Reflecting on this past year - looking forward to the next

I've been reflecting on this past year as we come to the end of 2011.  It has been quite a crazy year for me with trials, discoveries and uncertainties.  Thank you to those who have been supportive to me in our first semester. It's going to be an eventful year in 2012.

Have fun this weekend and I wish you all Happier New Year and see you on the other side.

X

Task 3C

My 5 most Important Sources of Information

Blackberry    This would be the portal to communicating with family, friends and business in my world.  Receiving e-mails from my sources for potential bookings and confirmation of bookings.  I travel extensively by road to jobs so the application for travel updates is important to me.  Primarily I prefer to make phone calls as speaking and connecting with my customers, teachers and staff may bring me additional information.

Google/Internet     As an initial search, I will use Google as the  facilitator for basic information on any new topic I'm researching. It could be for a dance project, company business profiles, and  contact details.  Like most people that use the Internet for searching, Google will link me to connect with the basic information I am looking for.  Liam Conman calls this service ‘invaluable’.  Well, I certainly rely on it and would find it most difficult to function without it as it is valuable for me and my business. 

Face Book    Face Book is important to me for calendar of events, dance workshops, classes, some advertising of goods relevant to my business and finding new contacts for networking.  I am thinking about setting up a page for business although I shall keep my current Face Book page for social chit chat.

Youtube   Has endless source of ideas after filtering.  I can reacquaint myself with some original dance moves or sequence and find new moves to add to my repertoire.  I find new inspirational pieces of music from around the world.  Although for some of my choreography I like to have ideas naturally and organically evolve as I listen to the music.  The ‘how to’ videos are great for the step by step instructions, not just for technical help in loading new applications but for other details such as make up applications for various looks and themes.

My Blog   My blog page is very important to me as I work through my BAPP course. I can connect, learn, express my views and ask questions to the students across the three modules as well as communication with my advisers.  The tasks have been painful at times to understand and digest but as Phil Carrol mentions about some of the Readers has been  like ‘reading through treacle’.   After reading some of the students blogs I begin to understand the fundamentals as their understanding is explained clearly.  I found Alicia Beck to have this ability in her quality of writing.  My blog has been revealing, inspiring and on occasions some weird theorising emerges that smacks you in the face when you experience, as Paula Nottingham  once said to me, that  ‘light bulb moment’ 

I do have other sources of information that could be on a par with the five above that are useful to me and they are; TV, Radio, DVD’s but fundamentally and most importantly I like to speak and meet with people.

The Networked Professional

Task 3a & 3b

My Current and Established Networks

Mine is a complex network of people and information network with multi dimensions and layers.

Over the years of teaching Dance and working in other industries, my people network has expanded considerably.  To date I remain in contact with some of the dance students I trained with 30 years ago and even more of them today since Social Networking sites such as Face Book, and Linkedin.  Since the School and College ‘reunions’ have appeared such as Friends Reunited, this has been a great new source and provision for fresh friends/professionals for networking. 

Most of my friends and colleagues of my generation,  are no longer  hungry to establish a career or find our true calling in life as they don't seem to have any reason to further prove much more to themselves their family or others.  To a certain degree, we have ‘arrived’ after years of work experience, building skills and a degree of financial stability.  It seems our concepts and plans for the future have seemingly come to fruition at this time.  I have had a number of discussions with  my friends and colleagues about career or jobs at this time.  These happen to be about job changes.  Namely,  redundancies, early retirement or health reasons.   With this current challenging climate in mind, helping a friend or colleague find a new job or career through my own network of contacts can be very satisfying to me. I recently helped a friend by introducing them to a contact that was able to help secure a new job in the hidden market.
Why is Networking so important? 

• it can provide you with help when needed
• it offers you expertise beyond your own,

My current Networking includes;

Face Book                               Friends Reunited

LinkedIn,                                  Websites

Smart phone                             Discussion Forums

Skype                                      Network Support sites

Video Conferencing                  Events

Blogging                                   Exhibitions

Email                                        Charity/Fund Raising Events

 Here is a useful link to a presentation on;

 How to Network

I have found one to one meetings and group discussions still the best way to network and get clarity from the lines of my initial enquiry or links.

Today I am forging new links with specific people to add to my map of networking professionals.   I will also need to get involved in new ways and improving the way I network.   I would like to attend more lectures and discussion sessions and to make improvements on my website and complete my  LinkedIn profile.

Cooperation

Experience and I trust, wisdom, has prepared me to know that Cooperating should be mutually beneficial. If I make contact with an old associate or friend for information, help or advice, I do this knowing that we have built a relationship and understanding over the years based on good reputation and mutual respect knowing that we wouldn’t take advantage of one another’s time, position or situations.   It is something I learnt that is a hard lesson of life, for myself.  I am a person that takes time to invest in friends and associates.  I soon realised early on that I needed to be build and maintain very good reputation of myself and my business to keep in association with my specialist contacts.  Wikipedia’s description states;

Reputation of a social entity (a person, a group of people, an organisation) is an opinion about that entity, typically a result of social evaluation on a set of criteria. It is important in education, business, and online communities.

The Game Theory

Linking with some of the strategies I read from The Complexity of Cooperation (Axelrod 1997)   I recall a series of events that lead to a close friend of mine and I to stop working together as it almost destroyed our friendship.  Initially we both collaborated on a Dance project and gave the same amount of time and energy to it and so shared the accreditation, it got to a point that I was putting in more hard work, time and effort only to receive the same accreditation, well I wasn’t happy so I argued for a bigger share of accreditation.  By this time my ego and reputation had grown and I defected with a different strategy.   I learnt an important lesson not to engage in business with a friend or at least if you do to have clear defined rules of engagement.  In this situation it required a delicate balancing act to work aside another person in a creative capacity.  I would have to lead or they would take the lead and I would assist for a short time. I understand this to be inherent genetic behaviour with me rather than my ability to use strategy

My understanding Affiliations vs my experiences with Affiliations.

