Learning, Knowledge, and Truth. my thoughs before the skype meeting.

I have been thinking about learning, knowledge, truth, fact, Actual, Reality, and Real and what all of these words mean, so I went looking into my dictionary. I found that:

Learning is:

1.the act or experience of one that learns
2. knowledge or skill acquired by instruction or study
3. modification of a behavioural tendency by experience.

which leads me to what is knowledge, and experience, checking my dictionary again I have found the following:

Knowledge is:

1. cognizance
2. the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association
3. acquaintance with or understanding of a science, art, or technique
4. the fact or condition of being aware of something
5. the range of ones information or understanding
6. the circumstance or condition of apprehending truth or fact through reasoning : cognition
7. the fact or condition of having information or of being learned
8. the sum of what is known, the body of truth information, and principles acquired by mankind

Experience is:

1. Act of trying
2. direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge,
3. the fact or state of having been affected by or gained knowledge through direct observation or participation.
4. a practical knowledge, skill, or practice derived from direct observation of or participation in events or a particular activity\
5. the conscience events that make up an individual life
6. the events that make up the conscience past of a community or nation or mankind generally
7. something personally encountered, undergone, or lived through
8. the act or process of directly perceiving events or reality

Truth is:

1. Fidelity, Constancy
2. Sincerity in action, character, and utterance
3. the state of being the case : FACT
4. the body of real things, events, and facts : Actuality
5. a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality
6. a judgement, proposition, or idea that is true, or accepted as true
7. the body of true statements and propositions
8. the property of being in accord in accord with fact or reality
9. fidelity to an original or to a standard

Fact is:

1. a thing done
2. feat
3. action
4. performance doing
5. quality of being actual
6. something that has actual existence
7. an actual occurrence
8. a piece of information presented as having objective reality


Actual is:

1. Active
2. existing in act, and not merely potentially
3. existing in fact or reality
4. not false, or apparent
5. existing or occurring at the time

Reality is:

1. Quality or state of being real
2. a real event, entity or state of affairs
3. the totality of real things or events
4. something that is neither derivative nor dependant but exists necessarily

Real is:

1. relating to things
2. of or relating to fixed, permanent or immoveable things
3. not artificial, fraudulent, illusory, or apparent : Genuine
4. being precisely what the name implies
5. occurring in fact
6. of or relating to practical or everyday concerns or activities
7. existing as a physical entity and having properties that deviate from an ideal law, or standard
8. having objective or independent existence
9. belonging o or having elements that belong to the set of real numbers
10. being capable of being detected

of course not all of these points are relevant, or will work together, but they are all in my train of thought and connected when it comes to knowledge, and what we know, and what is learning.

Communication

This week I have been thinking a lot about communication. When I have been teaching my own students, I have been wondering how if changing the way I explain things, or how I explain things, will get better short term results. What if I change the tone of my voice? this is all leading to what types of teachers did I have myself, that I enjoyed, and how much of my enjoyment by them was a direct result of how they were able to communicate? So this last week I have been looking at everything I am able to find in book, and articles, and to help me answer my questions about what role in teaching does communication serve, and how at what level of importance is it? I think it is obvious, but I think there are many levels that I personally need to learn more about.

Qualified

Hello everyone, I came across this article that a friend posted on facebook. It made me think, what makes someone qualified to be a dance teacher, I mean the bare minimum requirement, please leave your answer below, and even ask the families of your own student, or even your own students. I am really curious to find out the answer!

Also check out this article, it is an interesting read about Conducive learning environments!

https://www.herald.co.zw/creating-a-conducive-learning-environment/

Welcome Back Skype

Hello again,

It was wonderful to see lots of new faces, and of course the familiar older faces in the skype meetings today. I will do my best at reflecting on what happened today, it is a little difficult as the skype meeting started at 6:00am local time.

We the majority of the skype meeting was informative, and geared towards awareness of the resources available to us as students, through our advisors, librarian, and Unihub.

After the introduction, and in depth tour of unihub, there was some discussion about the importance of being organized and creating personal schedules to keep on track for the duration of the module, as well as some brief discussion about the importance of reflecting, and recording our regular activities that we do in a given work day.

Overall there was a lot of information for everyone, involved thank you to Adesola, Helen, and Maria. I am looking forward to Module 2.

