Job Done!

It is now finished (well apart from the presentation)!

I have to say that over the cours of this project I have not been the most regular blogger, trying to fit in all the written work with everything else and then spend time blogging did not happen.

I just wanted to say to everyone (if there is anybody out there that reads my blog), you should all be very proud of completing this course and those of you that I have met on campus days and talked through blogging, you have all been a lovely peer group to be part of and I wish everybody on the course the best of luck

Learning Blog Four: Reflection

Having now almost completed the BAPP course I have now come to realise how misconceived I was at the start of the course in relation to how much work would b involved an how much longer full academic writing can take when compared with what I had previously experienced. Before this course I felt that two days was ample time to complete a 2000 word referenced essay as this is what I achieved when doing the written work required for the NQF Level 6 Diploma obtained at Performing Arts College. I have learnt to always try to allow extra time than what you think a piece of academic writing is going to take you as it probably will take longer than you anticipate.

The first term of the BAPP course involved a number of small tasks that were set in order to develop our research, analytical, reflection and writing skills which were necessary experience to prepare us for the writing of our project proposal and the conduction and writing of the research project. These tasks were also a gentle start to learning the time management skills necessary for the later work. Term two at the time felt like being thrown in the deep end of research and academic writing on a larger scale as I had not experienced these before (with the exception of the short task in term one) however looking back it was far better to undertake this steep learning curve at this stage of the degree rather than having to undertake this learning while doing the final research project. However through this I have learnt about a number of different styles of research, how to undertake research (both primary and secondary) within my professional practice and of I can development my teaching skills through research and through looking ‘outside the box’ from the syllabi that I teach and the way that I was taught to teach it within the teaching course provided by the ISTD. Although I found the blogging created a sense of community within myself and my peers throughout the course, enabling us to help each other with problems and provide feedback, I found that I struggled trying to fit this in with the demand of writing my final project, I had to make the decision of what was more important getting the project finished or keeping a regular track of what my peers were doing as I could not fit both in.

I have learnt academically within this project on how to write in a professional academic manor but also how to analyse my own learning in a way that is more than ‘ok in that pirouette my weight was to far back which is why I fell off’. The analysing of the research and deducing the meaning of this is not a skill that I have previously struggled with as this is the type of personality that I have (a tendency to over think things) however the final project in particular I have learned to be more direct with my analysis and to be critical with what I have written in order to fit within a specific word limit. Although the thought of writing a 12,000 word report in the beginning I found quite daunting when I began to write the report I found that I was basically writing 6 shorter essays which were not any longer than those that I had written before. Once I got writing I found that I easily reached the 12,000 word limit and when quite far over this therefore I had to develop my editing skills leaving only the most important relevant information within my report, a skill that I had not previously had to use as this was the first project I had undertaken with a word limit.I have also learnt a number of personal lessons while undertaking this degree course, the most prominent not to take on too much as although I would have considered myself an organised person having to work full time, teaching, do a degree, plan a wedding/ get married, undertook my own dance exams as well as the day to days of life, I found myself not being the prepared person that I always had been. I had to quickly learn to really prioritise my tasks and make sacrifices in areas so that I could achieve what I deemed most important.

My project has had a tangible effect on my professional practice and given me further thought of how I can help the students personally which will help them in life and will remove a barrier that is preventing their success in dance. The project has also shown my employer a different way of working and she witnessed the effect that this project had on the students. This course has ultimately nurtured and provide me with new academic skill and shown me ways of looking at my own professional project and how I can improve myself as a teacher going beyond reading articles provided by the ISTD, the dancing times and going to seminars at ‘move it’ but by actually changing my own teaching practice to see what works, ultimately improving the dance skill and enjoyment of my students but also developing them as people not just as dancers.

Learning Blog 3: Project Summary

The aim of my project was to ‘Asses the effects of the inclusion of creative dance in a private sector ballet class on the students syllabus work’ and the following were the main project findings:

- Creative dance is not a style of dance but rather a process by which dance is created which encourages self- expression and exploration of self, an idea or the social world. Creative dance in essence cannot be neatly defined as it is personal to each dancer.

- The educational approaches taken the ISTD and the Public Sector (State Schools) can be explained by the mission of the ISTD to provide technical training for the dance profession and within state schools the creative educational aims set out by the government.