It seems, we as humans want an alliance, association, connection or partnership with someone, group, social and private events.

It could be seen as a ‘needs to an end’ or various levels of ‘you scratch my back…..’ or ‘Quid pro quo’ (Latin meaning ‘what for what’) I found Affiliation has a direct link with The Game Theory, whether you use strategies and or your genetic behaviour in the end you will always move your links with people to suit your individual game plan. 

At first as a newly qualified professional you need your first chance to step onto the career ladder so your old teachers/contacts are essential for that recommendation, feedback and support. Your strategies constantly shifts and changes at differing levels. You begin to see a change in your private and public life and keep those affiliations separate. I agree with The O’Conner and Rosenblood 1996, model of social affiliation rings very true with this as I have experienced it when my level of contact varies. There are times when I do need to be on my own and at times with just one friend.  There are times to when I need to be away or have no contact with my family.

I believe I have been a good teacher or dancer from the feedback and responses I have been given but times change and learning changes. The numerous times the words of ‘promise’ for a job or dance contract through a new contact that disguised themselves as friends or responsible manager, only to be left stranded.   So my very first lesson was not to instantly trust, but to establish how mutually beneficial we can be to one another.  The outcome over the years is that a genuine friendship or professional mutual respect evolves. 

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I have similar views to Leanne Watson;

 I believe we all learn from experience, and situations in our lives vary and send us on different paths, leading to different contacts and connections within those networks. Really understanding why we do things and need certain things is what will help us grow and understand our professional and personal lives further.

Stripping Back

OR

Going back to find its origin.

I am finding this one of the hardest things to do?  The layers upon layers of information and knowledge that has built up over the years of ideas, theories, thoughts, new technologies, programmes, gadgets,  new ideals, new worlds, new ways of seeing and doing things.  All of these emerging ideas could make you shut down your mind completely.  Are we not over complicating things for our thoughts? Aren’t we just modifying and changing or moving words around for changes sake.  Isn’t this all time consuming and consuming us?  Don’t most of us eventually come up with the right solution, words, answers or stumble on an idea at that needed moment in time just through process of experiencing life as we evolve anyway?  So what is the end purpose of all this for you?

One example of stripping back to basics is currently being shown in cookery programmes.  We are being encouraged to go back to using the basic ingredients and the simple way of preparing food.  They are taking us back to when cooking a dish with pure ingredients and no modification to its originality.  It seems that too many additions take away the purity and wholeness of the dish.  This could be said of most things including dance and teaching.

Another example is the social dance, Salsa, I believe it is becoming a show piece?

Does fusing dance styles make the dance original?  I think keeping the styles close to their classic origins in form, keeps our culture of dance from becoming thrown into a melting pot and loosing the pure identity of that style of dance.  An example I’ve seen on YouTube video of an X factor programme in India showing a young couple dancing ‘Salsa’.  This was an incredible jaw dropping performance with many Ariel acrobatic moves but only showing a few basic Salsa steps. In what way was this a Salsa dance routine?  The New York style Salsa seems to be heading in this direction with more choreographed moves, it is rapidly becoming a show pieces rather than a social dance compared to Cuban Salsa which seems to be keeping to the purity of the origins and culture of the community dance.

It is a continuing debate with new emerging Salsa Dance Teachers that have little or no training in dance.  Let us all go back to being authentic to our culture and true to our origins.

Do you have something you wish to strip back or go back to find its origin or even simplify?

Useful Links - Arts Magazines, Education Agencies, web sites etc.

Here are some useful Arts magazines and links to web sites. 

This is about Arts, Education and Job opportunities

Paul Hamlyn Foundation

This is an Arts Magazine about Arts news,  jobs, events and classifieds

Arts Hub

This is a job agency for Dance, music and PE teachers covering key stages I and 2. I have used this agency in the past to get my foot in the door of education.
PPA Cover Ltd 

This is an organisation that invites schools and youth clubs of all ages and abilities to participate in an organised showcase around the UK and performing their showpiece to like minded audiences with judges and VIP's watching. This gives Teachers and students the opportunity to experience all that is related to a musical performance.

Rock Challenge

Campus Session for Mod. 1 9th Nov 2011

This Campus Session was taken by Alan Durrant. 

Mapping can take form about any subject or about the NOW or the FUTURE. Mapping can also be used for frequencies or for the nature of the engagement or different ways of networking.  Above is a general map of the here and now on networking.  This was a collaboration of the ideas within my group on the day.  Note the use of networking with our families, remind ourselves that we can make use of their experiences and their contacts so it goes beyond the obvious group, thus including the next layer and so forth beyond that layer.  This is something that may not be obvious at first. I make the most of my family who's professional lives include;  Research and Development within Telecoms industry,  Music, TV and video production and Finance and Economics..  The obvious network are the Social and Media networks as in FB, Twitter, blogs, Forums etc.  Include your professional colleagues within design, music, dancers also any employers and think about their networks.

Points raised within the other groups;

• How much time do you spend on networking?
• Social Networking -  culling the people that do not give back
• Networks is about decisions and choices on whom you keep in touch with that is mutually beneficial at the time or may be in the future.
• Mapping as a 'Time Line' a journey of time,  possibly your future and how it keeps moving, changing goal posts.  We are currently changing our careers, we are uncertain so, a 'snakes and ladders' effect is happening.

