the day before about ‘meaning, experience, and behaviour’ (see blog before this one). I want to find out more about the literature on both these ‘threshold concepts’ and ‘pedagogy of ambiguity’. I plan to do a literature search when I get back to London.

The other paper in this session was about a programme that used digital visual diaries. Some of the students work was shown and it was really lovely. The paper talked about using Story as a means to generate focus. Students had been asked to focus on a character (not necessarily human) and an environment. The Character becomes a vehicle for exploring identity and the environment augments this by developing a sense of place and interaction.

This was followed by the last Keynote who had been doing neuroscience and cognitive science with Wayne McGregor and his dancers. This was followed by lunch and the last session of the conference.

I went to a session with a paper about how people in different practises invariably think their practise is the most enlightened, or wonderful or has unique powers to change the world and that this goes hand in hand with thinking other practises are slightly inferior. This paper was saying that in fact there are more commonalities between practises than we think and it is the small differences with a field of practise that can be bigger. This was likened to post colonial theory that talks about the ‘other’ and how the ‘other’ shaped by ‘us’. The second paper talked about the changing status of the Arts in University settings. Both papers were talking about looking beyond your practise to understand the context you work in. During the second paper the presenter said

“You may think you are on the verge of something revolutionary, but it is only within your own group”.

The conference ended.

What do you think of all of this?

Conference continues (first day)

2010-04-15T03:57:00.000-04:00

Carrying on about the conference. The Keynote on ethics in the fashion industry was interesting particularly because it illustrated an aspect of the underlining discussion across the conference about information and knowledge, (and their shifting relationship in education). In this case the charity that worked for ethical methods in the fashion industry realised it had information that could be given to teachers that would inform the practise and could change the way people approached teaching some areas of the curriculum. You could argue that when they just had the information themselves it was just information but the act of sharing it and using it for something made it be come knowledge. At BAPP we are sort of saying this that knowledge is how you validate, use, authentise and apply information. Particularly, with my own research I am starting to from an argument that knowledge has something to do with action. This Keynote also spoke about Empathy, and showed a web-site / blog called Social Alterations by a student in Canada.

I then went to another session this was only one paper and it was about the importance of look for problems rather than solving them. It was the presenters first time presenting a paper and he was quite nervous but he did ok. Because this session was short I went into another one to catch the second half. I caught a paper about the artists Studio (fine art). It was talking about the importance of the Studio space. These are white boxes like the spaces near the canteen at Cat Hill. I wondered if our blogs were like Studio spaces – places to explore, listen, reflect and see each others work. This speaker also talked about the importance to her of play, chance and ignorance in the artists creative process.

Finally the last session for that day I went a session where the first paper was about where there was a quote by J. Gill “Knowledge is not a thing to be processed but an activity to be engaged in” . This really reminded me of a number of quotes by J. Dewey who I am following to form the theoretical framework of the research I am doing. I realised in this part of the session how theory in design could be drawn on to explore the experience of creating work in dance. It seems obvious if you look at my work because a lot of the dances I create like site specific ones are created using the same questions about space, function and aesthetic that a designer would use. But whereas dance could be called knowledge in action, a lot of people cannot see it because dance is too hard for them to analyse through watching, (they just think it is amazing or awful) but the crafting of design seems easier for people to be able to analyse where the person making the artwork is making decisions of aesthetic &/or function etc…in the artwork and therefore the written theory in design seemed to bridge just was well for dance to philosophy as it does for design. The second paper presented in this session was about the shared language that could be created between designers and sociologists and how this could inform design / art works and social understanding. This paper talked about design as being – ‘how could we do this?’ and sociology being ‘how do we do this?’. I wondered if it was more ‘how do we do this?’ for design and ‘why do we do this’ for sociology. But there were three words that joined across the two practises ‘meaning, experience and behaviour’ which was thought provoking for me. Again I find this really interesting because of my interest in experience as knowledge. The discussion about these two papers went over time and I had just enough time to quickly meet with Peter and Alan before we had to go to a conference dinner, which was very nice.

