I attended the second campus meeting and I have to say it really helped me clear few things I was sure of to get ahead with my work. It was nice to meet Verity Evans for the first time, she helped a lot during the session with her participation and also has a very interesting inquiry on TIE work and the National Curriculum.( http://verityevans.blogspot.com/ )
We were given the schedule for the day by Paula and went through :
-The deadlines
-Help from advisers
-How to write up the Critical Review (Title, Introduction, Evaluation, Analysis, Critical Reflection)
-Artefact
We also did a group exercise on how to read and scan a piece of literature; we read a short piece from The Stage and tried to find the key points and its message. It was very useful as I personally had a frustration about finding the right literature without wasting time on long written pieces and books that actually don't have much to do with my inquiry.
I guess we have to develop a sort of method on how to find literature and spot the ones that interests us.
One at the time we spoke out our inquiry question to talked with the others about points of view and to check if the inquiry was clear to everyone and not just ourselves, this was very interesting as something that may be very clear for us, may not be explained properly and so it gave us and idea of where to correct ourselves. Paula asked one at the time the same questions, who where what and how; answering these questions gives us the basics to structure the Introduction for our Critical Review; we need to know well our sector and explain simply why our question was created in the first place and how it came about.
Then we went onto the artefact, Paula asked us to draw on a blank piece of paper a drawing of who our audience/s is/are, having that clearly in mind focuses you on what could be the most reachable and useful artefact for you audience. She also suggested to attach and explanation with our artefact as, again, it could be something very clear to us but it has to be understandable also if we are not there to explain it (an example I thought of was an installation/piece of art who always has a written explanation next to it).
I left the session feeling very confident and knowing what to do next, every time a campus session makes me so much more relaxed and confident on the module, that I suggested to have an extra session (maybe after Easter) after our 3rd one, not sure if this will happen but I think everyone was positive on this as we could all benefit so much more with an extra meeting.
Thanks very much for this, it's so helpful when someone re-caps over what was spoken about during the Campus Sessions. Great to hear you feel confident in the direction you are taking, I am still unsure as to my Artefact. Can I clarify, the suggestion was to draw on a blank sheet who we think our intended audiences are? I am finding this difficult, my audience seems quite broad, so finding a medium to suit all is proving tricky. How did you manage to specify a bit more?
ReplyDeleteI was also thinking about starting a new SIG on facebook, would you be interested? Paula's blog has reminded me how important is it for us all to keep working together to share thoughts and ideas.
You are welcome Sophie! I remember when I did the first module and I was living in italy and couldn't attent the campuses, it also helped a lot when someone re-caped what had been said and done!
ReplyDeleteYes, paula suggested to draw our intended audience for the artefact, it has to be something that "soms up" our findings rather than a further investigation on the matter; try to think who could benefit from your findings, who could actually look at your inquiry for "their" own inquiry for instance (does it make sense?).
I'm try to understand what a performer should and could do in order to succeed once on its own...or after training finishes, what to do if you don't get a job straight out of college... so my artefact will have something to do with a piece of material (not sure what yet!) that contains all the findings and element that can help a performer in such situation. NOt sure if I made it clear, again during the session we talked about explaining key words and things to others in a simple way for those not familiar with what a performer is, for instance, so please let me know if I helped or if you don't understand my explanation :) this will also help me improving my written work.
About the SIG I would be more than happy to start a new one, I suggested Linkedin a while ago on my blog as it has its own discussion board and it seems a little more reliable than FB (remember what happen last time when it got taken off the social network??)...I do believe that sharing ideas and exchanging opinions is VERY IMPORTANT for our projects!