Assessment Component
This was a break down of Portfolio Part 1, 2, and 3
Critical Reflection.  Explain what you have learnt.  You are your own manager or coach of your professional practice.  Your advisers will not tell you what you are doing is wrong or correct.  It's about your experiences, what are the changes, what are the key themes, what are you most sure about, what will I pursue further.
If nothing makes sense about Kolb's theory etc., then write about that. Take a slightly distant view.  It's NOT about how you feel, it's about making sense of that moment and what methods do you use.  Post on your blog or in your journal.  Realise it's a demonstration of your appreciation of YOUR position, include what you want to investigate further after realising something you missed.  Do read other people's blogs.
Evidence.  This could be in the form of a letter, blog or images.  Somethings will be harder to support with evidence.  Practice writting in your blog, post it ask for feed back.  There may be some private writings in your journal that you do not wish to disclose and without naming people and events can give an outline and conclusion..
Send an electronic version to Avni, link any appendicies to electronic version.
Send word document to Avni at Trent Park address.

It was the first Campus Session attended as I have work commitments and I must say how glad I was to be part of the group.  It showed me that there is much support if you ask for it and that you are all thinking the same things. I was glad to have attended and met the other learners.
Hope this will help in some way.

Inquiry Task 2d Please give me your thoughts and suggestions

During my half term week, there was more time to reflect on themes that may have emerged in my post that would give me an indication as to a new inquiry.  In spite of thinking that I have calmed down since the crazy start of September and thinking strategically about BAPP it appears that this isn’t the case with me.  Initially panic sets in, followed by a mass of ideas to deal with then the time consuming steps of elimination.  It has to resonate with me and demonstrate that there is a purpose for this inquiry.  So, how is this course influencing me and where is it directing me to? Are my peers influencing me?  I enjoy reading people’s blogs especially when referring to their life experiences, motivation, commitments and personal development.

However, I haven’t come across another mature fellow learner on this BAPP course like myself to really connect with, but  I am inspired by many practitioners on our module, one example is     Liam Conman very strong writing style and writes with true conviction and clear outcomes and other modules. I have followed Stephanie Thomas blog with admiration as she clearly shows in her posts, links to how she has, perhaps, come up with a probable final question.  At this point my numerous lines of inquiry look at the ‘health benefits of dance’ to ‘does the world of dance have a place in the world economy’? I need to narrow these down and focus. 

I enjoyed reading about the choreographer Twyla Tharpe ‘The Creative Habit’ (Tharp, Reiter 2006)  I admire her, her depth and matter of fact.  Another idea springs to mind about comparing trained ballet dancers technique to contemporary dance techniques. I will investigate this further.   

But I love giving time and space to children to explore, navigate, lead, expand their imaginations beyond their daily routines through music, dance, movement and sound.  It is reasonable to say that I have and do submerge myself in such activities or dreams and visions to find equilibrium in my life.

What makes me angry? What makes me angry is naturally intelligent people/students who decide not to do anything with their lives once they graduate. What do they do with all that accumulated knowledge? I don’t understand totally but I understand it is to so with choice, circumstance and influence.

I have introduced in this task a small part of ‘The Networked Professional’ looking outward at other people’s ideas.

I won't rush this line of inquiry, I know eventually that a Topic will emerge, but I know I will still panic. 

Continuing with Reflective Practices

Upon further reflection, I realise that I start Kolb’s learning cycle at various points of entry depending on what I am working on.  When I’m choreographing for myself and I start with a piece of music that I connect with and resonate with me and enter at Abstract Conceptualisation. This would be at the point of hearing the piece of music for the first time.  

I then realise that I engage in Robert Kottacamp Key Concept of reflection-in-action, this is specific to Middle Eastern Dance for me as generally Middle Eastern Dancers perform an improvisation at a performance and it is imperative that the dance piece is perfectly executed thus engaging in the ‘tacit knowledge’. 

 I have just realised that when I first started studying Middle Eastern Dance our teacher was unable to vocalise at times how to engage within the musicality of the music, or convey the feeling but we could visually see what she was trying to teach us.  I see now that ‘tacit knowledge’ is a very important component of our unconscious mind, I think particularly in improvisation.  I clearly understood this from Twyla Tharp extract explaining muscle memory. (Tharp and Reiter, 2006)..

I hear the words ‘muscle memory’ being mentioned more often at various classes I have attended recently such as 'Pilates' and 'Zumba'.  I am most interested in reading further Twyla Tharp’s ‘The Creative Habit’.  In particular how ‘she has to find ways to walk into a room and come up with the goods and make up a dance when she is hired to do so’ as this may inspire me in my work. 

I have been video recording myself whilst rehearsing, as this aides my learning and critical reflecting and view the performance as others would see it.

I am realising that I engage with multiple theory and use the tools of reflection and critical analysis in my profession.  I have a variety of dance teaching jobs so I shift learning cycles unconsciously to suite and adapt to the situation, event or person. 

Do I change and adapt to suit people’s needs or am I evolving and gaining knowledge and new experiences because I want to? I think I see myself as someone who continually gathers knowledge, learns and deliver and share this knowledge to new audiences.

I would be interested to hear how you see yourselves?

Journal Writing experience Task 2b and Reflective Theory Task 2c

Journal writing experience  Task 2b and  Reflective Theory Task 2c

I have combined Tasks 2b and 2c as I felt they were linked.  I’m not comfortable with writing the Reflective Theory task and post this to a public Wiki.  I’ve learnt that I’m terrified of the thought of academic writing.

For six weeks I have been teaching the ‘Jive’ dance to two year six classes, (ages ten and eleven years) I  have been given ‘carte blanche’ at this school as to what topic or style of dance I choose to teach and have written my own lesson plans for the term.  I generally opt to enhance the children’s topic and work cross curricular. Their topic was World War II and the ‘Jive’ dance was the obvious choice along with recognised music of the Glenn Miller Band.