Going to talk about BAPP and hear what other people are doing

2010-04-14T13:12:00.000-04:00

Alan, Peter and I went to a conference in Berlin to talk about the BAPP course. We were talking about how we use the blogs as part of the course. Other university faculties were also talking about how the inter-net could be used to support the learning and teaching of subjects. It was really interesting. Some people had built their own spaces in the inter-net but we are pretty much the only group of people using existing sites like blog-spot and Google-reader. We tried to encourage people at the conference to join in and follow everyone’s blogs.

Apart from presenting we got to go to a number of other presentations.

Here are some things I learnt from the ones I went to:

There were three Keynote speakers who spoke throughout the two days of the Conference. The first one had done a lot of work with conceptual art and outside installation. I love this kind of work and he showed some great pictures of work he had created or help support. He used to work with an organisation called Artangle in the late 80’s and early 90’s

Then I went to a seminar on a software programme for students, which is being created in New Zealand. It would allow design students to register in a web-site and state their interests, also registered would be companies with problems or a design briefs. The programme would match students, companies and briefs that all had similar interests. A bit like a dating agency. Also at that seminar there was a paper presented asking who is creating the content for university courses, especially arts course. Should it be industry/ businesses saying what they want students to know to work for them or should it be the artists and teacher saying this is what art has to offer. I may have phrased this to read along the lines of what I think !!! but what do you think of this? This presenter asked questions like is education a way of ‘being’ or a way of ‘doing’?

Next, I went to a seminar that was about a group of students that had felt out of the system of a university and had formed a group with a tutor to talk about their feelings. These talks ended up being the source material for a lot of work they created about their identity. The question here for me was that the work was extra-curricular but will the context and relationships change if the same experience was offered as part of the curriculum. People went to the group to talk because they wanted to but not everyone went. To make it part of the curriculum would mean everyone benefited and those working would have their work recognised as credits but it would also mean there would be new pressures of covering particular work that before when it was extra were not there. What do you think? Also presented was a paper on techniques for inspiring yourself to work / start a design project. I found this really interesting and I am going to try the same things out but as choreographic tasks.

The second Keynote speaker talked about ethics in the fashion and design industry. I will stop here and write more later.

Positioning of Self

2010-03-25T05:58:00.000-04:00

These last few weeks I have been involved with organising an audition. I have received over 150 C.V.’s and it had been really clear how important they are in the initial contact with a producer. In a sense this is to do with the first module – positioning of self but as ever I think the practical experience of working is a great teacher and wanted to share some observations. These are about applying to applications via e-mail.

1) Don’t name your CV file (the one you send attached to an e-mail ) C.V. doc, or “proffesionalCV.doc” because if everyone does that there are a few problems. Firstly, as I save them on my computer the computer thinks they are the same file and can easily replace yours with the next one that is named the same thing. Secondly, I cannot tell who it is I am looking at or looking for in files unless I open the whole file each time I want to check something. This adds hours on the job of sorting through them and does not leave you feeling very good. So name the file you send “yournamecv.doc”

2) If it is a professional appointment you want. Start the c.v. with your professional experience in the specific area the job is involved with(ie site-specific dance), then your experience in general (ie dance work). Don’t start with your training.

3) If its e-mail don’t send a picture separately the two get lost from each other as soon as they are saved unless you match the names (ie yournamepicture.doc, yournameCV.doc)

4) Lastly, a short introductory e-mail with the CV is useful and can set up great expectations for opening the CV doc. But make sure you have researched who the people are involved in the job and what their interests are. Don’t send something that is obviously what you sent to everyone about being interested in their work. Check who has what roles in the production so you don’t tell the producer or the project manager you love their choreography!

What have your experiences been on this? What do you think? Are there links to ideas about research methods and the insider researcher here?

