John Green - The Test - capacity to make connections.

Welcome to the start of MAPP  - Week 1 of this term
Please read and watch and comment below so we can start a conversation...

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

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

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



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

Tuesday Skype - learning in and as Professional Practice

In this Skype discussion we talked about the learning, knowledge, skills and information. We discussed the idea of learning from experience/ from doing/ from practice. In Module One you are developing a context for the learning you have derived from your practice.

We talked about discourses in learning and education that separate Theory and Practice or set up academic and vocation as different values. This discourse is a part of the field your discussion your learning reside in too.

We also talked about the importance of discussion for learning. This following video engages with the idea that discussion creates different understanding or learning...
The blogs in this course are where discussion happens for us... (discussion with yourself and with each other).

Please comment below...

Reflections on AM & PM discussion group...

This morning’s discussion group had a focus loosely around Knowledge and learning which also brought us to talking about reflection, the significances of experience, longevity of teaching, and the fluidity of knowledge.

I was interested in the space’ between our perception of our own learning (where we are the learner and how we expect the learning experience to feel, what we expect teaching to look like) and our perception of our students learning (where we are the teacher what we expect our students of absorb from our teaching and how we expect it to be absorbed).

Is there a disconnect between these two perceived roles? How does one inform the other? Is our idea of how we expect to learn different from how we expect our students to learn?

I often think about how much I am asking of my students (particularly beginners) to put themselves in situations where they do not know how to do something or it feels impossible. When I take a yoga class I also sometimes feel it will be impossible to do – or I don’t know how I will even have the energy to stand up to do it – I make myself remember and recognise that feeling of impossibility and trust in ‘just doing one step at a time’. This gives me more inspiration in my own practice because I see my own feeling of overwhelm and subsequent pushing through it as a reminder of what it feels like to be learning. I do not like to ask my students to engage in a feeling that I am no longer familiar with myself.

In the PM group we talked about different ideas that people were toying with within their practices. See comments for links to blog posts on this. We also noticed that you might respond quite differently to an idea when you have your Professional Hat on (such as dance teacher) from when you have your Student Hat on. The interest is again in how you inhabit a space between these roles. How you bring together these knowledges and experiences to support the exploration of new ideas, new learning.

Have a look at the comments below to link into what other people in the conversation felt…

Also, please comment below if you were not in the conversation to keep the topic going.

Sorting information and aiming Knowledge

Thinking about information, learning and knowledge: I am considering why people get so up-set when they don't feel things are clear straight away. A 'Google' expectation that if you ask you should get 'the answer'. If the answer doesn't make sense then there is something wrong with the the 'thing' /person giving you the answer and you have to draw attention to the issue. This is a new phenomena, I think, of expecting information to be knowledge. It involves by-passing any uncomfortable feeling of 'not knowing' - outsourcing the sorting of ideas to the thing or person you are asking...
This Ted talk discusses this further -
What do you feel?

February 12th chats

Sundays chats.

A lot of both chats were about ‘truth’ and answers. We talked about how ‘learning’ has slowly slipped into ‘information gathering’. The student is given information and then at the test you re-tell the information. So as a student your job becomes gathering the correct information in order to re-tell the correct things to get the grade to pass the course – like a little treasure hunt. But what then?

This course is not about that. It is about critical thinking and reflection. So there are no answers just better and better questions. It is not to be annoying it is because we are coming from a humanities background – dance - where truth is perceived or felt. It is not fixed.  We literally can not tell you an answer because there isn’t one. There is every answer, and no answer.

So we were thinking about how one avoids repeatedly falling into the rut of looking for someone to tell us what to do, and most importantly not feeling lost when there doesn’t seem to be someone to tell you. Also about how the loudest ‘voice’ is not the voice of authority. It is, after all, not what is being said but how you are hearing it that gives things meaning.  

We talked about how reflective practices support education. Also about developing dialogues particularly the importance of developing conversations across the MAPP community not in order to come to a consensus of what you have to say to pass but to tap into the ideas and knowledge that is held across all the experiences colleagues on or running the course have between them.

We talked about the ethics of 1^st person ‘v’ 3^rd person writing. How 3^rd person implies a kind of Grand Narrative or truth that everyone shares. How 1^st person lays bare the idea that you are talking about perceptions and experiences. Then some people commented that in the past they have been criticised for being opinionated. But a writer can be opinionated whether they are writing in 1^st or 3^rd person. It is their opinion after all. The problem is not that you have an opinion it is only have a concept of one opinion and only writing from that one opinion in 1^st or 3^rd person. The antidote to being opinionated is being reflective we decided.  

Here are summaries people said made into a poem:

A little Breath

Self-study and finding your way.

Writing a blog post every other day.

Reflective practices: different approaches to be

A student, a teacher, a part of the dance community.

Don’t have to be told what to do.

Sharing experiences that are part of you.

New ideas, new perspectives on for the ‘truths’ in what you explore.

An approach to learning without anticipating what is behind each door.

