Task 2D Inquiry

Task 2D asks us to look inward at different ideas of reflection that relate to me and what goes on generally in my professional practise. I am going to approach this task by answering the questions suggested to us.

What in your daily practise gets you really enthusiastic to find out more about? Who do you admire who also works with what makes you enthusiastic?

• What gets me enthusiastic in my daily practise are my weekly dance lessons and singing lessons.  I love continuously learning, progressing and improving my professional practise. I think it is so important to never stop and become complacent but always push yourself  to get better and go further. I really look forward to going to my evening dance lessons knowing at the end of a hard ballet or contemporary class for example I will come out feeling positive, stronger and better in my practise. I love choosing a song that at the time is hard and out of my reach and working on these in my singing lessons. Taking frequent lessons and feel the song getting easier and easier until I have finally nailed it! Working hard at my lessons to then See feel and hear improvements in my professional practise, that is what gets me really enthusiastic  and pushes me to want to learn more!

I really admire my dance and singing teachers For this. I believe having a good teacher is very important to learning and progression. My teachers are always so enthusiastic, energetic and encouraging in class. They know what I'm capable of and what my limits are and they push me to constantly get the best out of me in the correct way. They are encouraging yet honest. They criticise and correct in a positive encouraging manner. I really admire the patience and time teachers have and the genuine want in them to see you improve. I am very grateful for all the dance,singing and drama  teachers I have had over my years of professional training as they are the people who have encouraged and nurtured my passion for musical theatre.

What gets you angry or makes you sad? Who do you admire who shares your feelings or has found away to work around the sadness or anger?

• What gets me really upset and angry in my professional practise is the pressure for dancers and performers to be "perfect". The vanity of my industry sometimes disgusts me especially the pressure to b "skinny". I see more and more at every audition very skinny unhealthy looking girls. They look so frail and lack energy. I have been surrounded by it on every contract I have worked on so far. There is always one or two girls in the team body image obsessed. Every moment of the day checking how many calories are in their cereal bar, counting everything   they eat and panicking when they eat 'too much' they must rush to the gym and do 1000 sit ups   or even worse throw up.  It is so upsetting to watch these girls live this way when they are perfect just the way they are. It is such a horrible body image obsessed industry, we are starting to forget why we actually do what we do. Performing is about passion,performance, talent, not about size zero perfect and pretty! 

The people I admire who share my feelings on this situation are the celebrities who promote embracing yourself for who you are, no to size zero campaigns and are happy to be photographed with no makeup on. I admire them as they have the power to influence young girls who look up to them and admire them in magazines and they are promoting the right message! An example of this is beyonce, she is constantly discussing embracing your curves and also discusses air brushing and how no one is perfect. Here is a link to a small clip I read with beyonce's views 

Bootylicious us better than size zero!
I feel this could be a very interesting line of enquiry I would like to peruse in the future!

What do you love about what you do? Who do you admire who also seems to love this or is an example of what you love? 

What I love about my job is the fact it is my passion,my hobby,it's what makes me happy,it's what I'm good at and I get payed to do it!! Not many people can say they truly love their job and its their passion. Not many people get up in the morning excited about going to perform two shows in a day and getting payed for it! Every time I have a successful audition and gain a new contract I am so thankfully and think myself so lucky to be able to call it my job. I admire everyone in the same industry as me as although we are very lucky to be able to do what we do it is not easy at all as we face a lot of rejects and criticism. Daily you go through the process of looking up auditions, attending auditions with hundreds of other girls all fighting for only 4 jobs available, then facing the rejection when you are simply told "your not what we are looking for,sorry!". What do you feel you don't understand? Who do you admire who does seem to understand it or who has found a way of making not understanding it interesting or beautiful, or has asked the same question as you? Following on from my previous paragraph when I talked of rejection at auditions, what I don't understand in my profession is the question you always leave asking yourself..."why did she get the job and not me" and what exactly do they mean when they say "sorry your just not what we are looking for!" Then what exactly are you looking for?! If only we could see into the casting directors heads or they had time to explain to you exactly why, after getting to the final you are not what they are looking for but the other girl with brown hair is. These things we just have to smile and accept and try and find ways to understand ourselves by reflection and self analyses. In these situations I admire my agent. When I call her after being cut at an audition, or I am not called in for an audition I really wanted she provides me with feedback or just a reassurance that something else will come up. She assures me of others going through the same situation and that things will definitely get better and I have to keep fighting.

