Monday 3rd May - The ways ideas can be communicated: Module Three focus

Monday May 3rd 2021

Online session with ACI3633 Module Three focus

The ways ideas can be communicated.

6pm (time in London)

These discussion groups are a time to talk across the BAPP learning community and practice speaking to others about your work. You can join the group through the Zoom link on Unihub 

*Please note if you have any specific questions about the course that you need to discuss with your Supervisor you can email them or Skype call your Supervisor (quick questions can just be called in via Skype there is no need for an appointment - we ask you to try to call during your Supervisor's Office Hours if possible - see UniHub for times).

Monday 30th November - The ways ideas can be communicated; Module Three focus

Monday Nov 30^th  

Online session with ACI3633 Module Three focus

The ways ideas can be communicated.

6pm (time in London)

These discussion group Skypes are a time to talk across the BAPP learning community and practice speaking to others about your work. Please write below to indicate if you will be attending and what you would like to share/talk about. 

*Please note if you have any specific questions about the course that you need to discuss with your Supervisor you can email them or Skype call your Supervisor (quick questions can just be called in via Skype there is no need for an appointment - we ask you to try to call during your Supervisor's Office Hours if possible - see UniHub for times).

Skype with Module Three focus...

Great conversation with a Module 3 focus tonight. I am really looking forward to the final essays and artifacts people will be submitting. There are so many interesting experiences and ideas the inquiries have raised for peoples practices.

I felt our conversation about ways to communicate was summed up in:

...THINGS INFORM ONE ANOTHER...

Have a look at the posts and comments below from the people attending the discussion.

Twilight discussions -

In the Twilight conversations we talked about a range of ideas. please see peoples blog post. One idea that was significant was the idea of the importance of having different perspectives. Not to 'agree' with them but to understand your own position better by understanding others positions. Here is a really interesting video about perspectives.

Thoughts from recent group skype discussions

Module conversations

We have had a number of sessions on skype; conversations with a particular focus on Module topics. Please note a skype with a focus on Module One is open to anyone who wants to think about Module One points not just those on Module One.  From these conversations a few points to share follow below and same for the other Module focus sessions

 From the Module Two focus session on Thursday 16^th :

Making an inquiry plan is an art in itself. You can use your own artistry from your practice to create something… the ingredients or steps or parts of the inquiry that must be included are knowing what your Methodology is, your method and your analysis.

Your methodology is the way you are approaching the inquiry, how you understand the people and things involved it links to any ethical considerations you have considered. It is about explaining the why of your approach.

The method is being able to say exactly what you will be doing and explain why you are doing it that way.

The analysis explains what you will be doing with all the things you generate from doing the inquiry data collecting activity. It is not an inquiry if all you do is ask someone something and then tell us what they said. You need to compare across all the forms of data you collect, looked for significant ideas or themes or things that don’t sit together and think about why they are significant to you, why they are the same or different…

Analysis is how you will be triangulating:  1) the data you collect, 2) the literature and existing arts on the subject 3) your experiences and reflections on it (3 things like a triangle (triangulations) where you look at what hold them together and a part.

Keep asking yourself am I creating a plan that assumes I will go and ask someone the answer to a question I have. If so remind yourself if you don’t know the answer, why should they? And if they did answer it how would you know it was ‘right’. Answers are not what you are looking for. Better understanding the depth of your question is what you are looking for. So you will need to analysis everything you come across.

Look at defining what is meant by the words you are using to explore your inquiry. For instance if you are wondering what makes a good teacher, you will also need to find out what ‘teacher’ means to people and what ‘good’ means to people. Part of your inquiry is finding out if people make the same assumptions about things as you. Finding out more about something is realising not everyone thinks about it the same way as you.

We are using a form of triangulation in Module One as well. We are asking you to look at what your practice is. How your practice peels away from the background of your training, current work situation – how your practice is a thing in its own right. In the module, we ask you to triangulate:  1) your practice in terms of communication (inc. web 2:0) 2) your practice in terms of with reflection 3) your practice in terms of networks

In the Module One focus chats both groups talked about networks and the feedback one gets from people – how much of that you allow to shape your practice and how much and when to let it go. There is something here about the transition between being a student in training (when all feedback is expected to be taken on board) to when you are a professional when you need to decide what you will let define you.

We also talked about how sharing and hearing the experience of others can help you start to see yourself more clearly against the backdrop of the experience you had training or working cyurrently. This especially true if your training experience was more negative than positive.

We acknowledged the small word count for the essay in Module One is part of what is hard. You cannot waffle on about your practice or spend too much time just reciting the Module handbook information back to us. You have to have thought about a clear articulation of what your practice is and how it is growing and shaped particularly using communication, reflection and networks. Do not use the appendix to extend the word count!!! (Imagine no one will bother looking at the appendix.) The essay should be clear and make sense with no appendix.

We are more than half way through the term so now is the time to start thinking about what you are handing in and making sense of how it is relevant and meaningful to you/your practice and to the Module Handbooks information. Keep blogging and commenting on each others posts.

