Making Connections

Apart from becoming rather bogged down with information - or should that be blogged down? - my reading about blogging in tertiary eduction is starting to make some connections. For our Advanced Directing paper, a large proportion of our grade was for a reflective journal. We were supposed to make frequent entries into this journal but were not given much guidance about what these entries were supposed to look like. This was a conscious decision on the part of the lecturer - and a decision I actually agreed with - since she did not want us to just copy an exemplar. However, as a student, such a decision does not help the student. We were looking for concrete guidance and were not terribly interested in the dogmatic philosophy behind the assessment. On the other hand, we were not given any guidance - in the form of articles to read - on why we were doing this assignment and what we were supposed to be getting out of it.

This journal was supposed to be a record of our learning throughout the year. Since such a large proportion of our grade rested on it, however, the lecturer checked it once during the year. This was the only feedback we received before the journal became due. There was little incentive for us to share our journals - or entries from them - to get an idea of what our peers were doing. Also, because we were not encouraged to share the journals, many of us fell into the trap of not writing in them frequently but rather back-dating a lot of entries after we realised that months had gone by without writing anything.

It seems that a blog would have been an ideal solution to this problem. Not only would this have provided us with more guidance from what our peers were doing but it would also have fulfilled the spirit of the exercise more fully since having a public record would have kept us honest about our posting. These blogs could have also helped increase our collegiality - particularly important since there were only 5 of us in the class - and increase our number as we became part of a much wider community.

Reflective Practice and Blogs

Now that the opening of The Winter's Tale draws nigh, my attention is turning more towards what I have done. I believe that throughout this project I have been far more self-aware than I have been previously. Part of this greater self-awareness has come from the fact that I have been blogging about my process - this blog - throughout. Having to make my thoughts more coherent for someone else to read helps focus me on what actually is important rather than letting myself ramble on too much. Also, having Google Analytics installed helps me to keep updating my blog regularly to see if you are coming back to read what I am writing or how many new people are reading my pearls of wisdom. And - because the act of writing something makes it more clear - I am also finding ways to solve my problems and am gaining the heart to face them.

I have, however, encountered two particular problems when I have been blogging: having an advertising blog and actors' anonymity. My Current Projects Blog is designed to advertise the production. So, obviously, it would be inappropriate to mention certain things in there. Then, if I am having problems with certain actors, I must be very careful in how I speak about them. Particularly since there may be nothing inherently "wrong" with what they are doing but there may just be a personality clash in which I myself am not completely blameless. Then again, this is a general point about blogs: what you write is in the public domain and may remain there in perpetuity so if you bag people you may be looking like an ass; in looking like an ass, you write yourself as an ass in indelible ink.

To Teach or To Learn?

During the last session of my DIL project the co-ordinator apologised to me because she was feeling that I was not getting enough out of the project. I, however, was feeling quite to the contrary. Although it was true that I was feeling frustrated that I was not being extended I have since realised I was being extended in a different way than I expected.

I had always intended this project to be an exercise in how to effectively mobilise Web 2.0 strategies/tools. However, I ended up learning how to teach. I think I am rather fluent in using on-line tools since they are mostly pretty easy to operate - they are designed this way - and if I find a new tool it won't take me that long to figure out how to use it. Instead, I had experience in passing some of this knowledge onto people who may have had little or no experience with computers. It is great to realise you were learning when you think you weren't - you just need to shift your frame of reference.

Reflection?

Well, I have been asked to reflect on what I am doing in the DIL. Last night, however, I realised that because I was not carrying out reflection in action I could not reflect on action since I wasn't even recording what my actions were! Consequently, my day yesterday was not quite as effective as it could have been.

I did start working on Wikis and video editing so I will summarise what I remember.

Simon Hart was keen that I look at wikis for the Theatre Studies Programme to use as a way of collaborating between staff since they could post an entry and other staff could edit it and provide feedback thereby having a living document. The other option for these purposes is to have a blog with an RSS feed so staff knew when a change had been made; the changes would be in their face rather than staff having to go and hunt for them. My next step is to set up a wiki to see just how they work from a practical perspective.

I also skulked around the net to see if I could find either wikis or blogs which fostered a community of practice. This was very hard since most of them talk about theatre in general rather than specific forms of theatre - queer theatre was the community of practice with which I was concerned. My thoughts here lead me in the direction of setting up a community site for queer theatre. Although the problem will be buy-in since, for the site to be of any use, the community would need to embrace it fully. Add to this the phenomenon that theatre practitioners have very little time/effort to update a blog or other site this task may be quite difficult.

I then changed my concentration ever so slightly to look at on-line video editors. Why? A practitioner could use them to report/reflect on their work (if they are working in a traditional paradigm); they could be blended with live theatre; they could be used as a digital performance. I am using a web 2.0 directory to find on-line editors to use. So far this has been fruitful but has not been carried out in a co-ordinated fashion. My colleague Allison Brown, Digital Initiatives Librarian, who had the brilliant idea that I compare the different editors I find on a spreadsheet. What a fantastic idea! And, I know, you are thinking it is also so banal but my mind is working slowly these days. So, you can look forward to more...