Task 2d Inquiry

Hello Bloggers :)

1) What in your daily practice gets you really enthusiastic to find out more about?

The thing that really does keep me going as performer is that applause (if your lucky, a standing ovation haha) at the end of a show. It makes me feel so proud of what I do and makes me feel so happy that I have made someone feel something for however long the show has been on for. You don't know who is watching and what anyone is going through so they can come to theatre and just take their mind of any problems/stress their may be encountering and just enjoy! As performers, our aim is for the audience to feel what we are portraying on stage which could be many things; happiness, sadness, love, hatred, hope ect. and the claps and cheers show their appreciation of our hard work and this keeps me going! 
On a teaching level, when you see a child improve on the things you have been teaching and you know that your the one who has helped them is such a great feeling. This could be technically or even emotionally - One of my students started as a very shy, self conscious girl. I look at her now, she has her own friends and she's laughing and really trying things I never thought she would. I know that it's not all down to me but to be apart of it is a wonderful sense of achievement. Both of these elements keep me enthusiastic about my practice.

Who do you admire who also works with what makes you enthusiastic?    
I see other students who I either trained with in the past or done a show with who are doing other great things with their own practice and I admire them for all their hard work and it makes it evident that I can do the same thing and make my own goals come true. 

Me and my beautiful year on graduation - Admiring all their hard work and their success.

2.) What gets you angry or makes you sad?
There are two main things that really make me mad. One being when audience members are being disrespectful. I have seen it when I have been an audience member myself, people checking their phone and texting during a show! It's so rude! If its an emergency, they should leave quietly and sort it out and come back in but i'm sure the majority of the time it is't - we have worked so hard, more than they will ever understand and we haven't done it for them to come and sit on their phone. For another example, I was dancing in a 1920's show a couple of weeks ago at a 1920's car racing event in the evening. A couple of drunken men decided it would be funny to get on stage with us a try and copy what we were doing - taking all the audiences attention off us and onto them - I was in shock! 
The other thing which makes me a little bit annoyed when people are unprofessional in rehearsal, for example; I have a show in Liverpool on Tuesday, our choreographer called a rehearsal on Sunday as that's when we could all make it and one girl text's last minute and says she can't come 'because she forgot about the Sunday train timetable and by the time she got there, there would be no point' letting us all down. We accept it if it's the first time but it's starts to get annoying when it happens a lot. 

Who do I admire who shares your feelings or has found away to work around the sadness or anger? 
I have a very good friend who I trained with who understands me like no one else does. We share the same emotions and opinions on almost everything so talking to her always makes me feel a lot better about any situation I'm in which has made me feel sad or anger, Don't know where I would be without her!

3.) What do you love about what you do? 
I feel like this question relates back to the first one - If your enthusiastic about something, it probably means you love it too! I love that sense of achievement at the end of the show - when everything has gone right and you know you out everything you could into making you performance as best as it can be. However, even if the show didn't go as well as it could of, you should still feel that sense of achievement because of how you handled it; Donald Schon's reflection-in-action comes into play and you have to make the show work and carry on - most of time the audience won't even notice it!

Who do I admire who also seems to love this or in an example of what you love?
When I was in training, my Head of Dance teacher always talked about the passion and love he had as a performer and you could feel it when he told us - even though he didn't perform any longer, the passion still flowed through his veins, and for this, I admired him. He wanted to help you and become the best performer you could be - I saw him like this for 3 years until my graduation and he said to me "even if you walk out of these doors and never dance a single dance move again, as long as your happy and have love then you have succeeded". This took me by surprise, over the last 3 years as my dance teacher it was always about dance, dance, dance - I guess as his teaching role, that's what he has to do. But this was more a friend to friend advice and for this, I admire him more, he really opened my mind to think how right he might actually be.

4.) What do you feel you don't understand? 
I don't understand employers who think it is ok to advertise a job which pays minimum wage, or sometimes less, and say 'this job is great for experience' - they are aiming for fresh graduates who will do anything to get where they want to be. This is NOT acceptable! Fresh graduates have trained the same as any other professional! They deserve to be paid for a highly skilled job just as much as anyone else. Employers think they can get away with it and save money by doing so. It's not fair. 

Who do I admire who does seem to understand it?
I admire anyone who stands up for this - there are always posts on The Hustle or articles in newspapers about this current situation .

"Graduates could be exploited low pay/no pay doesn't grantee a job after. This just legitimates cheap labour end undermines the industry." 

I also found this which made me laugh but puts things into perspective:

http://shouldiworkforfree.com/ 

Line of enquiry: 
I didn't really know what I could write for this put I just did abit of research on what I was talking about for question number 4 and I think I could go further with this idea.
Should we work for no pay/less pay?
If we do, does it undermine the industry?
Who's to blame?
How can we stop this from happening?
How much should we pay?
Employers want people experience so how do you get your first job?
Are employers promising paid work at the end of it?
How does it effect people's emotional state? 

Task 2b: Reflective Writing (Journal Writing Experience)

Hello Bloggers,

So when I first read task 2b, I thought it was going to be quite a challenge, especially the last one 'Another View' but I actually surprised myself. 