Task 2C

I think I have finally completed task 2c after menu attempts and re writes!
Please find my link to task 2C here and feel free to leave any comments! Thanks x

Task 2c My Critical Reflection on Reflective Practise

What idea do I like and why?? Unpicking the layers of understanding...

I like the idea of muscle memory. That after several times doing a routine dancers start to rely mainly on their body remembering the routine and not their mind. The mind tends to switch off and the body in turn takes over. We put all our trust into our muscles remembering the dance steps as our mind drifts elsewhere.

Why do I like this idea?

I like this idea as I find it fascinating that the body can remember what it has done previously. As a dancer I take it very much for granted but when I stop to think about it I do find it fascinating. My mum will ask me after every contract "but how do you remember all those routines?!" And that I cannot explain to her in words. All I can say in response is "I just do!" My body just knows what is coming next which as a dancer is a a great tool to have!

I also like this idea as once you can rely on your body to remember the routine you can really start to enjoy what you are doing and feel what you are doing. From experience I know that when I go on stage and over think every step, every count, every piece of music, that is when I make mistakes! But when I shut off my mind and let my body take over then I can really enjoy what I am doing and feel and perform every move I make instead of over thinking and panicking which ruins my performance.

By unpicking the layers of why I like the idea of muscle memory I have discovered I find it fascinating because it makes me feel instead of think! I no longer as a dancer take muscle memory for granted, I understand it has a major impact on my performance which is hugely important in my profession.

"On-line" and "off-line" reflection...... The views of Robert Kottcamp.

Kottcamp views reflection-in-action as 'on-line' and reflection-on-action as 'off-line'. He Ali outs forward the statement that reflection-in-action is harder to achieve and as a dancer I very much agree with him. In my professional practise I use reflection-in-action frequently and although reflecting in the midst of action is not difficult to me I believe it is the harder of the two. 'On-line' is more difficult to achieve as the practitioner must continue with performing the action they are undertaking while at the same time analyse,observe and evaluate their work from an external point of view e.g as a dancer the point if view of the audience - has the action I've taken been noticed? Does it still look correct?

On the other hand an academic practitioner for example someone from a mathematical background would use 'off-line' reflection. Having time to go home perhaps and review, analyse and plan their action for the future which to me sounds a lot less stressful and much simpler!

Getting my head around reader 2.... My initial thoughts!

When first looking over reader 2 I was speechless, I thought to myself I will never understand this! But I persevered, took some notes, read and re read certain areas and slowly I think some of it is starting to digest! (I hope) I have started to understand and appreciate that we can use reflection as a tool in our daily lives to help us learn and develop and become a better practitioner. By having an experience and reflecting upon it we can develop new ideas. I have also come to realise that I have already been using reflection unconsciously  and quite frequently in my professional practise every day!

Here are my initial thoughts and feelings on several different practitioners views of reflection:

Dewey - John Dewey believed there were different levels of experience from which we can learn. Dewey talks of ''reflective thought" being engaged and aware of our experiences so we can reflect upon them and find meaning from them for ourselves. Dewey has made me realise that I have to take more time out to reflect and review on my daily experiences if I want to learn more and develop in my professional practise. I have a habit of cramming too much in to my days leaving me no time for myself never mind to reflect! By starting my journal it has given me that time out to write and think and get more out of my days. Especially days i may see as being a waste of time or boring or i think nothing happened, by writing down the events and my thoughts and feelings I have managed to pull positive learning points from each if them.

Kolb - David Kolb looks at experience and learning through the idea of a learning cycle. I really liked the idea of a cycle as I felt it was an easy and straight forward way to understand experience. His cycle has four entry points concrete experience (doing/having an experience) Reflective Observation (reviewing/reflecting on the experience Abstract Conceptualisation(concluding/learning from the experience) and Active Experimentation 
(planning/trying out what  you have learned) He understands that we are all different and learn in different ways so the point in which we enter the cycle will be individual and we will all have our own personal learning style.I think from reviewing Kolbs learning cycle and understanding at which point you personally enter the cycle is a great tool for reflecting and understanding how to approach your experiences.

In the reader we are asked "At which point in Kolbs cycle do you feel you enter?" By reflecting on how we learned to start our blogs.  I feel I used a couple of points in Kolbs learning cycle but believe I entered the cycle at Abstract Conceptualisation - I used the reader to help me set up my blog initially and also looked upon videos on YouTube for first setting up my gmail account.  I then progressed on to Active Experimentation - using trial and error and going back to change areas several times until I was completely satisfied with my set up.

