3c

The 5 most important sources of information for me as a professional are mostly about jobs.

The stage is a website that I look at the most for auditions and job openings.
http://www.thestage.co.uk/recruitment/

The Hustle on Facebook is a page that was created by dancers for dancers. This page is where all dancers can post about auditions, especially if the auditions are private to make it more public.

Facebook itself is a big thing for me because it is not just how to communicate with friends. I also find job posts and other opportunities available.

Blogs are something I use a lot now and not just because they are part of the course. I enjoy doing them a lot as I get to learn new things and post things I have learnt for other people to learn. It is great to see what my peers are doing and how they are getting on. Some people post some great and interesting blogs.

Google is very important for me because it is the main search engine I use to research and search topics. It is also a great help when searching for jobs. My first professional teaching post with found from google. I typed in Performing arts teachers in Leicester into the search box and up came a list of schools and performing arts providers in the area. I emailed most of them from the first page of the search and one of them replied.

With these sources there are not any major issues or copyright issues that would affect me. With the hustle when posting private auditions the only problem you may have is that you will be turned away from the audition because you have not been invited personally but that is a risk most performers are willing to take to get a shot to audition. Most internet sources have issues when it comes to confidentiality because you should never post any information that is personal about yourself. As you may have heard or may have had an issue concerning yourselves you should never post personal information about yourself online especially bank details or addresses. Some people take risks giving out phone numbers or email addresses but this is at their own risk.

I personally think I post quite interesting and informative blogs where as some people may not have ideas come to them as easy. This is not a problem but they should not just post because they think they have to. Even not posting for a week then after a week posting an extremely interesting blog is much better than maybe 3 a week that have no relevance to anything. At this point in the term very few students have posted blogs for task 3c so looking at the range of posts in task 3c is not as big as i'd like it to be but the ones I have seen was very good. They had pretty much the same top 5 sources as myself as I can see why because they are the most popular with most young people in my profession

WEB 3.0

Web 3.0 and beyond…

Predicting the “knight’s move,” the radical changes that will reshape social phenomena is always a difficult task, though in the realm of science and technology we at least have the advantage that researchers and developers who are working on new breakthroughs are toiling in plain sight. Tim Berners-Lee, for instance, one of the founders of the World Wide Web, has been working for some time on developing tools to allow a “Semantic Web,” or a version of the web where computers would be able recognize the meaning of data at some level (Berners-Lee, Hendler and Lassila 2001). For instance, search engines can currently find every web page where the word “cat” appears. Clever programmers can even get computers to recognize that the work “cat” appears so frequently with the word “pet” that those words probably have some relationship. Computers cannot however, know what cat means or figure out that cats are a subset of pets. In the Semantic Web, computers would be able to identify these types of relationships, and thus one could do a web search for the phrase “all the types of pets” and the computer would not merely search for websites with those exact words, but would search throughout the data of the web to find all of the data considered a subset of pet, and then return that data to the user. Such a web would dramatically increase the meaning-making capacity of computers, allowing humans to focus even more of their time and energy on higher order thinking tasks, just as search engines on the web have allowed humans to find massive amounts of information in much less time.

http://www.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/reworking-the-web-reworking-the-world-how-web-20-is-changing-our-society/

Campus sessions 3

Campus session 3- 

Today was the 3rd campus session and it was quite nice because members from all three modules were there and we were all doing the same tasks together.

Firstly, we had a debate on two questions:

1. What, if any, relevance does performance arts have in society? 

2. Who supports the arts in today's society?

This debate was quite interesting because each person had their own opinions and interesting contributions. 

Alan spoke about not looking for the answer but looking in more detail at the question. For example, is performance arts different to performing arts? And what society?, today's or worldwide or a certain country. The 2nd question is a little less brief compared to the 1st because it says in British society and it tells us to answer on todays society. 

After the debate we got into 3 groups of four. My group was made up of myself , two other module 1 students and a module 3 student. The task we were set in our groups was too chose around 4 words from a list and brainstorm about the words and write our own definition for that word. The four words we chose were deconstruction, argument, rehearsal and communication. At the start the brainstorming was a little slow but a few minutes and after a few words had been thrown out there we were on a roll. After we thought that was the task done we were asked to film ourselves speaking about the words and their definitions. In my group i gave a very small introduction and then we all spoke about one word each. My word was communication. I have posted some photos of the sheets we wrote on to brain storm so you can see them for yourselves.

Towards the end of the lesson we had a  module 1 session with Alan to help us with any queries or questions we had. He advised us to complete a draft of our module 1 write up to send to him for feedback to work on over Christmas. So, if you are on module 1 this is highly advisable so that you have time to get feedback and have time to improve on your reflections. 

I like coming to the campus sessions because I get explore a different city and try different restaurants, cinemas and shops that are not available at home. My personal favourites are watching musicals and going to planet hollywood, roadhouse and rainforest cafe. I seem to have a habit for buying a costa in the morning and before catching the bus home visiting Millie's cookies at the Victoria underground and buying myself about chocolate and some cookies. Haha has anyone else gained a London habit? Or what do you like most about London. 

I am now on the bus back and am thinking about my module 1 assignment and what I am going to reflect on. Serious brainstorming is now in progress. 