I felt like Description and Intial Reflection kind of went together so I did this for the same day, natural order told me to talk about my day then reflect on it - my brain didn't like the thought of doing it on separate days, not totally sure why! I found the description writing easy as I think this is way I have been writing in my journal - described what went on in the lesson then evaluated it. I also felt the same for List and Evaluation. Using a list to describe my day was good to do, I had never thought about doing it this way but I write lists all the time e.g. what I need to get when I go to town, food shopping list, things I need to get done (phone calls, post things ect) so writing a list about my day felt like second nature. 

I didn't really understand the graphs and charts way .. I made a graph on how my mood changed from hour to hour then also did a chart of comparing my week to last week. I don't think I learnt much from this form of writing.

I REALLY enjoyed writing in the 'what if..' style! My day fantastic! One point I wrote

 'What if .. a customer walked into the shop and told me I had won the lottery'.

 This did make me laugh! I also really enjoyed writing in the form of another object. I choose to write my day from my mobile's point of view; I wrote it in the way my phone was making remarks about me and mumbling to itself. One sentence was

 ' I wish she would buy me a new case, the crack in my back keeps catching her pocket everytime she takes me in and out, it's really starting to get sore'.

 This way of writing made it alot more exciting! 

I have started my reflective journal however these writing exercises have opened up my mind to try new ways of writing and I will try to bring these into my journal.  

Jess x 

Wed 28th Oct Online Session/ Task 2a

When I read Reader 2 I felt a bit overwhelmed by it all and didn't completely understand what I was reading. This session made everything so much clearer, I re-read Reader 2 and thing's are making much sense!

After researching into all the different theories of learning which were mentioned in Reader 2, I am now 100% certain that I fall into Howard Gardner's theory. He believes people have different ways of learning also know as 'multiple intelligences'

Garnder says "these differences  challenge an educational system that assumes that everyone can learn the same materials in the same way and that a uniform, universal measure suffices to test student learning" 

I fall into a couple of his learning styles, I researched for more of an explanation for each style and these are the ones I think I fall into:

"Bodily-kinesthetic - use the body effectively, like a dancer or a surgeon. Keen sense of body awareness. They like movement, making things, touching. They communicate well through body language and be taught through physical activity, hands-on learning, acting out, role playing. Tools include equipment and real objects."
"Musical - show sensitivity to rhythm and sound. They love music, but they are also sensitive to sounds in their environments. They may study better with music in the background. They can be taught by turning lessons into lyrics, speaking rhythmically, tapping out time. Tools include musical instruments, music, radio, stereo, CD-ROM, multimedia."

These are quite obvious as they link straight to my professional practise (dance.) However, I can link these back to when I was at school studying for my GCSE's. I definitely remember things when they have been put into a rhyme; I used to make up silly words and poems and songs to remember the important stuff which falls into the musical style of learning. I know I also learnt a lot more if there was a real object in front of me which I can touch and move about e.g. science experiment at school because later, when I  came to an exam, I could replay and visualise what I did which falls into the kinesthetic style of learning.

The online session gave me a few ides for my reflective journal which I'm very grateful of as I had no idea what I was supposed to be writing in it before the session. Here are a few of my ideas:
- Write my lesson plans for each week then highlight what I got done and what I didn't do.
- Write about how each lesson went; what could be changed, what I could of done better as teacher, what went well and what didn't go so well, how my mood affected my teaching and interaction with the children, did I handle a certain situation correctly.
- Write about how my rehearsals go each week, what I need to work on as a performer, what choreography I couldn't get and what I could get (Did I use the Donald Schon method of 'reflection-in-action'?)
- Write about how my shows go; did I perform as well as I could? If not why? Did my mood effect it, did something go wrong, was the space not as good as I hoped for?

Overall very good online session! Now onto my reflective journal :)
Hope this helps someone :)

Task 1d: 2D images

Hello Bloggers :) 
I always upload my pictures to facebook and instagram however there are so many on there now which I have accumulated over the many years I have used them that I decided I would just pick the most recent and the ones which best described me in just a handful and uploaded him into a flickr album - thought it would be much easier for you! If you want to look at more my name on facebook is Jess Boswell and my instagram name is jessbos1.

My flickr album:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/137296755@N07/albums/72157659862982488


You will mainly see dancing pictures (because that's all I've known!) Pictures of my mum, dad and brother (this is the entire 'Boswell' family so they mean a lot to me!) My best friend, my boyfriend and my beautiful year which I graduated with, my three pets; my dog Fudge who's getting on a bit now and my two pet turtles. I uploaded my 21st birthday cake which is a minion - one reason because I simply love cake and the other reason because I love minions, they are so cool! - I can't believe I just admitted that on here. 