Summer Intensive 2018

These past few weeks I have been directing a summer intensive at my school. The experience has been really good for me. I have been working with fellow peers from my past, and brought them together again for the first time in 10 years. It is wonderful to see how people have grown in the past decade, and still for some reason work together really well, even though everyone has drastically different experience, and now have been altered culturally from where they located to in the world since we trained together.

This has lead to many questions for me to learn about now such as; how can one teach a ballet class that includes many different cultures, languages, experiences, social classes (unique and different depending on their locations within the world), and also to teach students coming from such different dance experiences. Relative to my own experiences, and understandings as one example.

I also have realized that I am here to teach what I have come to understand, and that the students have also come here to learn my understanding for themselves, I guess they see a value of some kind within it. As well as to learn how my own experiences, and understanding pair with the understandings of my current colleagues teaching within the intensive, and to learn about the final product of this 4 week session.

Culture, experience, age, and education are extremely relevant to how one teaches and learns. (this is probably obvious, and there is much more to this other than the mentioned items, however I just am posting for my own record)

End of Year

The end of the school year is just around the corner, which makes me think as always, how can next year be better. Scheduling?, different faculty?, is it possible to pre-plan, and pre choreograph the next years classes already? how much time do I need to allocate to this task if it is decided to be implemented? During this year I have come to the realization that everything can always be improved upon, and even more so if you are ale to find correct sources of others that have been doing what you are trying to do. Learning from others experience is as vital as learning from your own experience. So my plans over the summer are to continue writting more AOL because I chose not to submit the ones I have until I have a whole bunch to submit, and make it into one giant package, and to read as much as I am able to. And upon that, see how next year will be better!

Sunday Discussion May 06, 2018

Skype Session.

What we talked about today in skype.
 we talked about what we are all doing, and letting everyone know where we are in their places

The first topic we discussed was about teaching methods, in particular verbalization vs. demonstration in the dance class setting.

While there where many different opinions about Demonstration Vs. Verbalization in regards to different methods of communicating tasks in teaching. This discussion led to people not officially  changing their minds about different teaching methods but did lead more to the conclusion that people will learn differently at different stages in their training. Age, ability and individual learning styles are also factors in how people learn. There is no one way of teaching, teaching is a 'liquid' art.

The next topic we talked about was MAPP experience itself, most importantly the emotional portion of the MAPP. There was discussion about why different individuals embarked on the MAPP, and the different stresses, and enjoyment they have been experiencing as a part of the MAPP. I personally felt that the main outcome of this topic was that the MAPP is intended as an enjoyable learning experience for everyone, focusing on a deep understanding of ourselves as teaching professionals.

The third topic of the discussion ended up being how dancers are perfectionist, and how as dancers, and dance teachers it affects our performance within the MAPP. For example as mentioned above the stressful part of embarking on the MAPP and the concern about evaluation, and the ideas behind what constitutes as evaluation. Dancers are always trying to make sure that they do everything perfectly, therefore in situations when dancers are giving tasks that are not necessarily  clear, and achieving outcomes upon completion of these tasks that we are unable to understand how to evaluate. This lack of understanding leads to stress.


We then talked about different teaching strategies that people have learned on the MAPP for example democratic learning, and inspired learning. Authoritarian leaning etc. And there was much discussion about the importance of examinations, and participation in different dance competitions being necessary for evaluation of the students and teachers. There were many differing opinions about the importance of examinations, and discussions, however, there was no conclusion reached in the overall discussion, with the exception of how are we ourselves being evaluated on essays that we are writting? What does true evaluation entail?

The 5th topic discussed was about the process of the MAPP and how it has effected us in our professional practice, what changes have we been able to identify within ourselves. One of the individuals in the discussion has noticed a drastic change within herself as a teacher since beginning the MAPP vs. before she had begun the MAPP. From what I was able to observe this was mostly emotional differences before and after, as well as teaching approaches before and after. There was a mention that she would have never been the teacher she currently is if she had never started the MAPP and it was my own understanding that she before she had learned about learning that she wouldn't even have believed she would be able to teach, and transfer information to her students in the ways she is currently using previous to the MAPP.

Overall this discussion was supposed to be more about where we were personally within the MAPP and the processes of how and what we are learning. I am not sure if we reached the goals of that discussion, however, I am sure that everyone had much to think about, and reflect upon once the discussion ended.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and insights. I have more thinking to do myself within my lifetime now. I look forward to it.

Dave.