Dress Code!

My very first thought about theatres in Austria and England was the "dress code"! They are very different to each other...

Here are some examples:

This is my friend and me before we were watching a musical in Austria.

This is Cassie and me in a theatre in England. You can't really see what I was wearing but I basically wore a long sleeved shirt, jeans and a scarf.

I think you can all see the differences now..

The first time when my mum and I went to a theatre in London we were a bit shocked!! Because people were walking into the auditorium with some shopping bags, food/snacks, wine (!!) and most of the people wore trainers and daily clothes. We both looked at each other and were like "what the hell are they wearing?!" We couldn't really believe what we saw...

...I think you can compare it a bit with our "we are going to the cinema" - outfit.

The last time I was in London I went to the theatre with a friend, who lives in London and my question to her was: "You know, what still really confuses me?...why are they all going to the theatre with normal/daily clothes on?" And my friend had actually a really good point. At first she also had to get used to it, because she is from Scotland and in her hometown they usually also wear dresses or nice clothes to the theatre. She explained to me that in England, or especially in London it is such an everyday thing you can do, because they have so many theatres and nowadays it is really easy to get some cheap tickets. Like we did on that night...on the same morning we just looked online and were searching for some good, but cheap tickets...and only after about five minutes we found some!

On the other hand in Austria it is not as easy as that, I mean I'm sure you can get tickets on the same day but I am pretty sure that they would be very expensive. Normally when my family and I are going to the theatre we book our tickets at least a month before.

I think it will always be a bit weird for me when I see the other people with some shopping bags or snacks in a theatre in England, because for me it's normal when I go to a theatre in Austria, it means I have to put on some nice clothes, pretty jewellery, lovely shoes and some make up :) 

Skype session

Hi everyone!

Yesterday I had a one to one skype session with Paula. The reason I wanted to skype with my tutor was, because I got stuck in finding an interesting inquiry theme. I  read a few blogs from different students, who already found their perfect topics.... when I read them I got a bit stressed out because I haven't found mine yet. However, I am so glad I had the skype session because now I've got a starting point.

The first question Paula asked me was "What am I interested in?".

My answer to that was "I would love to write something about D A N C E, and I would like to look further into it."
But dance is such a huge topic...so Paula and me started brainstorming. My problem also is that I don't have a dance job at the moment, which I could take as my inquiry. Paula asked me if she can be a bit nosy and she wanted to know what my jobs are at the moment. I told her that I have got one promotion job and a bar job. My tutor then was thinking that I maybe could look further into my promotion job but I honestly had to say that I am not very interested in that and it wouldn't be fun to write about...

....I then had an idea!!

Because I'm not english and I live in Austria at the moment, I thought I could write something about the difference from Austria and England. We then kept on brainstorming...

- Austrian theatres .... how are they different to english ones? (art form)
- literature ... how is it different to England?
- performance ... how is the performance different in those two countries?
- how do the teacher teach differently?
- find some practitioners...
- compare the two countries..
- do they have any similarities?
- what genre do I want to look at?


Personally I think this is a really good starting point.. and I am very glad that I had the skype session with Paula.
It is very interesting for me to research about those questions, especially for me, because I have already trained in Austria and in England, so I am sure I have got some good comparisons. :)

VS.

Audio Session with Paula

Last wednesday Cassie, Sophie, Kayleigh, Alex and I had an audio session with Paula.
Personally for me it was really helpful because I honestly need to say that I was a bit confused by reading the "Reader 3 - Networked Professional". I think the problem was that in the "Reader" there are so many facts and information and sometimes also words that I did not understand.

I made a journal entry from this session with Paula, and I thought I will share it with you. I have created a mind map and I think it covers nearly everything we have talked about in this session. (I hope you can read it!)

My favourite question from this "Reader" is:

Why is affiliation, friendship and love so important for us?

Because we are social creatures, human beings and we love to spend time with other people -> to swap information, to interact with each other.

In the article from Crisp, Richard J. & Turner and Rhiannon it says "Teenagers were happier and more excited when in the company of others than alone. A lack of affiliation may have a negative impact." = helps us to survive!

"If we have too little contact, we feel isolated and if we have too much contact, we feel crowded."