I introduced the learning objective and success criteria and explained clearly what they are working towards plus I demonstrated the dance. 

My objective was for the children to learn the dance in couples and to experience social dancing in a formal manner.  I was aware that there would be some objection from the boys and girls dancing together but I couldn’t understand why there were so many objections..

I asked the children to partner up in couples and I didn’t expect that only 10% were happy to do this.  Some were repulsed at the thought of holding hands with one another.  I also realised that there could have been cultural reasons for this behaviour.

Their behaviour changed, they were becoming noisy, loud, boisterous and unruly.

I become concerned and unsure of my management behaviour ability as well as feeling anxious at the thought of  loosing control of 30 children in a room the size of a classroom. 

I set myself to find the solutions to resolve these issues.

 At that time I had read about Gibbs model for reflection and also Kolb’s learning cycle and learnt that I had used a mix of both but models instinctively.  I realised I became unaware at what point and what stages they came into play or merged with one another.  This was a complex mix. Is this Multiple Intelligences working?  But through the reflective model and learning cycle I eliminated the fact that the size of the class and the number of students were not a contributing factor of their disruptive behaviour.  Half my dance classes in a week are conducted in the school hall and half are in a Cabin (classroom size) and it is only one class out of the ten that I teach that is so disruptive.  This class happen to be held in the Cabin. So why wasn’t my reflection and learning cycle theory working with this class?  This was baffling me.  With this particular class, the theories alone wasn't working for me. Did it mean that I hadn't grasped the theories therefore unable to correct the practise's?

Further research showed me that according to Piaget’s theory of cognitive maturity,   it was to do with the ability to think, for this particular classes age.  I concluded that this class had a large percentage of socially immature children.  I started talking talk to them about formal dancing and in particular ballroom dancing with children of the same age.  Intuitively I asked for a couple to volunteer to demonstrate the Jive dance with one another.  There were a few giggles and jeers to start with but seeing the demonstration, the children began to accept that it was OK to dance with one another.  This was such a break through! I was feeling elated that by a number of trials around the Gibbs cycle of reflection plus an understanding of Piaget's theory
I recognised what wasn't working and why.

Piaget’s theory states that from age 11 years upwards children become aware that they don’t  just have a sense of self, they have become aware that to move forward and get what they want, they have to accept and recognise other people’s needs.  This is known as ‘formal operations’ stage

The results showed a conclusive break through in the children’s understanding of formality and etiquette of social dance.  I went onto introduce Kolb's learning cycle to the class unbeknown to them.

At the same time, I divide the children into smaller groups to perform their steps, the children watching were asked to, analyse and critique the lesson. I also set a written task for the children not taking part in the class to write down what they observed about the children learning to dance in the class as well as taking notes on the class content and objectives.

I concluded from the written tasks and observations how much the children were enjoying the experience, they were smiling, were happy, they had learnt to communicate with one another about dance steps, they were dancing in time with the music.  I read these observations to the class. This encouraged the children to remain on task, engaged, very enthusiastic and less inhibited, and more dancing in couples.

I also learnt that each and every event and the facts available to you changes your judgement and perspective on how to apply the theories to gain resolve and solutions.

I look forward to your comments

Lesson Plan template and Aide Memoire for a Good Lesson

Teaching Dance in a Primary School

For Michelle Moss and all

See Michelle Moss's Task2b on WALT and WILF aides.  A very well written and analysed post and useful for anyone interested in teaching in Schools.
Here is a template of a lesson plan I currently use in the Primary School I teach in.  I posted this as an aide  to Michelle's Moss's post Task 2b WALT & WILF.  I am also learning to take a 'Games' lesson and I am learning the 'rules and skills' of playing football.!! :-))

Here is a link to a template currently being used in the school I am teaching in for 'Aide Memoire for a Good Lesson' used for Performance Management lesson observations and a reflection on teacher's practices and to set teacher's targets to improve their teaching.  Hope you find this useful..

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B_JmEfUEoU4TNDM3YTE2NzMtYjE4Ny00YzEyLWE5ZmEtZTJhNmZjMGM5ODAw&hl=en_GB

Reflective Practitioner - I think I see the light

Reflective Journal Task 2a

Further thoughts.

I found the reflective journal illuminating after a period of confusion. My learning curve is profoundly steep. I was writing down anything and everything and at times was going off track and had to pull myself back in line. I have discussed reflection with some of the teaching staff at the school to gain insight as to how they would write plus reading fellow learners blogs from previous year and examples of reflective writing from the web. I realised that I have been stuck in a 'culturally conditioned' climate and I require re-calibration. I am a practical person and find theory difficult to absorb but have found analogies very helpful. I require more research and reading of theories before I can discover new theories of my own. I never thought of critically analysing myself or my work.  I am experiencing an 'Evolutionary Awakening'  in more ways than one because I closed the door to my dance teaching  profession years ago.

I found that  Gibbs model of Reflective Cycle a useful and preferred guide. It's a structured template and gives clear cues. 
The Reflective Cycle

The Reflective Cycle

Moon mentions  reflection as a ‘melting pot’ of ideas, feelings, information, etc., this is exactly as I see it.  Easy to put in and off load,  but challenging to analyse, evaluate and conclude.  Moon also mentions ‘cognative housekeeping’.  I understand this as I attended an NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programme) introductory course on becoming a practitioner.  NLP is about re-programming your current cognitive (brain) behaviour. This is similar to muscle programming for dance or physical  moves.  This tool enables you to take new steps to better any bad habit/pattern or behaviour.  A useful tool for teaching Dance as a Therapy. 

What is NLP?