Have a look at what other people in the conversations said.

http://brandonleesears.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/mapp-dtp-beginnings.html?m=1

http://helenkindred.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/a-little-bit-of-breath.html

https://barbarabesque.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/different-approaches.html

https://dixieogivar.blogspot.no/2017/02/hello-everybody-after-skype-meeting.html#comment-form

http://ruthellend.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/following-our-early-evening-skype.html

http://rebeccajones87.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/how-to-move-on-to-next-module-what.html#comment-form

https://parimalamapp.blogspot.com/2017/02/12022017-back-in-action-module-two.html

Please leave comments here and with each other 

Adesola

Connections

A quick write-up of today's great conversations:

Distance:
distance = disconnect to distance = perspective

Technique:
I tell my students 'technique is the vehicle that will help you to dance and help you to keep dancing'. This course is teaching technique too look out for it. It is what will help you to do the expressive part. Don't see each module as a 'thing' with 'things' in it see it as part of building a technique that you will continue to use after the course is finished.

Trust:

Read the blogs and past blog posts, look at what you have done in other modules, look at other module handbooks.

Perfect:
If you woke up on Monday with the perfect question, or data,  or job description or etc... what would you do the rest of the week or the rest of your life?? If you were perfect where would all the fun be!! and the rest of us imperfect people would miss you.

Be flexible:

Tara in the comments below please give the citation for the book you talked about (flexible and fixed teaching methods).

Its a process.

Explore our learn community blogs for other peoples posts on the conversations.

What do you feel?

Adesola

Shifting grounds and opening doors - Group SKYPE chat 6th

On Sunday we had our first ‘first Sunday of the month’ skype chats of the term!!!

The AM chat was a little lonely – we want to encourage some more people in morning chats to talk to those whose time zone doesn’t permit the evening one. We also talked about commenting on blogs and getting the Linked-in discussion group moving. All these modes of discussion are important to the learning community you are joining when you are in MAPP. Blog posts and blog comments don’t have to be long to still share ideas and give valuable feedback / insights. It seems to be something a few people are feeling i.e. keep up the communication with each other.

In the PM chat we had more people and we talked about:

The idea of starting back, picking up ideas and observing our own changes and development in terms of how our work progresses and changes through the journey of the whole course.  Learning and teaching is a transformative experience. We talked about how this means things are changing all the time (we hope – we are transforming). A tension is created when you have a hard fast goal to achieve (find out X) using a process (transformative learning) that is designed to be fluid and responsive. We can often shut down openness to the uncomfortable feeling of Flux that fluidity can induce for the safety of achieving X. While preferably (and what I think the uncomfortable feeling is letting you know is that) X is changing. Of course X changes because we are understanding it differently/more with each engagement we have, each experience we have with X. We talked about this in terms of ‘colonizing ideas’ – that patriarchal need to identify, measure and pin-down ‘things’ (that I encourage us to recognize and resist!) We are working with/through movement. Helen talked about seeing study as opening doors.

Ainsely and Louise are going to post about jumping back into study/ the modules

http://ainsleymsudds.blogspot.com

http://louisedubai.blogspot.com

Tara is going to post on the uncomfortable feeling of feeling.

http://dancetara.blogspot.com

We talked about why dance was done by people who do not intend to work as professionals in the dance field. We suggested there were a number of ‘transferable skills’ dance offers, and that dance is a natural expression of Self for anyone.

Joy is posting on thoughts about how dance manifests in people’s lives (Joy please post your blog adrress in the comments below)

We talked a little about the ethics of representation. This is particularly interesting in terms of transcribing. For us working with the knowledge of the notion of Embodiment we are constantly asking ourselves how can you genuinely capture the lived experience. The experience of talking to someone is so much more than their words and then the words themselves are expressing more ideas and feelings that are often limited if only verbal language is used. So how do we choose to transcribe interviews. There is not a ‘solution’ to this. What makes it ‘right’ is not that it is universally a right way to transcribe. What makes it ‘right’ is that what you do fits with the philosophical and methodological framework you have created for your research. In other words what makes it ‘the right way to transcribe’ is that it makes sense in terms of what you are doing and how you are doing it.

Tamzin is going to write about transcribing

http://tamzinhoward.blogspot.com

 Hayley is posting on the conversation overall. (Hayley please post your blog address in the comments below)

Louise talked about how her additional reading on method and methodology has helped her when she feels stuck because she can think about some of the ideas other people have had and notice if and when they happen in her experience. For instance, “thinking about constructing an argument Louise might now be listening to the radio and think that argument is being constructed through…” or “that is not an argument it’s a statement… “Or “we want to get away from arguments and look at how what they are saying would be affected through the lens of discussion and collaboration”.

We talked practicals:

Feedback will be sent in the next couple of weeks.

Submitting date for this coming term is May 9^th 2016

Oral presentations by Module Three’s (everyone is encouraged to attend) end of that same week.

Summer Intensive (Dancing & Writing Professional Practice) is August 15^th to 20^th 2016.

Early Registration for the Summer Intensive will be open from February 22^nd 2016

What have you been thinking about these last few weeks? Please comment below.

Adesola