Inspirations

After reading Lauren's blog on inspirational people the other day it got me thinking - hence this blog (Thank you Lauren - I've posted her link here in case you haven't read it. http://laurenhoskins92.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/my-inspirations_22.html)

On being asked the question "Who inspires you?" can you really pin point one person? is there really one critical person that has influenced every aspect of your life so far? - Personally I don't think so I think that are many people who are inspirational and influence to each part of your life whether it be your career, personal life, Dance, Singing, Choreography etc.

Reading Lauren's blog took me back to when I was younger. After reading the blog I vividly remember being asked to do a piece of English work for school. (I was maybe 12 at the most) Anyway, this piece of work was to write about an inspirational person and to the present it in front of the class. As you would expect most people did their favourite pop star or band or Actor. However I did not.

I remember writing an essay on my dance teacher - who will remain nameless and now is a very close friend, but I clearly remember spending hours writing this long detailed essay as to why she was such an inspiration too me. Now if I look hard enough I do probably have the piece of work still somewhere, but I remember putting in words such as "Inspiring" "Believes in me" "brings out the best in me" and so on and so on. I remember standing up in front of the class and my fellow class mates just looking at me thinking why is this woman such an inspiration we don't even know who she is!? but at the time that is who my inspiration was - and one of the main reason I have gone into a career of teaching dance.

I clearly remember after I had completed the work giving her a copy to read for herself to keep. Now you may wonder where I am going with this but just bare with me.

So at work the other day after teaching a pre school class, one of the little ones came and flung her arms round me and said "I want to be like you Miss when I'm a big girl" and that got me thinking and too me on a major flash back. I was once that child who thought that their dance teacher was the most important and most inspirational person too them. Which made my week.

So you may be asking why have I written this? Well many of us on this course are teachers of Dance, Drama the Arts or maybe you are professional performers with younger siblings, but the point to remember is that we in some shape or form of our work are an inspiration to someone somewhere!

 

Road Trip to Campus - 22nd March

So yesterday morning, myself and Andrea (module 3) set off nice and early (I probably wouldn't add the bight and breezy till about 10am!) for the long drive down to campus for the all module session. After a steady 3hour 30min journey - Add in an extra hour driving round in circles looking for a parking space we finally got in to campus safely with a cup of tea in hand.

Now initially I was thinking - I hope driving all this way is going to be beneficial. I had visions of going all that way and not actually benefitting from it, my partner was also very reluctant to the fact I was going. "Can't you just skype in? Do you really need to drive all that way?" However I couldn't have been more wrong!

Firstly came the indroductions and  it was really interesting to see the diversity of everyone's back grounds and what everyone does. It was also really nice for face to face cominication rather than just distant skype voices! and to actually meet Paula and speak to her in person I found a great benefit.

Now we played a few games yesterday, but the one that has stuck with me is the twenty squares. We got given a sheet of paper with twenty blank sqares on and we had a minute to fill the squares with anything. I found it extremely interesting to see what different people did and how people interpreted the task differently. Now I just filled my squares with random words and pictures. All positive happy things such as "fun" and a picture of the sun. Now Andrea took a different spin. She had taken the theme of what we were talking about during our introductions to each other so for example "Arts" and "BAAP" Contrastingly Lisa who was sat next to Andrea filled the squares with all stars but tried to make some kind of pattern and then in turn found out that she had filled all twenty squares. This is something that I would be interested to do with students as an introductory in Arts Award lesson just to see how different people work differently.

Another thing that has stuck with me from yesterday was the "Concept Drawing" - Now this is something that I did find difficult - VERY difficult. How was I going to get across a concept to a group of people that I barely knew only using lines and for one of a better word doodles. Now I decided to go with the concept of beginnings and endings, using a sunrise and sunset as my inspiration, and in all honesty I didn't have a clue where to start! I sat and thought for a while and decided the beginning is a good thing, so went for open shapes with no shading which felt "nice to draw" for endings I decided to go for harsher shapes stronger lines with a little shading (well as much as I could manage with a biro ;)) and after struggling thorugh I did have some kind of end product. Now I understood what it meant, but I'm not sure that I did get the idea across to the rest of the group, but it is something that I am interested in looking into and maybe using in future as an inspirational tool or even for just keeping notes. (I will post a picture of my end product in a future blog for you to all have a look and and admire my art work ;) )

The most helpful thing of the day I found was having time to speak to other people on Module one and with Paula, so we could discuss how we were all about the course so far and the feeling of being "A bit Lost" and "up in the air" were a few phrases thrown about, but it was extremely reassuring to hear from the module 2's and 3's that they felt exactly the same in the beginning and that it will settle down eventually. Reassuring word from Laura who was skyped in from Germany.

Also having good conversations with my fellow module 1's (Grace and Maddy) was also a great help!

So after a very successful session my self and Andrea set off on the long journey home. Stopping via Nottingham for food and a rest!

After an extremely long day was it useful? Deffinatly! was it worth the drive?  yes! I know feel like I am focussed on track and know where I am going with it all. We were encouraged yesterday to take photographs however I only actually managed to get one snap! Looking forward to hearing how other people found yesterday!

Is technology actually harming our children's learning?

With the development of Web 2.0 and all it's technology and all our "Smart devises" I thought I would try do some research on previous articles that have been present in the news.