Reflective Practice Task 2

The Reflective Practitioner - the 1st steps

Reader 2

Various types of journals

Professional capacity.  My journal over the years contained short written accounts of my travels to various destinations throughout the world.  Notes on resources, contacts, lots of photographic evidence capturing those moments or reminders of that event.  I would use the journal to seek out new ideas and inspiration for dance projects.  It was a form of database.

Personal life.  I have written about personal events that have caused life changing experiences and about how I was feeling at that time and about the process of resolution.

For this task, I have started a different style of journal as I find myself in a completely different place and time and am confused.  I’ve firstly had to find out if there was a difference between reflection-on-action and introspection as I know that I can be pilosiphical in my writting and yes, there is. Introspection is personal, self analysis and has a philosophical aspect. When reflecting you have facts available to you, within your environment and you are trying to understand why they have turned out a certain way.  I found an analogy that helps clarify; ‘For instance if one of our car tires got punctured, reflection would make us conclude that the puncture probably occurred as a result of driving over a nail. Introspection on the other hand would cause us to believe that the puncture no doubt occurred because of the fact that one drove over a nail, but it was as much a result of not being careful and making no attempt to avoid driving over that nail!’
Thus we see that two seemingly similar terms which are so often used in place of each other, have entirely different connotation both in terms of the actual meanings and connotations. Moreover the close similarity and subtle differences between the two terms occur in the IT domain as well where the two terms denote similar yet differing properties.
Summary:
1.The term reflection denotes the act or state of being reflected while introspection has to do with the observation or examination of one’s own mental and emotional state of mind.
2.Reflection implies a fixing of thoughts on something or a thought while in introspection the whole tendency is to self evaluate and measure.
3.In reflection one looks at the facts while in introspection one looks at the philosophical aspects also.

If the above is correct, I think I will find it difficult not to include an introspection aspect. Would this be the  right thing to do?. I will be looking at other reflective journals for inspiration and ideas and also to see if there is an introspective aspect included. Has anyone else found this a confusing task to start?

Professional Communication Technologies Further thoughts

 I am familiar with some web 2.0 tools but since starting on the BAPP course I have learnt about Google Mail, Google Docs and Blogging. I was about to research ‘Delicious’ further as it’s a good social book marking site and I will eventually book mark the links below into it, but I became side tracked.. Google Docs – Cloud computing/concept. I understand this concept. I worked for Virgin Media and our division (Business) conceived and designed some of the routing for the hardware to be connected within large corporations nationally and internationally to one another for information to be collected/collated/pass through the ‘cloud’ concept. I was on the team of the BT N3 NHS project in the UK, connecting ALL government NHS establishments, hospitals, health care centres, GP centres, Dentists etc., to this cloud that stores all our health notes. Information passed through Ethernet products from speeds around 10Mb to 100Mb
http://www.n3.nhs.uk/HowdoI/N3LondonEthernetNextGenerationServices.cfm
In my current Professional capacity, I first thought ‘who would want to collaborate or edit anything that I've written and that I would want to store this information in Google Docs?’ This line of questioning tells me that I have been teaching ‘autonomously’ far too long and that the technology today has made/forced me to become transparent in all we do. I intend to add my research notes at some point. When I was reading about Ulrich et all (2008) who suggests that ‘these services are constantly evolving and that each platform is progressively developed and replaced (what they refer to as the ‘perpetual beta’), I’d not long read about Quora that was launched out of a ‘private beta’ by two former Face Book employees in 2009 What is Quora? “The website Quora is likely to have answers for you, thanks to submissions from its vast community of users, which the service calls “some of the smartest people in the world.” That's another website for us to ‘manage’! Further proof, in the link below, that Gruber (2007) suggests that there are three components of an on line system that support collective intelligence and the benefits that might be gained from the idea that in a web 2.0 platform like Face Book, the fact that there is over 500 million members makes it the valuable and useful tool for social interaction. The owners of Quora are certainly on their way to benefiting financially.

http://www.maclife.com/article/features/what_quora_and_why_should_you_use_it

Harnessing collective intelligence. How can we trust that the facts are correct? We need to be reminded that photographic and video evidence can be interfered/tampered with. Re mixable data & transformations. Valtyssen 2010 ‘suggests that the blurring of the distinctions between the people who make media and the people who consume it encourages people to engage and participate in the media’ Proof of this is that we have become journalists, reporters and media makers, making our own videos reporting the truth or horrors. One such example of reporting are from young people in war torn countries. This ‘platform’ has given us all a ‘voice’ we are now becoming equal and as important as anyone else with intelligence gathering and reporting it..
I intend to use this media to market my business and add a business page.  I have my own web site but need more hits.. I hope to learn about higher web site profile during this course. I currently us Face Book for socialising and was reading the statistics. A question sprung to mind ‘What would FB be like in five years time’ I was inquisitive so I Google’d the question and found a video interview in 2009 with Eric Scmidt, CEO of Google.  His highlighted comments are shown below;
• Five years from now the Internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content.
• Today's teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years - they jump from app to app to app seamlessly.
• Five years is a factor of ten in Moore's Law, meaning that computers will be capable of far more by that time than they are today.
• Within five years there will be broadband well above 100MB in performance - and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away.
• "We're starting to make significant money off of YouTube", content will move towards more video
• "Real time information is just as valuable as all the other information, we want it included in our search results."
• There are many companies beyond Twitter and Face book doing real time.
• "We can index real-time info now - but how do we rank it?"
• It's because of this fundamental shift towards user-generated information that people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Learning how to rank that "is the great challenge of the age." Schmidt believes Google can solve that problem.
• A very compelling interview and worth listening to.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_web_in_five_years.php
I am curious by nature and found the following link about FB. This site mentions Quora and how it would be a good competition for FB. Here is evidence of evolving ideas for improvement. How FB can become bigger in 5yrs than Google is today..
 http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/02/facebook-bigger-google/

In my conclusion I think these new ideas will come to fruition. Having  worked in the Telecoms Industry I was in the midst of the new concepts and designs for evolving and new technologies which are being implemented today.  Live, real time video conferencing for many and varied industries has been in use for quite some time. For example, in education, medical profession, live TV interaction and is happening now in our everyday lives.  Companies will have their day and then go out of existence within a few years. Companies investing in new Technology will be in ‘fashion’ and we all want to at least try out the new technology.  It’s up to us to make an informed choice about the Technologies in our lives. Is it a necessity? We should be responsible enough to allow our young children to dabble with the Internet safely. There is so much going on, I fear we are becoming desensotised.

