2d - Inquiry Web2.0 - Facebook

This course has been very challenging for me. As a dancer and after my car accident I have been working in an office and had a lot of time to sit back and evaluate and learn more about myself day to day.

With my passion for dancing lost, I want to look into why that is. An inquiry into the nature of myself; beliefs and values; personal, physical, mental, social and spiritual health; human relationships including families, friends, communities, and cultures, rights and responsibilities; and ways that things can change and how I can improve.

Questions I find myself asking;

• How can I improve professionally 
• How can I have a work/life balance
• How am I changing with reflection 
• How relationships with other around me effect me
• Exploring social and emotional characteristics
• How people build lasting relationships
• Social media and the effects it has on society

When looking at emotions like sadness or anger. I find myself looking at the affects of social media such as Facebook and web2.0. I have a love hate relationship with Facebook, consistently finding it causes more negative issues than good. Social networks are massively addictive. Most people I know check and interact on social sites constantly throughout the day. And they have no idea how much actual time they spend on social media. Always posting the best bits, being defined by how many likes your profile picture gets. I get so wrapped up in my virtual self that I forget sometimes to live. I look around my friends at a social gathering and everyone is glued to their phone - completely addicted to the virtual world. I admire people that have managed to disengage with this addiction only use social media such as Linkedin for professional usage only.

Recent research has shown that using social networking sites, namely Facebook, can increase people’s stress levels, produce anxiety and negatively affect a person’s sense of self. Using these sites might even cause a person to develop a mental health disorder or exacerbate an existing one. Social media even has the power to quickly spread moods around the world.

There are benefits to Facebook, Today almost every internet user uses Facebook. Using Facebook you can find your old friends and colleagues whom you have lost contact and connect with them online again. Facebook’s friend finder feature allows you to find your friends with their names or email addresses. Many people I know found their very old friends they never knew they will ever contact again. Now they have connected again through Facebook. I have kept in touch with lots of old collage friends.

Mark zuckerburg says:

 "We can help connect the next five billion people. Over the next five to ten years, most people with feature phones will get smart phones. Some of them will get smart phones just so they can use Facebook to stay connected with family and friends."

Why do we need to connect with five billion people? This is a worrying thought. Looking at my friends list I have 1500 friends - half of these are just people I have met in passing. 

"Fast Facts about Facebook

• 1 in every 13 people on Earth is on Facebook.
• 28% of 18-34 year olds check their Facebook account before they get out of bed.
• On a daily basis there are 350 million photos uploaded, 4.5 billion likes, 10 billion messages sent and 22 billion times that the Like or Share buttons are viewed.
• Al Pacino’s face was on the original Facebook homepage.
• Smartphone users check Facebook 14 times a day.
• There are about 30 million dead people on Facebook.
• A third of all US divorce filings in 2011 contained the word "Facebook" in them"

 http://hubpages.com/technology/Collateral-Casualties-of-Facebook

2c - Reflective Theory Evaluation

It has been a while since my last blog - I have been very busy personally and professionally with a lot to reflect on.

After trying out different ways of writing journals - it has been an interesting journey and I have found out more about myself as a practitioner. 

"Turning experience into learning"  - (Boud 1995) - before I began this course I would spend the majority of the time going through the motions. Not really reflecting or turning any experience I had into learning. The different methods I have applied this past month have really made a difference and not only made me learn from my experiences, but learn more about myself as a professional.

I found Gibbs cycle very helpful - The constant cycle of reflection means that we constantly find ourselves improving/learning. I no long see processes as "failing" but and opportunity now to do better and learn from the experience.

Multiple Intelligences

Howard gardner looked into the ways that people engage. It is interesting as I feel as people we all develop and learn in different ways. I decided to research this further.

After looking on other blogs and the ideas of other students on the module I can see we all adapt to ways that work for us. Honey and Mumford (1982) have built a typology of Learning Styles around this sequence, identifying individual preferences for each stage (Activist, Reflector, Theorist, Pragmatist respectively)

• Activist - Learning by doing and experiencing
• Reflector - observes and reflects 
• Theorist - wants to know the theory behind things
• pragmatist - Likes to trial things and see if they work

I believe I took the approach of an activist by way of personality and approach - even as a child I have always preferred doing and experiencing. Although this is how I would describe myself, during this course I have learnt to adopt other approaches. I have started using the Pragmatist approach in many ways as I do like to trial different things and see if they work both for example - trying out new sales techniques at work - a new running technique at the gym and seeing what works for me best. By writing my journals I have reflected on my day to day professional life and used the Gibbs learning cycle to learn from my experiences. Learning the theory behind my reflection and all the different theorists I have come across has made me apply theory to every day life.

