Time of change...

 On Wednesday evening after a long day at work I sat myself down at my Laptop at 9pm to start our online discussion group. Needless to say I was feeling tired, and truthfully not 100% motivated...but what a great hour it turned out to be! I have made a summary of the main points that stood out to me in our hour session, mainly to do with the structure of your essay. We first started talking about:  Academic writing VS Analytical writing Firstly looking at academic writing : so you need to first establish, what are the conventions used in academic writing? Below you will find a diagram explaining how one can structure an academic essay. Hopefully it is clear enough...(it wasn't til later that I was savvy enough to take a photo of the screen - silly me!) I found this really helpful and wish I'd used this in Module 1 to give me a base to my structure. Especially when working under a relatively strict word count and you need to be selective; the condensed version of having your the

 After reviewing Module 1 and looking at where my 'weakness' lay I started taking another look back at Ethics. However after the discussion groups last Wednesday and Thursday I am taking it back a step further. Our Zoom discussion made me realize I had read the handbook and my head had been filled with information, possible ideas for inquiry but mostly a big old blghhhhhhhh! I didn't know what to do with it all!!! So in this Blog I will start by making a summary for myself (and hopefully it's helpful to others) of how I am approaching this Module. Remember - you're not doing the research this module, but doing the research design Researching Research - looking for literature and artifacts about research and not the field of my enquiry We are not setting out to answer our questions, but trying to explore it and give it a context Allow questions to emerge, to find your ultimate question (Helen described this with a great piece of imagery: imagine dropping a pebble in

Reflecting on Module 1, I have taken it upon myself to delve deeper into Ethics. I feel I only touched the surface previously and need to make a concerted effort to understand the topic better and what implications this has on my practice. (And how it will play a role in my later inquiry). To do this I feel I need to go back to the roots, literally.  I have centered my first part of reading and research process in 'Theatre & Ethics'. A study that moves through History taking an academic approach to the works of Playwrights and their subjects. What has shaped the ethics of the time, and how the ethics of that time shaped the play. I think it already sounds interesting! But there's a lot to take in and analyse. For anyone else who struggled applying the ethical considerations to their Module 1 reflection, I can recommend this as a bit of extra reading.    Here I have added a picture of the city of Hamburg , my former home. This was after the horrific air raids of WW2 This

 With all the talk about the digital world in Module 1 I found myself wondering: how our digital carbon footprint impacts the environment? This is a tricky one and I could have devoted days, months and years to in depth research. However time is against me so I read as much as I could in a short space of time and came up with the following thoughts : Digitalisation is heavy on energy and is resource intensive. It comes with a gob smacking carbon footprint. A study from the Shift Project found that our use of digital technologies now actually cause more Co2 emissions than the entire aviation industry! (According to the experts the share of the global Co2 emissions from 2013-2018 increased from 2.5% to 3.7%) I find this staggering, even though we can't see it, can it really be ignored? Without decisive political action the digital revolution is set to increase our consumption of resources and energy and accelerate the damage we are doing to our planet and our climate. But this has to

 I suffer massive discomfort at the thought of conflict in and out of work. I think that the route of my problem is ultimately the fear that what I am/have done is not good enough. So I avoid discussions/arguments of getting onto a certain subject as I don't want to have to defend myself. I fear my argument is too weak and that whatever I have produced will not be to the liking of whoever it is that is judging it. So sometimes I don't say anything and try to distance myself. Of course this is actually exacerbating the problem to me (maybe unknown to the "judge"), so not only now am I dealing with the feeling of my product is soon to come under attack, but also that I am not being true. It may well be that my product is fine, but I automatically push myself into expecting the worst. Why do I have such low self-esteem?  I wasn't always this way. I was never one to be in the spotlight (apart from when I was physically on stage) and shout out me, me, I can! But I alwa

  I'm working through the Handbook and felt the urge to undertake some research into Collective Intelligence; and how online communities create partnerships and why. I began by asking: what is so compelling about being part and remaining a part of an online community? My simple answer was... 1. The urge to contribute to the community 2. the perception of benefiting from the community. Then I thought about it some more... You and I are bound together by a common interest or topic such as a hobby, profession, location or cause. We may have no pre established connections. We may well come from all walks of life. But everyday we're lost in a digital sea of information and conversations. But online communities can act as an anchor by personalizing or grouping all that content.  Online communities have improved three major aspects of online life:  communication, personal development and business. Communication  on the internet is often thought of as asynchronous but for the most part