From reviewing Kolbs learning style I believe that with every different experience we have our point in which we enter the learning cycle (our learning style) will change as we do not always approach  everything in our lives the same way!

Gardner - Howard Gardner discusses the idea of multiple intelligences. I like Gardners idea as he highlights the point we are not all the same. We are all individuals and we all engage with understanding and learning in a different ways. I believe personally As a dancer i am a VKA learner ( Visual,Auditory and Kinaesthetic. I mainly learn from visual movement, listening to lyrics or counts to learn choreography and by trial and error with my body. I will throw myself in to moves while learning a dance to see if I can do them or my body is capable of them, I guess that can also be linked again with Kolbs active experimentation point in the cycle.

Schon - I found Donald Schons idea if reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action very interesting. His theory of reflection-in-action I can very much relate to as I do this a lot in my professional practise. As a dancer we all know things can go wrong while on stage and we are very disciplined that the 'show must go on'. we do not have time to stop and think and we cannot let the audience know something has gone wrong. For example if you are about to go into a dance break and you notice one of the dancers has just ran off due to a costume malfunction you automatically re space and re adjust the number on the spot to fill the empty space. Another example would be when you are left on stage without a partner or made to cover someone who is injured on the spot, as a trained dancer you do not run off to think about what you are going to do to fill the counts, you must think on the spot - this to me is reflection-in-action! Reflection-on-action is an idea most used by academics who have the time to go home and conceptualise and look back at what they have done or need to do. This all links in nicely with Dewys theory that time has a big impact on how we reflect on experience, wither we engage in the 'present' or the 'future'. As a dancer I engage in the 'present'. Polanyi - I love the quote from Michael Polanyi when he wrote "I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell". There are so many occasions in life where we know what we mean but just can't explain it! I can't explain how my body knows and remembers how to run, skip or leapt just does. I believe knowledge cannot always be spoken or written. Knowledge to me can also be a feeling, a sense, something your body remembers and knows - muscle memory as a dancer is a great example of that. Ok so that was my breakdown of reader 2 so far, next I will tackle Kottcamps views and slowly start to piece all I have learned from this reader together in the next task to write my critical reflection!! Wish me luck! Please as always feel free to comment!! :)

Task 2b continued...

To conclude my journal writing experience so far I would say the methods which suited me best personally where description and evaluation. I enjoyed both these writing styles while writing my reflective journal as they felt very natural and open and honest to me. Giving me the freedom to think more and learn from my thoughts.  I think with these two methods combined I have found a winning writing style for me.....eventually!

Task 2b my journal writing experience so far...

Ok so as I said in the previous blog when I first read that we had to start keeping a journal I was a little scared. Naturally i am a big thinker actually an over thinker really, sometimes I find it difficult to shut my brain off with all the 'what ifs?' and worrying! But to have to put these thoughts out on paper and reflect on them to try and make so e sense of them was a difficult task at first. So to begin I decided to do as suggested and take a different approach and method each day to my writing. Here is how I got on...

Description - I felt this method was very helpful especially when starting out for the first time journal writing. Describing what happened and where and when really helped me to get my thoughts out initially and to get started writing but, but that was about as far as it went. Once I started writing I felt I wanted to write more, explain more and in more details so that when I look and reflect backin the  future it makes sense. But with this method I felt held back and unable to progress my thinking further.

Initial reflection - this method came very natural to me and describing my mood and feelings on events from that day really helped me open up and be more aware. I became more aware of how I did actually feel about certain events which took place as I was made to ask myself what mood has this put me in? What emotions has it stirred up? The only thing lacking in this method is description of event and time which I feel is needed when looking back at a piece of your written work in the future.

List - writing lists is another natural method for me as it seems everyday I am writing lists! To do lists, shopping lists, work lists etc but for a reflective journal personally I didn't find it useful for me. I ended up with a long list of bullet pointed words! Words for feelings,emotions,places and times which just now makes perfect sense to me but looking back it won't . What did work though was        making an extended list of things I achieved things I want to achieve and things I'm glad I did and    learned from. But all in all I don't think list making in this sense is for me.

Evaluation - I loved this method! I felt I could really explore my day and dig into my thoughts a lot more. By asking myself what went well today? What worked and what did not? I felt it was a great way to reflect and grow personally at the end of the day. As they say, you learn from your mistakes and writing in this style really helped me do so. It also helped me to b proud of what I achieved in that day by really thinking and discussing what went well that day and why. I believe I will use this method again.