Re-visiting tasks

I re read the requirements and realised that I hadn't done exactly what was asked.  I have a bad habit of not reading through thoroughly.    I will be posting additional images of my work.. I also need to upload the Audio visual to the BAPP YouTube channel as I have only posted it to my blog. I must take more care in reading the task requirements and take things a little slower.

Task 1c Video Clip

Starting out on BAPP

It's a bit longer than 45 Seconds!!..I think this is funny,  you should see the 'out takes'...

Professional Communication Technology Task 1b

Reader 1

First thoughts about Web 2.0

Does Web 2.0 have a place in my world today? . In deed it is good funnel for research, storage, collaborating, networking, interacting, entertain, be entertained, elaborate, exaggerate, lies, corruption, scheming etc.. One big fusion, one big melting pot..  I will extract what I need when I need it.  We are fortunate to be living in the developing world, we are educated, we socialise, we have freedom of thought or have we after being bombarded with new technology in ways that we can improve our lives, information that we all must have!. We should therefore, be able to evaluate, make good judgements and educated risks within seconds of pressing that ‘send/display/share’ button. Hard to live with it and hard to live without it..

I was reading some of the other student’s blogs and comments and had the same thoughts as Liam about society becoming lazy and becoming less physical.  I see this regularly when taking children’s dance classes how unfit and little stamina they have.  Jessica Hay mentions the difference between seeing a ballet production on TV or video compared to experiencing the real thing and exciting all of our senses. Will we loose some of the use of our senses? Emily Brenchley hit the nail on the head; it is our choice in the end.  Do we sit for hours on end in front of a screen for hours on end, adults at work as well as children at play? Should we? Do we have to?

Since starting BAPP and setting up a Blog, I have never come across the whole concept of Web 2.0.  It is very very clever… A real maze for me though!

New to me is Google Docs or similar and without is it would be difficult to share or publish you work in progress.  Do I want everyone to steal some of my ideas if I’m researching?  Is what I’m researching correct?  Should I trust what I read? Wikipedia is a site I will initiate my research, but I need further proof and justification for cross referencing.

Blogging is new to me too.  I will probably use this more often now.

Flickr or similar sites are great for photo storage and of course ways to make some revenue as a professional.  I enjoyed the outcome of this task but not the process.

Youtube can be fun, entertaining and informative, excellent to broadcast news events but a reminder that horrific scenes can be shared too.

I have looked at other gadget and widgets that can be added to your blogs and web sites and may use them further down the line. For now I still prefer to interact much more with humans face to face, to feel them and so witness their real emotions.  I like the feeling of being alive.

My CV Corinda Hall

Task 1a

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1zTw29vwsdq8KnLLrbZ4Jsa-vhTeFt1-qLROnKuj2z9c

My slide show Task 1d

 I managed it! What a relief! It was bugging me over the weekend, I just couldn't get to grips with the technical side of it. Here are some photo's I managed to upload to Flikr. Mushroom photo's taken by me at night, flowers photo's taken by my husband, I love the bright colours and I love orchids and a couple of modelling assignment photo's taken by my agent. I love hats. It's the first time I've uploaded photo's and turned them into slide show. Is it working? 
I've changed the photos to My Work. 09/10/2011

I've added photo's of my work. Dance in Education in schools, working cross curricular. 1st wedding dance choreographer, Middle Eastern Performer, fun dance workshops for adults.

 

The balance - looking forward to tasks 1c & 1d

Glorious day, just going out for a walk across the fields and woods, need to soak up the sun, filter my cluttered mind and re-charge myself with Negative Ions.  We are all surrounded by electronic equipment, TV, radio, computers, mobile phones, living near high voltage cable lines, walking through shopping malls, etc. and these free radicals need to be eliminated before I attempt the audio-visual and images task. http://www.health-benefit-of-water.com/negative-ions.html  These are exciting tasks for me as I have family members that are knowledgeable in these areas...Did I just say 'exciting tasks' for the audio-visual and images tasks? That means I have to get to grips with more technology...Do we really need all of this technology in our lives? I want a simple life.  If we can get this technology to become even more simplified we can spend less time with our heads in technology and enjoy everything that is free out there in life.  It's a balance..Enjoy your day.

2nd Draft, Task 1a: Professional Profile

I took Liam's advice. I think it looks a little better and not so heavy. Let me know what you think.

 Dance - I want to be like my dance teacher

My first Ballet exam passed was RAD Primary to grade 2. Further ballet exams passed; grades 3 to 6 with the ISTD. Tap Dance exams passed; grades 1 to 3 and Junior Bronze, Silver and Gold and Elementary. I played the Piano Forte, and attained grades 1 to five with Trinity College of Music by the age of 12 years.