Going back to Gardner and his theory of  having different "lenses" I agree that you don't have to be one specific type of learner but you can adopt all types of learning to benefit you.



Online reflection and offline reflection 

"Reflection - on - action is accomplished "offline" at a time where full attention can be given to analysis and planning for the future without the imperative for immediate action" (kottcamp, 1990) 

This is important to us as performers as Kottcamp points out that it is harder for us to reflect in the moment as we use to adapting in the moment.

There are many who would disagree with Kottcamp's view that 'reflection-on-action' is easier than 'reflection-on-action'. Dance teachers and choreographers, for example, often find it easier to implement changes to choreography as they go along. This might be because they can see that their initial idea is not working on their pupils, or  it might be because they have had a new inspiration during the lesson and want to explore it.
Many in performing arts might find 'reflection-in-action' easier because they are used to adopting 'on the spot'. I emphasis the word 'might' because, like Gardner, I agree with the concept of multiple intelligence leading to different ways of learning; we all think and act in different ways. 

2A - Journal writing - "Clearing away mental clutter"

As a Recruitment Consultant with everything being so KPI driven I work well when working towards targets.

I agree that writing things down in lists helps you to de-clutter the mind. Today I decided to create a sheet to help me map out my weeks by lists and tables therefore I can reflect on my targets and look at correlations of figures - For example - The more candidate calls I make the more leads I generate ect. By spotting these trends by keeping a diary I can reflect on what things I am doing and what I am neglecting I can then reflect on my sheet every Friday and look to see where I can make improvements. 

I will keep you posted on how I find this.

2A - The Gibbs Model - Reflecting rather that just "doing"

Having reflected on ways to create a journal that would be effective to my learning and how it can help me to develop my professional career. I want to try a few methods to see which is the best method for me to develop moving forwards.

The Gibbs Cycle allowed me to reflect on my professional day to day experiences rather than just DOING - which is something I quite often did - Doing and going through the motions. 

You should go through a series of stages which will get you to think about (reflect on) your experiences. This begins with fairly concrete questions that ask you to describe what happened, and how you feel. You should then evaluate the positives, which you want to repeat next time, as well as the negatives, which you want to improve. 

Please find example bellow:

Task 2A - Reflective Journals

When I looked at the second part of the module and I saw the journal writing task - I wasn't thrilled at the prospect of writing a descriptive journal of my day. I have never been a fan of talking about my emotions never mind writing in depth descriptions of my days. 


So I decided to do more research into why keeping a journal would be beneficial. 

Do Journals help you have a better connection with your values, emotions, and goals?

"By journal writing about what you believe in, why you believe it, how you feel, and what your goals are. Some argue that you better understand your relationships to those things. This is because you must sort through the mental clutter and provide details on why you do what you do and feel what you feel."

I sometimes feel writing things down can make things clearer - Sometimes when faced with overwhelming workloads - making a list/ writing things down can man you feel less overwhelmed by it - seeing it written down on paper. In essence it is just clearing away mental clutter to allow you to think straight. 

My professional work as a Recruitment Consultant is so KPI driven - constantly working towards targets and goals - Aswell as my performance goals, I am going to experiment with different ways to have a journal.

1. Creating lists
2. Descriptive journal 
3. Collating my achievements
4. Using different models to reflect in my journal rather than a scene by scene what happened.
5. Collating different stats for the week and reflecting on how I can improve 

I will have a look at the different ways of keeping a journal and will find the best way to develop my professional career.

Research 

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/journal-writing-5-smart-reasons-why-you-should-start-doing-today.html

1C My You Tube Channel

You tube has been a fantastic way of promoting myself as a dancer. I put together a showreel of my professional footage to send off to casting director. Its a great tool to send your footage overseas to directors. I gained my cruise contracts through my Showreel so I have found YouTube a fantastic tool for me to use. 