Going into the Holiday Break

Happy Holidays

Rest: My computer needs a healing !!  so it will be out of action for a couple of days.

Feedback: if you are waiting for me to respond to an email - write to me again, because I don't realize you are waiting. I feel like I have double checked everyone and have answered everyone. So I may have missed the email.

Talk: if you have quick question or want to have a quick de-freak-out feel free to skype me.

Adesola

Talking to people

On Tuesday we had some great conversations.

AM we talked about Module Two planning and Module Three reflection. We found it really helpful to try to concisely tell each other what we were doing. When you try to tell someone what you are doing you notice the parts where you waffle!! or don’t complete a sentence!! These could well be parts you yourself have not completely worked out your thoughts on or that you don’t yet understand.

We asked each other to repeat back what they thought they heard. Doing this you can see where you have been clear, where you are going on about something that is not important and what parts you are explaining well.

You have to have it straight in your own head before you try to write it down. For many people writing helps them sort out their thoughts. (For many other people going for a walk or having a bath or dancing or doing yoga helps them sort out their thoughts). Whatever you do to think things through and understand what you think! Is fine but if your way is to write that does not mean what you write is what you hand in. It is just a means for you to get things organised for yourself. Don’t get writing-to-organise-ideas mixed up with writing-a-reflection-on-something. The way to make sure you have written the reflection / work you are handing in is that you should be able to explain it in a couple of verbal sentences to a number of different people. You should be able to explain it to someone who doesn’t know anything about the BAPP course as well as to someone who knows all about it. These would be different explanations of course but it is good practice to make sure you really understand what you are trying to communicate in what you hand-in.

We talked about how what you hand-in is always about the process of the Module/term. In each Module it is about reflection on that module and discussing what you did, what you learnt and how it resonates with your general Professional Practice.

In the PM chat we talked about the same thing of explaining your process but in that chat we also talked about Module One. Module One work to hand-in is reflecting on the process of the Module and what you have learnt about yourself as a learner. It is not about proving you have read the hand-book! And just writing what the handbook says. The important part is what you think of it all.

As so often it was really good to talk to other people on the course.

Have a look at some blogs and leave comments.

 http://josephdarbybapp.blogspot.co.uk

http://victoriamayvickers.blogspot.co.uk

http://shonabeggsblog.blogspot.co.uk

http://maddybantick.blogspot.co.uk

What do you feel? Please comment below

Adesola

Chats from the am First Tuesday skype chat - You, I, We

Our First Tuesday Skype chats went really well this month.

In our AM meeting we talked about blogging and web 2.0 in general. We talked about how web 2.0 is prevalent across our lives. It is out there but we don’t usually think so much about   how our interactions with the web builds a sense of who we are. We thought about ‘what do I look like through web 2.0’. Who am I professionally through the eyes of people who know me through the web. Then we thought about how this reflection back of ourselves can help us further reflect on who we want to be: what we value, what we want to develop, where we want to go in our practice. Module One is all about this self-reflection to better understand Self (YOU), which gives you a grounding for the next two modules where you are asked to journey down where you want to go with your practice through your inquiry project.

Kayleigh www.kayleighbapp.blogspot.com  is going to post further on ‘what do I look like in Web 2.0’ how does that apply to my idea of my professional self.   

We talked about how useful it is to talk to people about your ideas. When you explain your thoughts and ideas to someone else it often helps you clarify for yourself what you mean. This linked to the blogging because your blog post are a great way to feedback and get feedback from others.

Sophie www. www.sophiedonald.blogspot.co.uk  is going to post further on this.

We also talked about the notion of questions particularly in terms of Module Two (but of course the process of learning across the course in itself is made of questions). We talked about how we need to check-in with ourselves about the questions we ask. Are they questions we already know about – in which case they are really more a affirming you are ‘right’ about something. Or are you genuinely interested in finding out more? If you want to know more about something you will not be looking for a ‘finished’ answer to your questions you will be interested in knowing more about the question itself. It is these kind of questions that lead to more informed questions that are most useful in this course.  So if you are in Module Two and you have a general area you are interested in, at this point, that is enough. Doing the course this term – looking at the questions from the perspective of ethics, literature etc… will help you know more about your question and help you come to a place where you have a question that you authentically want to know more about. Not a question where you can already predict what you will find or where you are trying to prove something you already know.

Catherine www.catherinehayward.blogspot.ae  is going to post on ‘asking a question we don’t know about!!’

Paula http://paulanottingham.blogspot.com  is going to post about listening and the importance of allowing moment of quiet or thinking time.

Don’t be afraid of those moments when you are in process. Don’t expect yourself to ‘know’ all the time but trust yourself to move through the unknown to the known. This will happen just because you are thinking, communicating, caring and doing. That is more than enough. The community of learners of BAPP is the current energy that helps you flow through the learning journey. Try to see the whole course, whole module in the small bit-size chunks you do each week.

What do you think?

Adesola