Adesola

Campus Session (March 3rd)

2010-02-28T18:06:00.000-05:00

Hi
At 4pm, after the Campus Session on Wednesday I am going to be asking for feedback. If you are attending the session can you stay for another 20 mins to an hour whatever can work for you. feedback is really important and helps us monitor how things are going for you.

Hope to see you
Adesola

Lessons from Oprah!

2010-02-18T19:12:00.000-05:00

Kolb's learning cycle popping up in unexpected places: I was reading my Christmas Oprah, Diet advice by Martha Beck titled 'It takes all Kinds'. Its fun to read the whole concept in terms of going on a diet!!! She has:
'"quick start" swings quickly into action, making creative discoveries and mistakes - through trial and error'
'"fact Finders" need information; they're the friends who'll research every relevant factoid about any task they're preparing to undertake'
'"Follow through" people naturally use methodical systems: they set up files for every receipt and alphabetise their refrigerator contents.'
"Implementers" focus on physical object and environments; they figure out things by building models or grabbing the appropriate tools. They respond better to bricks and mortar than castles in the air.'

The advise is that you need a group of friends that range across these types so that the strengths and weaknesses of the group can support each other on the diet. Groups - learning sets - are a great way to work. Martha says its like 'Fellowship of the Rings' a fellowship of people going on the journey together but all very different from each other. Funny to find it all in Oprah Magazine.

The "Future of work"

2010-02-02T16:48:00.000-05:00

There have been a number of interesting programmes on T.V. and radio about the internet and networks. There was the one on BBC 2; and then on Radio 4 today about 'open source'. Companies that have there programmes open and anyone can add to them. Wikipidia being an example. The programme cited the book 'Future of Work' I looked it up and found a web-site!!...

"Future of Work is an active global community of organizations and individuals who believe in the power and importance of collective intelligence in creating the future of work. Our focus is on the changing nature of work, the workforce, the workplace, technology, and management practice.

The Work Design Collaborative, LLC (WDC), founded in 2001 by Charlie Grantham and Jim Ware, manages Future of Work. We are a research and advisory firm with a single mission: helping create the future of work.

That mission translates into four primary capabilities:

Developing Knowledge
Improving bottom-line performance
Creating new workplaces
Building communities'

I feel as if we on the edge of something (this time with its ways to connect people) but it is so big I can't tell what exactly it is.

I really believe in the sharing of knowledge and ideas. But I feel held back, I guess the internet is such a dyslexic unfriendly environment. I think I get HOW we can connect through trying to understand the technology BUT I am not sure I understand the root of why or what it means beyond the concept of sharing a piece of knowledge.
What do you think?

Adesola

Thinking about Dance Literature

2010-01-14T14:00:00.000-05:00

Paula asked me to think about literature to do with dance. It is such a wide subject and there are so many perspectives. I am currently writing a chapter for my research - the Literature Review. I start by locating my position (perspective) with in the mind / body paradigm through looking at the different thoughts on and values for the body. I think finding a location within the mind/body paradigm is a good starting point for exploring dance through reading texts. Anna Pakes wrote a paper 'Dances mind/body problem' in Dance Research Journal. Volume 24.2 winter 2006. This article started me off on an interesting journey of asking myself what dualism means to me as a dancer.

Next, I think it is important to acknowledge that some dancers would say you understand dance by dancing - practise based knowledge. This is an epistemological question and it is interesting to look at dance through general epistemological standpoints. Graham McFee wrote 'Understanding Dance' which is a philosophical look at what 'dance' means. And many well known choreographers and dancers have written about their creative process this also leads to analysis of dance - Larry Lavender - 'Dancers Talking Dance - Critical Evaluation in the choreography class' and Doris Humphrey -'The Art of Making Dances'

I have read some of Ann Cooper Albright - 'Choreographing Difference'. I liked the way she writes theoretically and as a practising dancer also. Peter Brinson - 'Dance As Education' is a great history of recent dance in UK. Miranda Tufnell (UK) has written a number of books that look at and support the creative process (in dance). Theresa J. Buckland has edited 'Dance in the field - theory, Method and Issues in Dance Ethnography'.

