About 'The Test' - the capacity to make connections

Welcome to the start of BAPP  - Week 1 of this term
Here are some thoughts about how you position the idea of learning. Please read and watch and comment below so we can start a conversation...

This is a section of a video lecture. It is quite light hearted but what John Green's point is that learning - that is worthwhile is a part of living (and living with integrality). Education is about application not being told what to do...It is about the capacity to make connections and critically imagine, divergent thinking...

Then think about what your learning is - what does it mean to have learnt about life through being an artist or being in the Arts. What value do you put on creative skills to imagine, wonder, working-out the capacity to make connections . These are skills we ask you to use as core to what learning means - Art's Critical value.

In this video Cindy Foley references *Sir Ken Robinson's lecture (video).
Cindy identifies key habits that artists employ, that are also key to our course.
Comfort with Ambiguity
Idea Generation
Transdisciplinary Research



*https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity/up-next?language=en

Watch this film

For the post on the film of Sir ken Robinson's speech see below. Looking forward to reading what you think of it.

http://adesolaa.blogspot.com/2012/01/arts-and-education_7442.html

Adesola

discuss!

How have you constructed your thoughts about...

This post is about looking at what three things mean to you and how you can interact with them:

A)    What it means to work when doing a work-based learning course,

B)   What campus sessions are / mean

C)   Notes about stuff on posts

I am starting with (C) – I am really excited about the SKYPE group calls plan see my post last week. If you want to do it my SKYPE address is in the handbook. This blog is open to anyone and everyone because I think the idea of open access is interesting and education needs to work out how to engage with the idea. But I don’t want my SKYPE address to be open access!! So I am not posting it, just look in the handbook. I have at least one person for each module discussion BUT for a group we need more than one so join in.. 

Looking at Blog posts this week I read Rhoda’s blog post about how much data she has. I think it’s really useful and not just because she mentions me!!! Have a look and leave her a comment on what you think.

http://rakparker.blogspot.com

Looking at (B). This relates to the open access ideas I hate to endorse too much use of Wikipedia but for the common understanding of something it is useful. Here’s what they say about open access.   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access

What do you think?

The philosophy of this course has something to do with the changes in how we can understand learning, information, knowledge and connection that the inter-net has raised. We see these issues in our everyday social life and work life. We begin the course by flagging it up, but this is for more than just how to get noticed for the next audition it is about thinking about how we interact and connect with each other. On this course we have decided to come together in the web 2:0 ‘world’ it seemed that because people are working or looking for work in the professional arena that the Internet offers two interesting concepts that we can use. Firstly, connection with each other out side of time and space as we usually use it. I am writing now, about things I care about and hopefully connecting with you but you are not ever in the same time or space as me even though we connect. Before internet maybe we could use a letter in this way to some extent but a letter requires a physical object that travels the distance between us. From my time and space to yours – the internet offers another way to address time and space. I am interesting this because of my work in embodiment.

So the internet and the blogs and lib-guides are our shared point of connection. That’s what that’s about – what do you think? How have to understood what the blogging is all about? You can see that from the perspective I have just described it is really important you post on your blog and comment on others. It is how you participate. So the campus sessions are not the places where we give you information that is on the web in Lib-guides, group emails & blogs. The campus sessions are places where we can come together to talk about what we think of the information. We then share out what we found. So not coming to a campus session is not about missing important information it is about missing connecting in a particular way – in physical person. You my be someone who needs this or likes to work that way but other than feeling sad about not working in your preferred way you are not missing key information. I think the coming together of people to talk is really fun and interesting. One of my advisees was really worried about missing a campus session and that is what made me think we should think of other ways to interact together in conversation – hence the group SKYPE idea (see previous post).

This course is not about us giving you information and you telling us back what we said. It is about you pulling the information and meaning toward you through a range of sources and us nurturing and encouraging that process. We are here to help you find meaning and value in the information. So not coming to a campus session does not mean you miss having us inject you with information.

How do you see the campus sessions? How are you finding the connections you make on the course with peers with advisors, with the handbooks, with other people’s literature….etc…?

Point (A) It’s a work-based learning course. To me that means work is central (your professional practice) so the course should not be an either /or situation: study or work. The point is you are studying your work. If you get offered a job while on this course do not see it a conflict – I mean maybe we are doing a good job of helping you open yourself to new possibilities and deeper thought and that has shifted your approach to something in a positive way or made you more attractive to employers. Maybe it’s not a coincidence that as you open the door into deep thought around your practice you get a job!!! Of course I am not saying you are validated by a paid job but think about the experience and see how things connect.

Of course work out with your advisor any admin problems if you are worried about getting work posted off for deadlines or less internet access but we are all imaginative people we can make it work. The opportunity is that the work will add experience to your study at MDX and the study at MDX with add depth to your work. That is point. If you are not finding that synergy then think about it because that is why we ask you to centre around your professional Practice in the work you hand in for assessment. Part of this course is about placing yourself in your work context, better understanding what you bring to your practice what your influences are, what you want to know more and more about. How have you seen the relationship between ‘work’ and ‘study’ so far? Have you noticed work informing study and study informing work? What is your experience in this?

Please comment

Keep up the good work

Adesola

Arts and Education

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

Dance education

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

Reasons for why the Arts and Education are important