So I know that this article that I am about to share with you is more about education in general rather than being specific to the "Arts" however I thought it was an interesting article, find the link below;


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34252598

Now I have to say, I think I agree. The way the children are talking about the use of technology making lessons "fun" which "yes" lessons should be I agree with that, but is it sad that technology has such a massive impact in education today?

Should teachers use technology in every lesson? - Should children learn that technology and the web can not assist them in every aspect of life?

I'm not saying that it isn't a fantastic tool and in cases can be brilliant, but I do think children should know how to use a text book, how to reference properly. How to write a bibliography. I know I have blogged about this before, but I would love to hear other peoples opinion, especially if you work in an educational environment?

Have a watch of the video if you have the time!

Reflections - is it useful?

After briefly scanning "Reader 2" I did question why would I want to keep a reflective journey? I have many other things that I have to remember in a 24 hour time bracket never mind adding more!!! Anyone else feel a little like this?

Anyway I decided that I would make a list of pros and cons towards it here are a few below;

Pros:
* you can visualise what you have achieved that day/week
* helps you keep a track of what stil needs to be done
* a daily record that you can keep looking back on and refer too in the future
* interesting to see how much you actually do in a day- do you need to do more/less?
* a way for you to personally express feelings where it doesn't matter as its for your personal use

Cons
* time consuming
* if it's been a bad day is it just better to forget "tomorrow is a new day"
* do we need extra stress of jotting things down?

Now as you can see, I have got more pros than cons and I am going to give it a go and I will report back in a future blog as to how I find it, however I would love to hear if you find it a helpful tool to use. Honestly I am a little sceptical but always open to new ideas and ways of working.

What do you see? - The Power of Images

On my previous post I started to think about different ways of communication - referring back to the struggle of the use of "neutral tone" that we seem to have, what way then really is the best way to communicate? What do you think?


Now I am a fan of instagram, I think it's a great way of sharing pictures and memories for others to see, but do we all interpret the picture the same way? I'll give you an example.

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https://www.instagram.com/laurajayne1412/ - The link to my instagram

So I actually saw this image posted on Facebook, but I decided that after the day I had just had, the words were extremely relevant. Now you'd be surprised how many texts I received from concerned friends who were really worried that something terrible had happened. Now I was completely fine, I am currently just preparing a production at school and it had just been an extremely stressful rehearsal, but you can understand how images such as this can very easily be miss interpreted.

So are images as powerful as we think. Professionally I think they are a great and helpful tool. Especially for advertisements and promotions, leaving the consumer on the edge as to what may come after the image, but are they an effective form of communication professionally and socially? I'm not sure, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.

So many meanings ....

I'm not sure if it's just me, but how many of you double and triple check text messages/Emails to see if you think the message that you have intended to give will get across, or will it be "lost in transit" "miss read" "miss Interpreted"




Does this sound familiar? and again leads me on to the question of do we need all these electronic communications and the development of Web 2.0? Does this "high tech" equipment actually lead to further miss communication? which can then lead  to tension between friends colleagues as we could potentially be in this situation professionally and socially.


During a discussion I had last week, the use of "neutral tone" was brought up quite a lot - meaning read the words as they are on the page, but do we ever honestly do this? - I know I don't.


I'll give you an example; So a simple question via email/text "Where were you last night?" can be interpreted in a number of different ways! Is the person being concerned? are they being nosy? Are they being off hand? you just don't know - and this is my point.


Sometimes online communication can cause so much upset stress and unnecessary hassle - again both socially and professionally. Now I am often quite partial to an episode of "Jeremy Kyle" whilst doing odd jobs and how many times do you hear "Well .... posted it on Facebook!" Is this what the development of Web 2.0 was for? hassle and upset? - I don't think so


I mean I am all for emails and texting and everything it's convenient fast and effective and yes, the majority of the time does not cause the extra hassle, but it does sometimes make me wonder, what has happened to having a face to face meeting. I hear it all the time at work "Oh we don't need a meeting, I'll just send you an email" Have we lost the ability to communicate face to face?


I'd love to hear thoughts and opinions on this!

Digesting and thinking

So, after spending much time reading "Reader 1" and doing some research. I'm thinking why? Why was there a need for this drastic change from "Web 1.0" to "Web 2.0" What changed in society that made us want to socially interact with each other through the internet? Is it just a sign of the times? The way things are developing? I don't know

I found it astonishing that just over 10 years ago (2004) there were only "1500 Facebook members" What has changed to make such the dramatic increase in members in a relatively short space of time? Is it society that is pushing the use of social media both professionally and socially? Or is it just easy? Now a days most of us have quick easy access to tablets, laptops, smart phones does this make socialising through the web easier? I think so.

When I first embarked on the course to find that blogging was a massive part of it, I was astonished. Coming from completing a Foundation Degree which consisted of essays and a lot of set written tasks with a strict clear structure and not much room for my own thoughts and opinions. To this where I can question and think about my decisions and findings. After reading the "O'Reilly article" it is now beginning to make sense that the development Web 2.0 has been revolutionary especially through blogging "One of the highly touted features of Web 2.0 is the era of blogging"

I know many of you have not really blogged before (myself being one of them) however I have to admit that I am finding it an extremely useful tool to express my thoughts and feelings along with being able to connect and read what others write and get feedback on things.

So, I am starting to understand the change from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 - and the benefits that we get from it. However have these changes been necessary? I'd love to hear your thoughts.