Surrey, Rohampton, Laban and De Montford have extensive libraries and Cecil Sharp House, English Folk Dance and Song Society has a wonderful library.

For my research chapter - having located the research approach in the mind/body paradigm. I go on to look at literature that is not specific to dance. This because I feel that text and movement are not alternatives to each other so something understood in dance cannot be verbalised in text but strategies for 'understanding' and 'communication' in subjects that are text based can express the feeling and thoughts of movement 'understanding' and 'communication'. Therefore I tend to build bridges between 'subject areas' to create the theoretical framework I am working within. With one all important understanding I need to dance to understand what I think!!! So it is just as important for me to make sure I take two or three classes a week as it is that I go to the library to read. This is not to be elitist, anyone can use this process to understand dance by finding their own relationship with dancing - Bollywood classes, salsa classes, not just professional classes.

So I in my literature review I go on to look at:
Image, language, and presentation of self (Barthes, Saussure, Goffman).

The place of experience in learning (Dewey)

How movement and space are linked (Rasmussen)

Excuse spellings, I think I got most of them
xx

Books

2010-01-10T18:44:00.000-05:00

I love Amazon! The strength of the dollar / pound means they can find me any book I look for!!! and tell me what other people read (!) making some really interesting links I would not have thought of.

I am keeping a personal citation library with Endnote. This is also so helpful. It means you can retrieve quotes, ideas and authors very quickly while you are writing.

Two

2010-01-09T16:57:00.000-05:00

I am watching 'The Ghost and the Darkness' it is the only scary movie I can watch because I am sort of on the bad guys (lions) side. I was thinking how I would describe the story and how it is advertised are so different. Understanding is a perception.

Thoughts

2010-01-08T18:07:00.000-05:00

I am just reading a Saussure for beginners (!). (Because of my interest in Roland Barthes). Saussure lectured on language. One interesting idea is the how communication through language involves two part, a concept (the 'thing') and an acoustic image ("the mental image of a name that allows a language-user to say the name" Gordon, T). These are called the Signified (concept) and Signifier (acoustic image). I won't go into why this is really exciting for my research! But two other things:
1) My Dyslexic self does not always seem to have a link between these two. I can have a thing/concept in my head and not be able to find the word (acoustic image) to say the write word and/or I can read a word and know its meaning by its shape but not how to say it, or know how to say a word but not know what it would look like to write. Do any of you other dyslexics have this??
2) It raises some cool questions about the same process in movement. One of my ballet teachers always said decide how many turns you are going to do, then do them. Is that a concept followed by a physical 'image'? So if I feel dance is a language then can linguistics provide ways to explain the action of dancing to non-dancers or is it just different?

Lastly, getting back to my last blog about trying to better understand the network, "Its about sharing of knowledge not call and response". Part of this is a very vulnerable process because you have to share with no idea of the VALUE that will be placed on what you write. I watched "Julie and Julia" on the plane. (only the first half hour or so when it got to the lobster bit I had to turn it off) I think it has changed my attitude to blogs though. (That and all the research into networks I did over the winter break.)

Can you wordle text and put the image straight onto the blog? I wish I had a picture of what I just wrote here, right under it.

SNOW - HAND IN !!!!

2010-01-07T12:19:00.000-05:00

Hand-in From Alan's blog:
"The bad weather is causing severe difficulties with travel, and is likely to continue for the next few days. This may mean work posted to the University will arrive later than expected. Campuses are closed today (Wednesday 6th January) and may remain closed further into this week.

If you have already posted your work, you need take no further action. Work arriving late due to difficulties with postal deliveries will not be penalised.

