MA Professional Practice, Dance- Jesse Milligan

In a blog post by Adesola Akinleye, Connectivism is looked as a fundamental feature of the MAPP course. Akinleye uses two theorist's ideas on connectivism to establish how they are linked to our practice within dance. George Siemens sees connectivism as a means for a more socially connected process of learning that can eliminate a contrived instructivist or self-regulated approach. This can take many levels; at a biological level where neurons are firing and forming new connections to networked learning where one takes concepts and applies them to their pre-established understanding to form conceptual connections. Most commonly connectivism is seen everyday in networked learning from external social platforms (blogs, social media etc.) This Combinatorial Creativity can be applied to how dance has evolved over time. At a biological level, a sense of movement is instilled in everyone at birth and dance has been seen in the earliest of records. As dance has evolved, networked lear...

On Tuesday we had a discussion session with Adesola with a focus on module one (DAN4510). Adesola started by asking if we had any questions regarding the module and it seemed the majority of us weren’t too sure of the difference between our AOL submissions and the Recognition of Prior Learning essay. It soon became clear to us that the RPL essay was rather an articulation of the theory behind our current practice and how we would contextualise what we know; whereas the AOLs were specific to each area knowledge and the experiences that allowed this learning to come about. Later in the session, Adesola showed us a TED talk conducted by Ken Robinson on the subject of Changing Educational Paradigms. His talk went on to describe how the current educational system wasn’t fit for purpose and that there was a divide between young learners who are classed as ‘academic’ and those classed as ‘non-academic’ From a young age, children are deemed best suited to jobs that are either ‘intellectual’ o...

Sunday evening saw us have our monthly MAPP discussion group which was based upon the topic of 'Knowing and Learning'. After going around and hearing everyone's current progression and thoughts, Helen directed us to Agatha's query on 'Translation of Ideas' and how we translate what we know in our bodies to a medium that is understood by others. From this the discussion quickly moved onto the broader subject of communication and how we communicate in our chosen practices. This took several forms, including Tara's experience working with disabled students, Jade communicating with young students in a narrative that they would understand and David's research into Ideokinesis (the improvement of posture and alignment of the body using visualisation techniques). Although one might say that the subject of conversation deviated from the initial topic of 'knowing and learning', I felt this was extremely beneficial for me as I explore 'communicat...