Graphs,Charts and Diagram - I did not feel this method worked for me. Like list making I was left with a lot of words on my page which when I looked back on did not help me to reflect on my day. I was more concerned about making my chart neat and pretty than my actual thoughts!

What If? - what if really got me thinking creatively which felt nice to use my imagination again, but it also felt very unrealistic. I was imagining sinariose and creating situations which did not happen and which I would like to happen. Writing about feelings and emotions I might feel but not what I did feel. Reflecting on things which did not happen personally did not feel write for me. On a positive note though, after experimenting with this method it has encouraged me to write lists of what my goals and  dreams are and things I want to achieve wether it be on a daily,monthly or yearly basis! This method has helped me to be one more positive in my career.

Another View - this method of journal writing I found almost impossible to start! I am a huge over thinker in life with a lot of feelings and emotions and to try and see these thoughts and feelings through the view of another object in the room at the time I found very difficult to comprehend. This method did not work for my personally as when looking back at what I had wrote while practising this writing style I felt awkward and untrue to myself.

Have I finally figured flicker out??

I hope by clicking on this it will take you to my photos.... Fingers crossed!!

http://flic.kr/s/aHsjEibyY3 

Task 2a starting my reflective journal....

So after completing task 1 and when I went on to read task 2 I must admit I freaked a little! I found it all very confusing at first read of the mammoth reader and the thought of keeping a journal scared me a little. Where do you start? What's right and wrong? Is there a right and wrong way?! I've decided I guess there is no wrong way, the whole experience and learning process behind it is personal and you work in a way which suits you. So for the past week I have tried the different methods suggested in the reader to see which one suits me best,which style I feel comfortable writing in and will helpme develop   further with my reflective thinking.

I will break down each method I tried in my next blog and explain personally what I felt worked for me and what did not.

Task 1c. starting out in BAPP

Talk 1b... My initial thoughts on Web 2.0

When Web 2.0 was first mentioned in the course handbook I had no idea what it meant, it was a brand new concept to me as I admit I am not the biggest computer genius out there!

After reading the "Professional Communication Technologise" reader I have came to realise that although I thought I had no clue what Web 2.0 was it turns out it is a huge part of my day to day life! Every time I log into Facebook, google to find auditions, upload a showreel to YouTube or research a song for my rep I am using Web 2.0 and I have to admit it has been a huge help to me with my career. For example without the help of YouTube and email I would not have been able to upload my showreel and send the URL address to countless amounts of agencies and employers while trying to obtain a job and further my career.

Another great advantage to social media is the networking opportunities. With Facebook for example I can "friend" casting directors and agencies etc which then allows me the freedom to search their page for auditions, and other useful information. Facebook has also been a huge advantage to me while working abroad on ships helping me stay connected with friends and family but also keeping me in the musical theatre networking loop so I don't loose track of what's going on while I am away.

I believe Web 2.0 can be successfully used to enhance and develop learning of new Technologise  which will in turn help us to become a better practitioner if we use the tools provided correctly and to our advantage. I think social media can be good for research and learning, it allows active participation and encourages creativity. This is backed up when we read Lorenz's txt where he talks of the advantages of Web 2.0 "you are not limited to receiving information - you can comment, collaborate and create your own content" This can also lead in to Bruns theory of "Produsage" where we are both producer and consumer of content.

However like everything else along with its advantages come disadvantages. I agree with Lorenzo when he talks of being "Net Savy"  and when he says "students need to understand that their freedom to publish whatever they want online comes with responsibility" I agree with this hugely with things such as Facebook if your employers or potential employers are able to access your Facebook, the information written on their can reflect badly on you if you are not professional,careful and selective about what is publicly written.

I also pose the question, is social media taking over our lives?  Although it is great to catch up with friends over a computer quickly, is it creating a new generation of people who are lazy and have lost the art of social communication, person to person meetings. I know personally I would rather meet up with my friend in Starbucks and discuss her boyfriend troubles rather then constantly send private mail messages back and forward over Facebook. I fear sometimes we are loosing real relationships and our personal identity over social media.

Also when being "net savvy" and using Web 2.0 we must realise when doing research not all information provided is positive and correct. We have the semantic web where all information is authorised and checked but we also have the social web like Wikipedia which is shared information from different sources and it may not always be correct or helpful to us.

In conclusion I think Web 2.0 is brilliant and I could not be without it now as I do use it daily for work,developing my career,networking and socialising etc but asking as we are "net savvy" and do not loose ourselves completely behind a computer screen we will continue to benefit from it greatly.