If you intended handing in your work to Cat hill campus today (Wednesday 6th January), please keep your work with you and check the University web page after 9.30am (www.mdx.ac.uk) each morning to see if the to see if Cat Hill is open. If the Campus is open, please deliver your work to the Student Office if you are able to do so. Please do not take risks travelling if the conditions are dangerous. When conditions permit, please deliver your work to Cat Hill campus. Do not post work after today (Wednesday 6th January) as deliveries are likely to be delayed.

Please note that you will not be penalised for late delivery of work for assessment. We ask that you make reasonable effort to deliver work if the campus is open. Realistically this may be towards the end of this week when the forecast suggests a slackening of snowfall."

Me (Adesola): I have been in the Snow in NYC and just got back! One of my new year re-thinks is to write more on my blog regardless of whether I see comments. It is about a network of travelling info not a call and response.

Hope everyone is keeping warm.

2009-12-13T07:27:00.000-05:00

Dec 7th, tasks D and E

2009-12-13T07:10:00.000-05:00

It is great to have some comments. Thank you. I have been away from the Internet for the past three days. Laura-Beth’s comment said she was not sure how the session relates to improving her writing for task D or E. I think that we were trying to focus on the Why of task D or E not so much on the How. We wanted to support understanding; the reasoning behind the tasks thinking that if you understand why something is required then you will be able to investigate how to do it. I would investigate (research) how to write academically through looking at the Rubric on Peter and Paula’s blogs and through standard instruction books that give advice, and through reading academic literature. But why are we asking you to do this? And why are we asking you to do this at this point in the course? This is where the learning is for you beyond acquiring a skill in writing because we told you to.

The idea was that task D & E are about communication of ideas. We are then going on to say that there are specific ways or style of communication for this kind of work – academic writing. The session was to raise questions for you about your personal style of communication to find ways to link this to the tasks so that they are meaningful to you and more than a tick-box requirement.

Donna commented that she feels that the ‘rule’ of academia are to think as if you are in a debate. I know what she means and this is an example of having your own relationship – making the tasks mean something to you. (That is how this course will be useful to you beyond the year or so of the course). For me I imagine academic writing as it being really important to be gentle and not to assume anything, to feel as if you are a part of something being goingly constructed and you want the bits you add to be strong and supportive, not collapse if someone started using it. Also you want to add gently with respect and knowledge about how other people have added to the construction. Donna also asks “Regarding tasks D & E, I’m having a little trouble deciding what to write about, do all the different writings have to be about the same thing?”
I would just say it is the way you write not what you write that we are asking about.

Rachel talked about the academic style and the Literature Review. A literature review is to tell us about what other people have said (written about) the things you are talking about. You then summarize this into a document that is a Literature Review (just like a review of a play it summarizes what happened and who was involved and what they said). It gives us a sense of what is going on. This will also be written in an academic style.

I think that continual reference back to the information you found about Kolb’s learning cycle will be useful. What we are trying to do in this first module is to help to define yourself through what you have done and your interests i.e. the information on your blogs. Also to identify yourself in terms of starting to know how you learn and then saying now for you to engage with this course you need to start to find your own voice within the academic arena. This is a life-long process but the first step is to start to learn how you write in the academic style.

I know for some people myself included writing is really not a preferred mode of communication. But remember it is just a way to communicate. The first part of the session on Dec 7th was saying that you can still think and work things out in your preferred form. But to be heard in academia you need to be able to learn to communicate in its language to some extent, (and you want a BA hons which is an academic certificate. This can come with a wealth of history (baggage). I got laughed at a by people because of my spelling and because I miss out words and letters sometimes when I write and because the spell check can put the wrong word in. BUT don’t worry remember your writing is not your thinking, believe in your thinking and try your best to take this opportunity to learn a little about how to write in this particular way.

Campus Session (Dec 7th)

2009-12-08T13:35:00.000-05:00

Yesterday (December 7th) we had a campus session based around task D & E.
The first half was looking at what made a productive conversation, communication. This related to both tasks but was aimed more at task E (the conversations through the comments). In task E you are asked to comment on each other’s work.