Task 2c: Reflective Theory

When I was reading the "Reader 2 - Reflective Practice" I found it helpful to highlight the most important ideas. I am a visual learner, so it makes things easier for me when I use colour, otherwise there are just thousands of words and I probably wouldn't remember anything. I also wrote the most important quotes or sentences down, which helps me to actually write something about it.

David Kolb

It was very interesting for me to read that there are various modes of learning new things. Obviously I knew that there are the "visual", "auditory", "communicative" and "kinaesthetic" learners but Kolb's "Learning Cycle of Experiential Learning" was new to me.

• Concrete Experience: learners do or experience something
• Reflective Observation: new experience - learners watch others doing something
• Abstract Conceptualization: learners deal with a new idea - "work it out in their head first"
• Active Experimentation: learners start to try out ideas

"Kolb's learning cycle is a tool for reflection on how you learn and a tool for approaching experience." (Reader 2)

In my opinion I fall into the category of "Concrete Experience"; for example, in learning a dance routine it's always easier for me when I watch the teacher first, then immediately my brain engages in it and I am involved in the concrete experience. I am very happy with that talent, because especially in an audition it is very important to learn the choreography as quickly as possible.

Howard Gardner

I found a really good website about Howard Gardner's life and it is very interesting. 

http://infed.org/mobi/howard-gardner-multiple-intelligences-and-education/#multiple_intelligences

On the website it also says: "Howard Gardner viewed intelligence as 'the capacity to solve problems or to fashion products that are valued in one or more cultural settings'. (Gardner & Hatch, 1989)"

Gardner introduced seven different intelligences:

• Spatial: involves the potential to recognize and use the patterns of wide space and more reduced areas
• Verbal-linguistic: involves the ability to learn languages and to use language to express oneself rhetorically and poetically
• Logical-mathematical: involves to think logically and it's most associated with scientific and mathematical thinking
• Bodily-kinaesthetic: involves to use the body to solve problems and is related to mental and physical activities
• Musical: involves the skill in the performance, composition and appreciation of musical patterns
• Interpersonal: involves the understanding of motivations and desires of other people; allows people to work effectively with others
• Intrapersonal: involves the understanding of ourselves and relates to one's emotional life

There are so many people out there who you can't compare with each other! Every person is different and everyone has different talents. Most learners are a mix of learning styles.

It seems to me that "bodily-kinaesthetic" and "musical" are my two intelligence. They probably are the most common ones among the participants in this course because we are mostly dancers or/and musicians.

Especially “bodily-kinaesthetic” seems really easy to identify because first I have been dancing since I was four years old and second I have been trained in that.

Donald Schön

He introduced the idea of "reflection-in-action" and "reflection-on-action".

• Reflection-in-action: it can happen while you are in the middle of something, for example if you are dancing and something's not working you can change the steps while you are moving
• Reflection-on-action: it can happen when you are looking back on something - you experienced in the past

Reflection-in-action would appear to be more important or useful for dancers / performers because it allows you to change a step or move while you are dancing. Rather than looking back on it, which would be kind of pointless for a dancer because then it would be too late to change anything. I think it is always better to change something on the spot, so we can actually remember the step.

Taking up Schön's idea, Robert Kottcamp likens reflection-in-action to 'on-line' and reflection-on-action to 'off-line'. Kottcamp says that the on-line situation means you are in the middle of an on-going action and in an off-line moment - when it is a past event - you can analyse things.

It is basically the same notion as Schön's idea, using different terminology.

Kottcamp also says that reflection-in-action is harder to achieve but that might be because he is used to reflecting back on something. For me as a professional dancer reflection-in-action seems easier because in the course of my training I was encouraged to change steps or movements on the spot.

I think for most people routine or repeated activities make things easier.

I would like to add a few important items which I copied down from the Reader 2 handbook.

• The process of 'learning from experience' is a process of turning information into knowledge.

I totally agree with this statement because I think every day you can learn something new. And I also think you can only learn from something when you experienced it, which then becomes new knowledge.

I have a really good example: If you tell a small child not to touch a hot plate s/he will probably  not listen because s/he does not know why. So it is most likely that this child needs to first experience 'the hot plate' because then the child's brain associates the hot plate with danger.