- That in the situation of Action Research group one the inclusion of creative dance had a positive effect on student’s performance skills within their set syllabi ballet work. In the situation of the Action Research conducted although an improvement in technique was seen this is unlikely to be attributed to the inclusion of creative dance.

- Within the situations of the Action Research and those within the Royal Academy of Dance Case studies the inclusion of creative dance enhanced the student’s enjoyment of dance.

The main benefits of my findings are my enhanced knowledge of creative dance, the conclusion that it is possible that the low confidence in adolescent (self-esteem) can be detrimental to the application of learning. The main benefit I have learnt that within the scope of my professional practice the inclusion of creative dance enhances the enjoyment of the dance education they receive and with younger students a positive effect is seen on the performance skills required for syllabi

Learning Blog Two: Google Docs

Google Docs is an additional function created by the search engine Google in order to be able to store or create documents on the internet. This enables you to access your documents from any computer and or allows you to share your documents with others. In order to be able to use Google Docs it requires a Google email account however on this occasion this did not cause a problem as previously within this course we had to create a Google email account in order to use Google Reader to monitor our peers blogs. The site allows you to apply different share settings to the documents you store on Google; Anybody can access it, Those who have been provided with the link can access it (When a document is uploaded an the share settings selected Google provides you with a link to this webpage of your document which you can email to others), or private settings where you can invite certain people to be able to access your work which requires them to sign in. Google Docs also had the facility to create a range of documents including, Microsoft Word, Excel and Publisher documents.

The concept of being able to access you work from anywhere without the use of a memory stick is useful however the use of Google Docs to store documents I do not believe to be a secure storage of information and in storing any information resulting from my primary research would cause ethical issues as I had not stated the possibility of this being done to the participants within my research. Uploading this information having not informed my participants of this would not have been good ethical practice. I did however use Google Docs to allow my interview subjects to access the ‘Informed Consent Form’ for my project to enable them to read it before the interview (As I had not met in person the subject of my interviews before the conduction). This was an easy, convenient and quick way to provide information to the participants, to ensure that they were fully informed about the project (I took a paper copy to the interview, in order to obtain a signed copy from the participants). Although throughout much of this project I have considered Google Docs an insecure way to store work once my the first draft of my project was submitted (this way an potential leaks of my work onto the internet from Google Docs it could not be brought into doubt if any work was copied from the internet) I found Google Docs useful in illustrating some help that I provided to a peer. The best way to explain to her what I was trying to convey was to provided an example however the work was simply too large to publish on her blog therefore by giving a brief explanation and signposting her to Google docs I was able provide her with advice in an applied way.

For information that is not confidential Google Docs is a useful tool to distribute a document to a number of people and I believe would be useful if a person does not have their own computer from which to work as Google Docs is more reliable than a memory stick which can be lost however due to ethical consideration to obtain feedback on my own project this was not possible.

Learning Blog One: Delicious

The website ‘delicious’ is a social book-marking site which enables you to create internet based bookmarks (much like ones that you can create from a desktop) which can be accessed by yourself from any computer or which others can find. The site delicious enables you to search using keywords for sites that others have book marked. One disadvantage I found with this site was the necessity for a Yahoo email address thus adding to the long list of email addresses I currently have in order use to certain web based applications and for my personal and professional use. Delicious suggests that you can still set up an account using another email provider however I was unable to do this and was forced to create an account with Yahoo. The concept of this facility suggests that it would make it more time efficient to search the internet for sites on specific topics however for the purpose of my research project I found this was not the case. I searched a number of key words relating to my topic which centred around creative dance and dance education hoping to find possible literature that I could reference and would provide useful insight into my topic however all delicious provided was websites for dance schools advertising their dance classes. I utilised delicious finding one website which referred to dancer’s nutrition which I knew one of my peers was researching and therefore booked marked the site to hopefully assist her with her project. The use of delicious was not beneficial towards my research project. I believe that delicious could be improved by being able to add descriptors to the bookmarked website e.g. advertising or academic in order to be able to quickly decipher whether the websites retrieved from the search are worth-while accessing thus making a more time efficient process.

I retain the notion that the concept of delicious sounds as though it would be a time-saving tool for searching the internet however I did not find this the case and do not consider it a research tool beneficial during the research for my project.