3B: Networked Professional

By looking at the theories relating to networking on the reader and other soruces you can see that there are many ways and many ideas to reflect on.

Cooperation: Cooperation is the the will and way to win, Its like a games tactic, meaning that it is where a play user another player to win at the expense of the other player. It's very much like the saying 'It's a dog eat dog world' which from auditiong I really can see, which in turn makes me very unconfortable to believe that as the world grows bigger we as a nation grow harsher. As I come from a very large but close family group I find it a little bit conforting to know that not everyone out there lives to squash to succeed. My friends have always said I give too much, but for me it's how I network giving more so that one day people may give back.

Course Reader The Networked Professional 2011 on pg 3 states that coopeartion is a theory closley placed with gaming theory. The origins of this is the disire to model games on a player succeeding at the expentise of another. The Prisoner's Dilemma gave me the understanding that selfishness and cooperation gives you better results.

Affliation: 'The Desire and need to form closer relationships' (Crisp and Turner, 2007 p266) This is the kind of theory I can agree with this. Being alone can be seen to be a negative feeling we as humans like to seek realtionships and this is our natrual way of networking. We surround ourselves with people so that we can support our own needs weather for comfort, firendship or love.

Social Constructionism: The reader states that one of the key principles is that through social interaction, humans construct meanings of the world and their experiences of it. Which means that as people we take what we see and develop it into our own values and meanings. It emphasises a larger social interaction and because of this as we learn and understand netwroking and professional networks it can offer us a great deal.

Connectivism: Connectivism is connected to Network Theory which originates from computer science and looks to help explain how nodes in the network interact. Connectivisim in the professional networks is to proivde the answer to help idividuals learn and connect. It has been suggested that we either modifie or reject traditional methods and ideas and seek out new ways from classrooms, networks and the web.

The Reader The Networked Professional 2011 on pg 14 states that ' Connectivisim is the intergration of principles explored by chaos, network and complexity and self-organization theories.'

Communities of Practise: A network is a community, the networks knowledge that is gainned from the community is helpful towards our practise as professionals. Connectivism is similar to Communities of Practise as it describes learning as a group. Networking well is important if not imperative to develop our knowledge and skills. Lave and Wenger (1991 pp98‐100) 'learning occurs through centripetal participation in the learning curriculum of the ambient community', 'knowledge is within a community of practice'.
.
Refrences:
The Networked Professional Course Reader 2011

2D: Looking Inward

I guess truly I have no idea where to start, but my main part of dancing I'm most enthusiastic about is choreography, the way a dancer can make you feel by just doing one slight movement is what really makes my heart race. I guess that's why Ive gone down the path I did, Teaching. I can use my school as a blank canvas and mould my dancers into emotions.

My first person i admire has got to be my first dance teacher. Some would say there was nothing special about her, she was just a normal dance teacher give her best. She inspired me to teach and to continue dancing and for that i guess I will always admire her. I admired her work from the simple to the difficult, the movements she choreographed that made a story out of any dance, weather sad or happy.

My second has got to be my mum, an ex dancer never professional as me and my brothers got in the way, but a stunning dancer and sometimes still is, when she thinks I'm not looking. She has got to be my inspiration to teach dance, I just watch her and I feel the emotions, the feeling she portrays and can get carried away with the story and for one second forget that I'm in Lincoln or on the sofa.

I guess the last person i would have to say I admire in the dancing profession has to be George Balanchine. The creator of many ballets, an artist of musicality and a dancer. His School of American Ballet, The New York City Ballet and his 400 choreographed works of art transformed American dance and dance in general. He had created modern ballet by developing a unique style of speed and attack. I admire his work and himself, he pushed the boundaries and made history and works of art.

It seems to be a great choreographer you must gamble in life and your creations. As my mum always says, 'You Win some and You Lose Some, it's the trying that matter' for me she couldn't be more right.

3C: Important Sources of Information

Here I explore my 'soruces of information' and to be honest none of them should be a surprise to you. We all use them in one way or another, sometime people have diffrenet ones that help, but there is deffently two that I am sure we all use.

1) Facebook: The best thing if you just need and answer, you can post it and people will answer. Generally getting the answer in the end. Facebook helps connect people with the most relevent and updated parts of the profession even if you thought you knew them.

2) Youtube: My absalulte favroite source of information, it tells you how its done. Its helped me with many ideas for the dance class and has given me great insight into what out there at the moment in dance.

3) Friends, family and co-workers: No matter what the area of experticse your sure to find someone with an answer in your collective network. Most people are more than happy to share there expertise and advice with you and time and any where.

4) Google: Think we all use google from time to time for help. It one of the best and proberble will be for a very very long time. You write no matter how weird and click search and generally you get what you need. A great source of information for me.

5) ISTD Webstie: For me this is a great source of information, it brings the most relevent and new advice for dance teaching and dancing. If i'm in need of a little help I would normally find something that helps on this site or one of the partner sites to the ISTD.

Well there you are my 5 most important information sources, now lets see yours :-)

2B: Journal Writing Experience

MY NINE DAY JOURNAL CHALLANGE:

I played around with the nine different journal writing techniques throughout my writing of my journal for the past nine days. I wouldnt say i found one easier than the other, but more i found them all helpful in there own ways and could adapt to suit my needs. Here are the nine different formats:

Description: I wrote about an average day for myself, nothing to special. It was more about writing in basics where I was, what I did and when. Even tho writing wasnt easy or difficult I did however find that I wanted to diverse into my feelings, which I did fight back and kept on track. This wasnt my favroite format as I normally would like to write down my feelings about the events etc, but felt that een though I didn't feel to good about it, when reading it back realised that it didn't matter too much about writing my feelings down as when i read it back I felt them all again and was able to reflect on the day, the way I would normally of writen. Still not my favroite but not a wrtie off.