• Reflection is a key tool for understanding and learning from experience.

This is a very helpful advice for journal writing, which I first thought would not be as useful as it actually is.

When I personally think about a day in the past I do not fully recall what actually happened. I only realize it when I reflect back on it in my journal.

Writing my journal actually opened my eyes because I can learn so much from my days when I look back on them.


I found a really good quote from John Dewey in this context:

Conclusion

To sum up I would say that at first I was very confused about the Reader 2 - Reflective Practice but as I highlighted the most important things it became clearer and clearer.
The handbook taught me about different intelligences and learning styles, which I had not been aware of before.
One of the most important themes for me is 'Journal Writing' because I still learn so much from it and reflecting back on a day is extremely useful and helpful to me!

Reader 2 - Reflective Practice

Howard Gardner's life: http://infed.org/mobi/howard-gardner-multiple-intelligences-and-education/#multiple_intelligences

Task 2b: Journal Writing Experience

Description
Initial Reflection
List
Evaluation
Graphs, Charts and Diagrams
What if?
Another view

Those are the different types of writing a journal.

At first I was not quite sure which will suit me best, but after trying all of them I came to the conclusion that three of them are the most suitable ones for me.

Description
List
Graphs, Charts and Diagrams

The most fun one is to make either a diagram or a graph because I can make it as colourful as I want, which is the best way to remember things.
I am a visual learner so the more colours or pictures I have the easier it is for me to look back on it.

Writing a list about a day is also a really helpful idea because I can literally list all the things I saw or how I felt or what felt good doing on the day. If I want to get back to the list at some point it is very clear what I have written about and how my day was.

I also have days when I just want to write about my day in a kind of description.

Personally for me it is good to have different ways of writing into my journal, so I have a variety and I will not get bored of it.


All in all I think writing a journal is very useful for me because I can learn what I have experienced new during the day, what helped me and I can see how I reflect about my days.

Task 1d: 2d Images

When I was younger I definitely posted more pictures. Nowadays I only post pictures when I think it's an "important" occasion and my friends should see those images.
I usually post my pictures on Instagram AND Facebook, don't ask me why, but it's just a habbit. lol.

I honestly need to say that I never heard of "Flickr" before I read through the handbook, but I logged myself into it and I put a few images on there.
Most of them are dance pictures.. obviously! :-P But what is also very very important to me, is my family! And I'm very proud to have them, so I think I can 'show' them to you aswell. :-)
You can also find a few pictures from me and my dance partner Alina, I know her for so long now and I've done and experienced so much with her and one of our biggest success were the "World Championship" in Las Vegas in 2011.

Here is the link to my Flickr account:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/136744250@N07/?

I hope you like them!

Skype Session with Paula

A few days ago I had my very first private Skype session with Paula, which was very helpful because it was the first time and chance to speak to my tutor and she actually made the Module 1 so much clearer to me than it was.

I told Paula that I still was a bit insecure and unclear about the whole Module, so she tried and explain it to me. She said that basically the Module 1 is about technology, how to use it correctly and how to communicate through the web.

We also spoke about the statement "Everyone needs to be online!".

I said that I think it is a very big theme to talk about but I see it in two different ways. On the one hand I think it's very good to be online because you can stay in contact with anyone you would like to and it doesn't matter where those people are. On the other hand though I think we all need to be a bit more careful what we post, share or publish in the world wide web. I think we still need to have our personal details or personal information what we shouldn't put online because it's private!

And I think private things shouldn't be put into the internet because it can be very dangerous and it could fall into the wrong hands.

What I also discussed with Paula was 'googling' ourself is very scary. When I did that I was a bit shocked because I didn't know that I can find so many pictures and information about myself. :-O
"Will pictures and/or details/information stay in the internet??" Paula had a really good statement to that, which was "No one knows!" Which I think is very true because we don't really know what will happend with all the things we've uploaded or posted.

We also talked about reading through other people's blogs can be very good and inspiring because you can get new ideas and thoughts!


Once again I am very thankful that I had the chance to skype with Paula because now I am a bit more clearer about the Module 1. :)