KATIE SCOTT SHOWREEL

Please follow my channel. any feedback will be greatly appreciated 

Reflection as a Catalyst for Change - My Research and Ideas

Reflection as a catalyst for Change

How often do you reflect though out the day? How often do you come up with an amazing business idea? Or a fantastic class you want to set up? And how often do these reflections create change? 

After reading through the blogs of the campus session in which I unfortunately had to miss. I decided to do a bit of further research of my own and delve further into reflection and how it affects me within my professional practise. 

Gillie Bolton uses an interesting metaphor to describe this power of reflection.  One metaphor for reflection is the mirror which projects back the object being looked at--as it is.  She, instead, prefers the notion of the “Looking Glass” out of Alice in Wonderland:

“Alice ... has just crawled through the mirror.  She looks around her and, in this looking-glass-land, even "the pictures on the wall next the fire seemed to be all alive." In my experience, the things seen from the Reflexive Writing side of the looking glass are or are about to become, all alive.” 

(Reflection in the Electronic 

Writing Classroom

L. Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College)

Bolton points, here, to the transformational nature of reflection for the person doing the reflecting. Notice that reflection is represented as a catalyst that has the effect of a change—a change of knowledge, a change of awareness, even a change of consciousness.

As a performer we tend to be harsh on ourselves. Failure and Success; two words which we use to define how well we are doing. If you get cut from an audition - FAIL - If you fall out that pirouette - FAIL. We spend so much time being hard on ourselves rather than reflecting how we can do better in the future. The word failure being the common denominator stopping changes.

Gibbs created a reflective cycle to follow in our professional careers.

However I read an interesting article written by Jonathan Payne.  Jonathan Payne is a High Performance Mental Conditioning Coach working with high performance athletes, entrepreneurs and business executives. He lives in South Africa. You can find more of his articles at http://www.jonathanpayne.co.za. As he deals with high performing athletes I believe it was more relevant to us as performers.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Learn-From-Failure-And-Become-A-Top-Performer&id=8613603

The article explores how we all will fail at some point. Any successes has been a direct result of failure. What the article explores is how we reflect and learn. He uses a learning cycle developed by Peter Honey and Alan Mumford to help reflect and develop failure.

Here's how the learning cycle rolls out:

1 Doing something, having an experience

2 Reflecting on the experience

3 Concluding from the experience, developing a theory

4 Planning the next steps, to apply or test the theory

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8613603

The DOING part is for example going to the 5th audition this week and being cut first round.  You know you are a fantastic dancer, you were top of your class at college, your assessments were top of the class, but your just not getting there. So you have experienced the doing part but you haven't quite reached you expectations. 

The next stage is to REFLECT - just simply doing the auditions will not help you learn. You need to reflect on this learning starts as you begin to reflect on what has happened.

In this case it could be a case of - “I fell off my turn” - “ I didn't perform the choreography in a way that they wanted” 

The next step is critical - CONCLUDING. Here is when we make conclusions based on our reflection. It is at this point where the danger of self-recrimination and negative self-talk rears itself. Thoughts such as "I'm a failure", "I will never be as good as... ", "I think I should give up", begin to arise. This is where we as performers need to block out that inner voice and create an action plan moving forward. “This week i will concentrate on my performance skills” 

This is where we as performers should formulate a PLAN of action. Creating a plan we need to ignore all inklings of self doubt. Focus on forward planning, what we can do to improve on our failures and see failures as an opportunity to learn rather than hitting walls and damaging our progress. 

A fantastic read I encourage all to read is “The Secret - by Rhonda Byrne” It focuses on positive energy and the way it can help us move forward and It has helped me keep positive through my injuries and subconsciously keeps you on track professionally - I highly recommend this book to all professionals wanting to succeed in their goals. 

The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue EXCELLENCE by Thomas J. Peters (Author) - This book is something that was recommended to me by my colleague at work. It focuses on small changes you can make to big differences in your life. 

In summary - Thought processes are vital to become successful within our performance careers. We are going to be knocked back 9/10 - but if we follow the ideas and learning developed by Peter Honey and Alan Mumford we can reflect on these failures and create change which ultimately will make us a true professional and successful in any career path that a we choose! 

Thoughts and comments always welcome.