After three years on a  Dance Teacher Training Course at ‘The Guildford School of Acting’ I attained Associate and Advanced levels in Greek Dance (Ruby Ginner), and the same for  National Dance. I passed Cecchetti Ballet at Elementary level. Other dance styles covered were; Contemporary and Jazz Dance. I won ‘The best progressive dance teacher’ award in my first year. Other subject studied; Speech and Drama,  exams with LAMDA from grade 5 to silver Medal and Child Psychology

I graduated in 1979 with a ‘Diploma’

 ‘The Corinda Hall School of Dance’, established in 1982 for students to take exams and perform at Arts festivals, events, and competitions. 

I took dance into my community and promoted Dance in local school and colleges. I introduced after school dance clubs.  Welcomed and supported enthusiastically by Head teachers, parents and the local council. 

I was contracted to teach key stages 1 & 2 in at St. Bede’s and St. Anne’s Junior School and key stage 4 at Bishop Challoner School. I devised, delivered and set my own topic projects.

I would collaborate with ‘Arts’ organisations such as ‘Hampshire Dance Trust’, Eastleigh Arts’ and BT Dance’96. An organisation platform for dance groups, clubs and teachers in the community to network and perform their dances

In 1995 I secured a three year contract and given a budget through Hampshire County Council to introduce dance at key stage 3 at ‘The Vyne School’.  End of term performances in collaboration with the Music, Drama and Art departments lead the school to achieve ‘Performing Arts’ status.

In 1997 I secured lottery funding for a community dance project.  I produced, directed and choreographed a musical show with 200 performers.  I managed all the legal administration, theatre design, theatre technicians, licenses, professional guest artistes, marketing and advertising with local and national media was on a bigger scale than I was used to.

In 1999 to retired from teaching dance, I wanted a different challenge. I joined the Telecoms industry. I progressed from Customer Services to Sales & Marketing Manager through to Product Manager.  I was motivated and determined to learn about Systems and Software usage and became a competent user of Microsoft packages up to intermediate level and an understanding of the commercial world of this industry.

At my last company, Virgin Media, I was Support Account Manager.

My duties included; Managing Sales Opportunities (MSO) Management and

Coordination of all provisioning of sales, quotations, orders and billing, presentation

of financial analysis, management of the Business Tracker and a shared target.  

Co-organised and took part in the ‘Three Peaks Challenge’.

My social life included Latin Dancing and started teaching beginners

as a guest teacher.

In June 2010 I became a freelance dance teacher.

My web site is; www.corinda.co.uk  I am currently teaching Dance in Education

in Primary, Junior & Secondary Schools.  My new interest is the

Middle Eastern Dance culture.

I am also a choreographer for First Dance UK. I have some TV and acting experience

on a film set. I have danced in music video’s

I was thrilled to have found BAPP in Arts conversion course.  It will be challenging,

engaging and will give me the opportunity to purse my continuing passion for the Art

of dance. 

I am self motivated, eager, determined, and enthusiastic. 

I value the opportunity to further my education as a mature student and discover

skills needed to become successful in my future career, as Dance Lecturer.

Intense Week - Learning

Wow! It has been intense what with this course and am in my third week of getting to into a routine of teaching dance to 30 children per class and 5 classes per day, two days per week. I established  'Moves and Grooves'(M & G) rather than 'Dance' classes, particularly for some boys.... Behaviour Policy and getting to grips with that, also taking two other classes 'Games' (never taught games) and 'Humanities' the latter of which is class based and topic subject.. Those two subjects were not expected by me, but I rise to the challenge and am enjoying it and learning.  The travelling is painful, one and half hours there and back around from M3, M25.  I had to let my social life go for a few weeks, as these new important elements are going to be in my life for a while.  I did, however, drive another hour and a half after school from where I live in Hampshire to Wiltshire for a rehearsal for a Gypsy/Flamenco belly dance fusion piece to be performed tonight in a trio.. I was so happy to do that and get back to some degree of normality. I am exhausted, but it was my choice to do...Hopefully after the show I will drive to Devon for a weekend break with my family.  I will use this time to do some 'Reader' reading.  Hope you all have a great weekend.

First Draft Professional Profile

I admit I haven't done much reading yet and I'm still getting to grips with blogging and how best to layout my tasks within this media of Web 2.0 tools, it's all the add ons in the technical set up that I'm finding confusing, please feel free to offer advice and suggestions...Here is my first draft of my Personal Profile, I haven't expanded too much and not sure if I should add more to it which will include more names, dates, places etc. I was unsure about showing finance figures and budgets, what should I exclude in this?.There's allot there..

First Draft

WBS3730

Part 1

Task 1a: Professional Profile

I had a very kind and sensitive dance teacher. I passed my first ballet grade exams with the RAD.  Ballet was very challenging, not being able to communicate in English because my first language was Italian, I mimicked the moves to start with. I continued with ISTD syllabus and added Tap Dance and Modern.  My parents realised my love dance and I realised that I had natural rhythm.  I was an introverted child but wanted to keep learning new things.  I started playing the Piano Forte, and attained grade five (Trinity College of Music) by the age of 12 years.  I played the small organ in church, I wasn’t happy with that but did my duty.  I started to formalise my Italian language studies through a teacher from the Italian consulate and attained a valid Italian certificate for study up to Year 6 (age 11). I passed all my dance exams and attended ‘The Guildford School of Acting’ where I enrolled on a three year Dance Teacher Training Course and attained; Associate and Advanced exams in Greek Dance (Ruby Ginner), Associate and Advanced in National Dance. I found Cecchetti Ballet challenging and attained Elementary grade. Other dance styles covered were; Contemporary (Martha Graham), and Jazz Dance. I was delighted to have won ‘The best progressive dance teacher’ award in my first year. I loved choreography.  I would auditioning my peers and enter them for competitions. I was asked to teach Tap Dance to all the students as I was the only one that was working on Elementary syllabus. We studied and took Speech and Drama exams with LAMDA. During my first year I also studied ‘O’ Level Music.  I was invited to join the Musical Theatre course on their tour production for extra experience and to gain confidence in performing. We studied child psychology. This was of great interest to me. ~After graduating in 1979 with a ‘Diploma’ I toured North Africa with a small modern dance troupe.