I had a think as to why images and pictures are important and I came up with a couple of ideas:
1.) I mentioned this in my last blog but i'll say it again. People judge; judge what you look like, what you wear, what you do. First impressions matter!
2.) I know that from when we are first born, our brain processes images and pictures like the familiar faces we saw everyday and the familiar surroundings probably being our homes so looking at images and pictures is second nature to us as humans. When using images within our work will help make things clearer (as long as the image is connected to the text in some way) because the brain is so used to processing them. 
3.) "A Picture is worth a thousand words" .. this quote is just perfect! If i described an image of something to you, you would never grasp the true beauty or truth. If i showed you the picture, it just says it all! 
4.) Pictures can be very personal and hold special memories which you can go back to whenever you like. They can hold all kind of emotions, some good and some bad. I know i'm really bad for hoarding pictures! But they help you to not forgot the memories you created. So many times I've looked back at photos and said 'Oh my god, I totally forgot about this!.' We should be more grateful that we basically carry a camera about with us on our phones nowadays and that we can capture any moment in life and keep it with us forever, it takes us seconds! My mum and dad barely have any pictures of their childhoods! Something we take for granted today.

Writing this blog has actuallly just reminded me that I need to start using more images within my tasks and blog! It makes it a lot more interesting too!

Task 1b Professional communication technologies

Hello Readers :)

When I read the slides a few days ago i didn't actually know what Web 2.0 was, initially I thought it was a program  I could download, oh how wrong was I! I googled the definition and this is what I got:

'Web 2.0 is the term given to describe a second generation of the World Wide Web that is focused on the ability for people to collaborate and share information online. Web 2.0 basically refers to the transition from static HTML Web pages to a more dynamic Web that is more organized and is based on serving Web applications to users.'

Web 2.0 is something most people and I use every single day but I just knew it as the 'internet', I did not have a clue there was two versions of it?! (hope I'm not by myself here)

When it comes to social media I think there are huge positives and huge negatives. Personally I think there are more positives and here are my opinions:

1.) Facebook is great if you have your own company/running a buisness; it's a brilliant form of free advertising and you can stayed connected with your pupils/parents by putting up updates for all to see. For example 'Class next week cancelled' or 'we are still open half term!' 

2.) I know people love uploading their new headshots or dance portfolio pictures (myself included) onto your facebook page or instagram and things can travel so fast around the internet nowadays! At a click of a screenshot and into your whatsapp conversation, or copy and paste a link into a facebook chat which pops up onto everyone's phones, you just don't know who is going to get hold of your new pictures. A casting director or choreographer perhaps and you look like the perfect part for what they are looking for leading to a potential audition/job opportunity. 

3.) Many many many auditions are advertised on facebook! We probably all know about The Hustle .. I got my first major overseas dance job from  The Hustle, I know a friend which saw an open audition for a cruise which was advertised on there and got the job. Pages like this are so so so useful for performers which is a massive positive for social media.

For me personally, the major issue of social media is what you upload on your page. Almost every company nowadays will check your facebook before they employ, even companies which you don't think will. I worked in a bar/nightlcub in London while I was training. Even my manager was going on people's facebook for a bar job before they got offered an interview and I know for certain there was one call which didn't get an interview because of her facebook page and if a bar in London does this then I'm pretty other major companies will. You have to be so careful what you write; you can't hear the way people say things so something could be taken the wrong way. You could offend someone with what you write if your not careful and last but not least, your pictures!! People judge. Even if they say they don't, it's human nature to do so. My fiend works of a big company in London doing something to do with business, they have told her she can't even upload a picture of herself holding a drink which looks alcoholic!! If they don't like the person they see in the pictures, you won't get hired. Scary, I know!! 

Does the web help us understand global issues and local issues?

I think it does to a certain extent! It's so easy to google something and find videos and images from the other side of world to just round the corner from you. However I think you can never fully understand these issues we see unless you personally experience them (which I hope none of us have)

If everyone just stops and thinks before they upload anything onto social media/Web 2.0, we should all use it help our professional practice. Use it to show off your positive energy then everything will fine :) 

Task 1a. Professional CV

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx5D6Cno1pAnUDR4UTljTFRQREk/view?usp=sharing

So I'm not sure if the link above isn't going to work, I have followed a website which told me upload it in my GoogleDrive then post the link, I'm praying it works otherwise I have NO idea how to upload a document to this blog thing!

I already had my CV, CPA Studios where I trained ingrained it in our heads to always keep your CV up to date because you never know when your going to need it. However, there was a bit of tidying up I needed to do to it so this was the perfect opportunity.

Onto task 1b :) if the link works, fingers crossed!

My first blog!

So .. Finally got round to writing my first blog after the first campus session which really helped clear up everything I was worried about, especially after talking to a Module 3 student :)

I was really worried about writing my first blog; I guess as performers we feel like we are always getting judged and want everything to be perfect. As performers, well from my experience, I'm used to getting text and reading it rather than writing it and letting other people read it. All of these put together was a little terrifying.

At the first campus session we learnt a lot about reflecting upon ourselves, reflecting on what we do and what we have done. When I applied for the course, I already knew what I wanted to learn about and what I wanted to write my enquiry about however, after listening to module 2 and 3 students and hearing their ideas on what they want to do, it has made me more open minded on what I may end up doing. Being open minded is one of the qualities you need for reflection along with wholehearted-ness and responsibility.