The second half of the session looked at the style of academic writing. You are asked to use this style in both task D & E.

This blog is an overview of the campus session (what we did) for those who could not make it and a reminder for those who were there. I am also hoping both people who came and those who could not be there will comment about this blog.

First half of the session:
This was a movement-based session. We wanted to look at how people engage, interact with each other. We were thinking about what makes a ‘good’ productive, stimulating conversation. In a way we are saying that academia is about engaging in a large conversation. It is about ways to understand and explain ideas across people who are quite spread apart (both in distance and in time). In other words academia has conventions of communication, (the academic style of writing that is asked for in task D & E is one of these conventions). These conventions have developed as ways to carry on useful and engaged conversations across distance (for instance between people in universities across the globe) and across time (for instance to develop ideas people who wrote in 1700 had in today’s world). In task D & E we want you to start to learn how to write within these conventions (in academic style) so that your ideas can fit into productive learning conversations through the blogs and comments.

But how do you have a conversation? We wanted to look at the personal values and feelings that people had about engaging in conversation. We wanted to see what a conversation looked like! We did this by replacing words with movements. We asked each person to choose three words that were elements of a productive conversation (these were elements like ‘respect’, ‘re-evaluation’, ‘questioning’ ‘passionate’ ‘quality’). Each word had a type of movement that would represent the word. For instance passionate was a big movement and quality was a slow movement.

We imagined the room was a metaphor for a conversation, stepping into the room was the same as stepping into a conversation. When we stepped into the conversation (room) we would execute the movements we had that represented our three important elements of a productive conversation. The movements were a physical representation of what each person individually valued as elements of a productive conversation.

We stood around the edge of the room. But before we could start we needed a reason to begin, enter a conversation (enter the movement space) and a reason to stop leave the conversation (leave the movement space). Each person made-up a personal rule for beginning and ending the conversation ‘dance based on their feelings about starting and ending a conversation in ‘real’ life. We did not know what each other’s rules to begin or end were. But we knew they were rules that were similar to their feelings about starting a conversation. Music was put on and people could start the conversation ‘dance’ as soon as their rule to start (enter the space) was met.

The first time we did it people waited on the edge for sometime and then a couple of people started moving others joined in and then the whole thing seemed to come to an end pretty quickly. We then talked about what had happened – we felt it looked like people had not stuck to their rules for starting.

Feedback from participants:
People had wanted to stick to their rules for starting but then felt they had to do something so just did anything. Then they felt sorry for other people who were out in the space moving so they joined in but finished as soon as they could. Once a little bit (token amount) of movement had taken place they felt they had done their bit and left. The whole thing finished quite quickly.

That’s what it looked like.

What did we feel this meant: we felt that starting the conversation because you felt you had to or felt sorry for someone meant that you didn’t bring much to it other than being there. It was not productive because as soon as you had done your ‘bit’ you left. Also there was nothing to really interest you because you only joined in to be polite not because you had anything to add or say. People said that the blogs could feel like this; because they don’t know people they felt they needed to be polite and say something but didn’t really want to do any more than that. They did not really write things to engage people more to acknowledge they were there.
We asked the questions; how can you become interested in something? What makes you interested?

We tried the dance again, this time everyone had to wait until their rule for stepping into the space was met and not just join in to be polite! We put the music on………………………………………………no body moved………………..no body began……………………we stopped for feedback.

Feedback from participants:
Nobody moved because nobody else did anything that would make them start.
They all had rules to start to engage that relied on someone else starting first; we asked how this reflected on the blog space. In truth no-body would really start to comment on each other unless someone else did first. This was understandable if we were looking at conversation in general but we were looking at a productive learning conversation. We asked participants if they needed to re-evaluate their rule for beginning to engage. Did they need to ask themselves if it was productive to wait for someone else to be engaged before you were? We said nobody had to change their starting rule but they could if they wanted to and I joined in the next one with my starting rule which allows me to just start – as an advisor I felt my starting rule should be just begin as soon as the music starts.