Initial Refleaction: This format gave me more freedom to write about my feelings, as i finished writing my feelings of the day, I noticed and jotted down the one main feeling i had. This felt more confortable for me as it was how I would normally of wrote my Journal and therefore was alot easier for me. This is defently the main bases of my journal, even though now after the nine days i feel more confortable trying new ways.

List: This was once again strange for me, but i didnt fully enjoy and understand it. If i was going to wrtite a longer journal entry, but didnt have much time on my hands this would deffently be my first choice. I did however feel that i had short changed myself with this format as I hadnt really gone into detail or anthing. It was truly the bare minimum and for me made me fell uneasy.

 Evaluation: This for me was all about asking the question, why it happened? The good, the bad etc This is were my reflective practise was most seen, I was able to look into my thoughts in more indepth way than I had previously done. All in all this format in my journal made it feel like a more mature and controlled outlook into the events of the day.

Graphs:

Figure 1: This first graph shows the concentration, ability and progression within the class of my students. I teach four diffrent age groups 2yrs-4yrs (Baby), 4yrs - 6yrs (Junior), 7yrs - 9yrs (Middles) and 9yrs+ (Seniors). This helped me to understand and better my teachings, I was able to understand which groups needed work on which areas, so that the progression within class and the term would be greater. For me this didnt help or hinder in my journal writing.

Charts:

Figure 2: (The Pie Chart) This chart enabled me to see the difference of progression between the age groups and helped me to understand that the more concentrated and the mor ability the class had the more progression was shown. This was useful for me in my Journel writing as i was able to see and evaluate the progression of my students as a whole and not by class.

Diagrams:

Figure 3: This diagram still dipicts the progression my students make throughout class but helps with more of a verbal sense. Showing in words how and what progression they make throughout the class. This was my favroite out of all the graphs, charts etc as it helped with more of a verbal recigniation of my students weakness and strengths instead of numbers. This was the most useful for me out of the three.

What If?: Truth be told i never like asking this question it makes me question everything i do, what if i did this? Even though at first i felt unconfortable with this format I did stay strong and worked through it. I found that by the end even though it was uncoftable I came out with a greater insight into why I do and say or write what I did, and therefore believe that even though my feelings for it arnt great it is still a good format and in time I may revist it in my Journal writing.

Another View: At first this was a little wierd but it did grow on me, being able to veiw my thoughts and feelings through the eyes of another did help me to understand that even though I feel and see things one way another person or creature does not. It made me think deeper into my thoughts and feelings and work out what it might look like to someone else. For me it was questioning every thought and feeling to see what i really was and not what i wanted it to be.

All in all I have enjoyed writing for the nine days in the nine different ways, I found out new ways to write, ways i felt unconfortable in and also ways that felt natrual. It helped me to understand that even though sometimes it can be unconfortable it is also sometimes worth it.

(DIAGRAMS TO FOLLOW, WHEN I WORK OUT HOW TO PUT THEM ON :-S NOT TOO GOOD ON COMPUTERS, STILL LEARNING)

2A:The Journal

Here's the Picture of the inside of my Journel :-) more insights will follow

Wishes everyone a good journey and good writing

1C/1D: Flickr Images and BAPP Video

Hello Folks :-)

Hope all is going well and your enjoying the learning......

     Check out my Images at Flickr :-)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/anniewalker2012/

Let me know what you think. will be adding more on soon....

KEEP BLOGING :-)

1B: Communication Technologies

At first glance of this Reader I am put back to how much information there was that myself did not know about. All the types of technologies out there that are available to us to use to advertise, develop and grow as a person and as a profession, but as i look deeper and start to read I can see and understand that you never have to stick to just one area for communication, and this is exciting to me.

I enjoyed learning about web 2.0 (second generation web-based communities) and web 1.0 (communications between creator and reader).

Web 2.0
Three competencies are very much relevant to the position in which web 2.0 is contained in professional practise and our workplace. Out of the three, two base there focus on scalability in hardware and economic impacts. The three competencies are Re mixable Data and Transformations, Architectures of Participation and Harnessing Collective Intelligence.

Re mixable data and Transformation - remix culture originating from in Rap and hip hop style music. The theory that items can be rearranged in diffrent orders to create something new.  This ability is central to Web 2.0, so that us as users can share and cut images, videos, letters, writen work, etc.

Architectures of Participation - participation is such an important part for web 2.0 as it helps the ability of people being able to connect and interact. For participation to happen there has to be an active and passive aspect, so that there is something taking taking part as well as creating it. People are more likely willing to participate and more able to if certain factors are taken into account, such as , time, money, skills etc. Without these things people would be unable to participate and therefore web 2.0 would have difficulty functioning.

Harnessing collective intelligence - one study into web 2.0 effectiviness helped to identify that web 2.0 allowed people, strangers to share views, ideas, opinions and many other aspect in life helping for generationly idea swops. The platforms of web 2.0 is designed to help and push social interaction where you can share your space with other people. Facebook has developed by 2004 to 2010 from 1500 active users to 400 million active users, this would not have been possible if it was not for web 2.0 and the fact that generations of people where willing to share and swop with sometime complete strangers on the other side of the world. I believe this is communication and freindship at its best and worse, and I myself am excited to see the next 6 years development with facebook and many web 2.0 supported networks.

KEEP BLOGING :-)