Tast 3a. My current and future networks!

At the moment I am currently using social networking sites daily such as Facebook and Twitter. When I used younger I used sites such as Bebo, myspace and msn but times change and everything is evolving. Sometimes, I look back on these older sites as my profile is still available. It is good to look at all the old photos that are stored on my profile because they bring back a lot of memories but, looking at things I have written on my pages makes me cringe haha.

My current networks on the internet are more personal than professional. I know people that have both personal and a professional profile and they keep their professional one on lock down so they do not have things on their that they would not want on show. Quite frequently I tag a photo of my friend on his professional profile, obviously by accident and minutes later I get a message saying something like, "Oi, div, wrong profile!"

I should probably make a professional one myself because my personal profile is very open and has photos from holidays and nights out, which if looked at by a professional do not benefit me. 

In the future I intend to use my online networking more and progress it into something more professional. When I have finished my personal training course I am going to make a page promoting myself as a personal trainer and post it to friends and ask them to share it with their friends. 

At the moment, the performing arts school I work for have their own pages and I am on the pages promoting the school. Eventually I would like to have my own school and be able to create a page promoting the school. Facebook pages are also free so it is a way of advertising for free and if you share your page with local friends who then share your page, it can get around the community for free very quickly.

If i go into teaching in schools, which is something I am thinking about strongly doing I would definitely change my profile to private, so that only my close friends can see. This is because it would be very unprofessional for me to befriend students, parents and other teaching and give them access to look at photos of me drunk and doing things they most likely wouldn't approve of. In fact, I would not accept friendships online with any students so that I avoid any situations. You hear a lot about how teachers have had conversation with students online about things they shouldn't or that a student has found out where a teacher is and done something. Some schools now have their own facebook pages and most teachers from the schools would be on the page or they would like it so it would be easy for someone to find them from looking at the schools page. Like anything these days, It's better to be safe than sorry, so anything precaution I would need to take to protect myself I would. 

Pushing children to do things they don't want to?? Or helping them...???????

Today was a different day for me because I got a call at 9am asking if I could cover some singing classes today between 10-1. So I got up, got showered, dressed and ready and grabbed what ever books and CDs and materials I had and drove to the school.

It was going to be teaching 3 different classes

Aged 7-9, aged 9-11 and aged 12+.

I had the aged 12 and above group first and with them we did a warm up and explained to them all about using your tummy in singing and told them about splat ( a singing term- singing please let out abdominal tension). We then learnt the beginning of finale B from Rent. Which they did great with until the harmonies. The girls in the higher group got e harmonies perfectly, it was the lower group that struggled. 

I then had the aged 9-11 year olds and this was my favourite group of the day. They listened to everything I said and were eager and wanted to learn. We started with some warm up exercise, did some scales and arpeggios then sang some easy songs they all knew. After singing the song once, we sang it again but missed out words such as in the grand old duke of york we missed out up and down. If one of them said up or down they had to sit down p, so basically they were out! 

As I was just covering for a one off I didn't want to start anything majorly complex with this group so I put them into groups and gave them a fairly well known song to memorise and set some easy steps to.  Uncalled it the X factor game and I was a judge with two other pupils, one who had a sore throat and another who was very young and quiet and gets scared when performing in front of people. I really enjoyed this group because they listened to everything I said and wanted to learn. 

Lastly I had the younger aged 7-9 year old. In this class I did basically the same as above but they were not as keen with things like the X factor. Some of them were fine and got on with the task but there was a few that either didn't want to sing in front of people, didn't want to learn a song or just didn't want to be there. 

When I child doesn't want to be there It is always a grey area because they could end up enjoying it or they could end up hating it. Sometimes parents want what's best for their child but reflecting bAck to the question in my blog yesterday

What is the right thing to do?

I have been teaching a 6 year old recently and she definitely does not want to be in class as she tells me every week. After about an hour she get in a tantrum and most weeks runs out the class. Thank god I am not on my own because i cannot leave my class of students but then I cannot cut myself in half to cater for both. I have an assistant who runs after her or mans the door to stop her from leaving. This makes my job very hard and she is lovely kid, very cheeky in a funny way but she really doesn't want to be there. 

What do you think about this and do you have any experience in teaching younger children that do not want to be in your class?

Task 1d - inquiry task

There are so many questions that I am asking myself, especially after the week I have had. The questions I have always asked myself are 

Will I work?

Will I get a job that gives me enough income to live and enjoy life?

When will I be too old to dance?

But then now the questions I am asking are 

How do dancers afford to live when they are just working part time dance jobs?

Should I go into teaching now or later?

If I volunteer in a school will that help me? 

What sort of teaching should I look to specialise in and at what age?

When will I be too old to teach?/

At what age will I be able to teach dance till?

The biggest question I have is

What is the right thing to do?

The answer I keep giving myself is

I don't know!! 

And I wish I did but then I wouldn't be able to learn from my mistakes and grow as a person!

Making decision in your life is the hardest thing because you want to make the right decisions but a lot of the time it is like living in a casino. You could be gambling everything!!

I have been doing some teaching recently with a younger group than I normally teach and I had many questions when teaching the early stages because they just seemed to be playing games. So, I was asking others teachers for ideas of games linked into dance, drama and singing.