We tried it again, this time some people started with big (passion) movements. There was a lot of interaction.

Feedback from participants:
One person noticed that passion as a big movement can be a little overwhelming and sometimes it needs to be small and intense. (Maybe considered and focused).
Another person found that people who stuck to being respectful or polite where hard to dance with after a little while because you could not get beyond the same polite movement.
Other people noticed that the comfort place for most people was to be doing the polite movement because it was safe!
Some people that did the personal conversation movement ended up drifting from person to person.
When people got into a rhythm with someone else they felt quite relieved, but people outside of that small group felt that it was hard to enter the group. They felt the group was much more organised than it really was.

Do you think these observations could apply to the blog spaces too?

We did the dance a few times developing the rules and trying things out as we noticed them in feedback. At the end people were asked to write what they see, what this made them think and what they wondered.
See:
Compassion
People have some connection
It was very random, but with power
Hesitation
Many instances of copying
Observation what happens when people observe each other and situations?
Lots of copying
Lots of copying of movement (respect)
Copying!
Copying
Small groups formed

Think:
Each exercise was very different
She’s shy
People will only engage in movement (conversation) fully if they are interested
People’s attention has to be grabbed
A lot people copying
Educational
The group are not trusting each other at first maybe near the end a bit more
It’s ok to play a small part in a conversation as long as you are involved
Breaking the ice

Wonder:
How it was ever going to end?
If some people don’t comment because of lack of trust or lack of confidence?
Does this reflect each person?
Is it ok to not be drawn in?
What was your rule?
What made the conversation easier?
How important are rules?
How it was going to end?
When to start coming in?
What made you change your mind?

Have a look at what they wrote and see if you think they apply to the blogs and the activity of the comments on blogs.

Overall we felt we learnt a lot about how conventions of politeness and respect could get in the way of having a productive conversation. This was because we were not their as friends and we didn’t know each other very well but we need to get to the ‘meat’ of the conversation without feeling we were being rude.

This is the problem that academia has tried to solve; how do you talk to someone in a university hundreds of miles away who you have never met but about something that you are quite passionate about. THIS IS WHY ACADEMIA HAS CONVENTIONS AND RULES – FOR INSTANCE A PARTICULAR WAY TO WRITE . Academic writing is just about another set of rules to be polite but to cut to the chase and get on with the interesting learning conversation. This led to the second part of the session which was about looking at the conventions of academic writing in ore detail.

I led the first part of the session. The way of working is my way of looking at embodiment, how the body can be a part of a whole understanding. Some of the research for this part of the session was done with Prof. Anna Craft a few years ago. The ideas are part of some research I am doing at the moment about the body, environment and learning

Paula led the second half of the session. We looked at the idea that writing in academic style use conventions as we said above. These conventions are to aid with neutrality, exchange of ideas, critiques, statements and concepts. We looked at the idea that a set of concepts forms a theory. When writing in an academic style you express and explore concepts and theory. It is important to have these to allow the Reader to understand where your points are coming from, why you are taking a particular point of view.

Paula introduced the idea of Critical Thinking as a process that is used to think about topics and issues. In small groups we did some exercises discussing (having a conversation about a topic), writing down some concepts and theories that different people in the conversation had.

We looked at the important distinction between the content of some written text (WHAT it is about) and the structure of some written text (HOW it is written). We said that academic writing, marketing and descriptive writing are all structures for writing. (They are about How it is written)

To summarise: in the first half of the session we discovered why it important to have conventions for communication that support the kind of conversation you need to have. We identified where our personal conventions for engaging in a conversation might need to change. That we may need to have a distinction between our personal rules for engaging with people in general and our personal rules for engaging in an academic context.