In 1982 I set up ‘The Corinda Hall School of Dance’, I delivered ballet, tap dance and modern classes for children and adults and enter them for exams. I persuaded and encouraged the students to perform for Arts festivals, events, and charity shows. 

I wanted to take dance into the community and started promoting Dance in local school and colleges. This was very welcomed and supported enthusiastically by Head teachers, parents, the local council and the current mayor of my town.  I introduced after school dance clubs. The feed back was positive and realisation of the beneficial contribution dance makes to students emotionally, physically and in some cases psychologically. At this time, I was contracted to teach key stages 1 & 2 in at St. Bede’s and St. Anne’s Junior School and key stage 4 at Bishop Challoner School where I devised and delivered my own topic.

I would collaborate with ‘Arts’ Organisations such as ‘Hampshire Dance Trust’, Eastleigh Arts’ and BT Dance’96. Organisations such as these gave community dance groups a platform to perform with other groups in the UK .

I would suggest to local theatres, The Anvil and Haymarket, with funding from local council to arrange master classes for local dance students with the professional performers from the show

In 1995 I was contracted for three years to teach dance at ‘The Vyne School’ at  key stage 3.  I was given a budget, this was a wonderful opportunity to bring in out reach workers for different styles of dance to stimulate and influence the students with different styles. Street dance was especially successful for the boys with male professional dance teachers.  End of term performances were arranged in collaboration with the Music, Drama and Art departments. I was delighted to have contributed and helped this school to achieve ‘Performing Arts’ status.  

I would regularly produce, direct and choreograph shows but in 1997 I secured lottery funding for a community dance project.  I produced, directed and choreographed a musical show on a larger scale with 200 performers.  All the administration, legal contracts, designing of costumes, theatre management, technicians, scenery, licenses, music, professional guest artistes contracts, marketing and advertising with local and national media was on a bigger scale.  I realised after that I should have asked for more people to help with this project.  It was after this I retired from teaching due to burn out.  Along side my teaching I had a regular life with two sons and a Professional husband to look after.

In 1999 I made the decision to work for a corporate company to help finance our sons University Education.  I joined the Telecoms industry through my husband’s company. I progressed from Customer Services to Sales & Marketing Manager through to Product Manager.  I was motivated and determined to succeed in this new career path that I endured for several years. There were challenges of learning new skills, such as Microsoft word, excel, power point, the world wide web, at intermediate level and understanding the commercial world of Data and Telecoms Industry.

The last company I worked for was Virgin Media as Support Account Manager.

My duties included; Management and Coordination of all Ethernet & CPC

provisioning, quotations, orders and billing, presentation of financial analysis and

the management of the Business Tracker and a shared target with my account

manager for revenue for Business of £10 million.  I Co-organised the

‘Three Peaks Challenge’. My previous employments were in similar industries.

During that time I studied the Latin Dances socially. I started to teach beginners

as a guest teacher and I concentrated on my technique.  Three years ago I started

Middle Eastern Dance and am now studying the music and culture.

In June 2010 I became a free lance dance teacher.

My web site is; www.corinda.co.uk  I am currently teaching Dance in Education

in Primary, Junior & Secondary Schools,

I am a choreographer for First Dance UK, (wedding dances). I love the challenge

of working in collaboration  with non dance couples to produce a dance

performance for their wedding. The process is immensely satisfying and my

instincts and intuition are at their highest. I have had walk on parts in a

Bollywood Film (Tezz) and had the experience on a film set with Anil Kapoor,

Ajay Davgan, Kangana and Zaheed Khan. Director;Priya Darshan
I danced in a video shoot with 'Smokey Bastards' band with Face TV

(www.facetv.co.uk)

My long term career plan is as Lecturer in Dance. BAPP in Arts conversion course came at

the right time.  It will be challenging, engaging and will give me the opportunity to pursue

my continuing passion for the Art of dance. 

I have tons of experience but haven’t had the opportunity to reflect, analyse

or internalise my skills. I am self motivated, eager, determined, and enthusiastic. 

I value the opportunity to further my education as a mature student and discover

skills needed to become successful in my future career, as Dance Lecturer.

My first meeting with my Academic Adviser

Beautiful sunny day today, I drove up to Trent Park from Hampshire, I didn't sail up without traffic jams and road works so the journey was a little long and painful but when I got within the grounds I instantly began to relax, enjoy and soak up the academic energy that was wafting around the lush, magnificent surroundings and thinking how I'd like to spend time strolling around the grounds, which transported me to some of the outdoor scenes of 'Pride and Prejudice' but reality kicked in ... So I met with my adviser with hope I would get some help, clarity and relieve me from the pain of overload information, confusion and noises in and around my head about the first module.  With my adviser's help a miracle did occur and I managed to put much of my past experiences into compartments to recall for later modules.  ~Well the fog began to clear and I could see what was expected of me..So, I have started my first draught of TASK 1a PROFESSIONAL PROFILE and I'll post it soon. I look forward to your comments, this way I can get to know you as I can't attend most of the Campus sessions due to work commitments.

Corinda: Corinda

Corinda's Lift off!

Hello, I've just set up this blog page and am still learning how to add to it. As a Dance Teacher, I don't often get the chance to link with other like minded people and exchange experiences within the world of the Performing Arts. So, here we are at the off set of my BAPP (BA Honours) Professional Practice course.