In the second half of the session we looked at some practical examples of the conventions within academic writing and we practised some writing in small groups.

Other things:
People pointed out how frightening the posting of blogs is, especially if you are not sure about spelling. We talked about using spellcheck and reading your work to someone. We talked about the importance of getting help if you have dyslexia. I have dyslexia, I have a step by step guilde to what to do to try to get government help as a pdf on the communication page of my website. (If you want to look at it)
We talked about the difference between facebook and the blogs. How the people on facebook are people you know but the people on the blogs are not and you would not know them if it was not for this course.

So what do you think about all this? PLEASE comment

Looking at people's blogs

2009-10-13T12:23:00.000-04:00

I have looked at some of the blog sites. (I have tried to comment, just to say "hi, I looked").They all look amazing, it seems like people are really figuring out the ins-and-outs of making them.

Some people have put short posts on thoughts which are like excerpts from reflective diaries, I think these work really well because sharing them on your blog means that you can get other people thinking too. Of course not all thoughts are so formed that you can type them up and post them and the Reflective Diary comes into its own in those cases because you can keep adding to your ideas etc...

There are some great videos on people's sites too. I am a very visual person so I enjoy watching them. Have you thought about putting sound on your site or links to songs?

Keep up the good work

House Keeping / Getting started

2009-10-12T08:03:00.000-04:00

Just a reminder that:

My on-going call in times are Wednesday 8am to 9am & Friday 7:30pm to 8:30pm
If you need to talk to me at a specific time other than these or want to organise a SKYPE call please e-mail me four days in advance of the date you want to talk. This way we can make sure we are both on the same time zone, etc...!!!

If you are sending me work (try to) attach it as a Word document in an e-mail. Make sure all your work has numbered pages and your full name in the footer. Please, send work in this form even if you are also sending hard copies; this means I can mark the work and send it straight back to you. It is quicker and easier to comment onto the work.

PLEASE, make some comments on my blog. I am interested to know what you think of the films I put up. Are you using Reflective Diaries? What kind? Any tips?

Reflective Diaries

2009-10-06T14:41:00.000-04:00

Hi
Just some quick thoughts about Reflective Diaries, or artists note books or learning logs, there are many names for them (and they maybe a little different from each other) but I think the most important thing about them is that they help you find a place to put your thoughts and ideas so. A place to put you. I found the recommended reading - Jennifer Moon, Learning Journals - really helpful.

As I said in the induction day I now number the pages of my Reflective Diary so that I can refer back to it. As you start the year it is really good to start making a little bit of time to write and capture your thoughts and experiences.

Why research analysis is so important; it's not all data collection!

2009-09-24T06:54:00.000-04:00

Communities, how we voice 'together' in the Arts can impact on a wider society

2009-06-19T08:00:00.000-04:00

Reasons for why the Arts and Education are important

2009-06-19T07:52:00.000-04:00

Another shift!

2009-06-18T19:13:00.000-04:00

The sharing of thoughts

2009-06-17T10:09:00.000-04:00

I am making this blog as part of an idea of sharing professional practise and inquiry into how a conversation can develop across spaces. It is quite daunting mostly because I am dyslexic and the thought of writing something that can then be read by anyone, anywhere is frightening. But of course that is the point and so far I have one follower - not to worry then!

We are going to ask students to make a blog as part of a Professional Practise course, so I wanted to know what making a blog would entailed; and of course be there in the community that we hope will be built from this. In beginning to build the blog though, another important process comes to light and that is noticing how I learn. I started from not knowing how to build a blog. What stories do I have in my head that I turn-on when I want to give up? What strategies do I employ to get the courage to try? How do I learn best - trial and error, read all about it first, look at examples of other peoples blogs? When we ask the students to do this it will be just as much about asking them to start to notice how they learn and accomplish tasks as it will be about getting them to have a profile and begin to engage in conversation and the sharing of thoughts.