Life's Just a Stage-So Dance!

Well I finished the Web 2.0 course I’ve been taking but I’m not done with this blog-I want to keep it going, though I do wish I had given it a “catchier” name!

I never ever thought I would become so attached to blogging and I was sure that no one would read my posts, especially anyone in performing arts, but thanks to the Clustrmap I can tell this blog has been seen by some far-flung people, and that’s been exciting even though I haven’t gotten as many comments as I hoped for.  Mark Twain said, “I can live for 3 months on a good compliment” and he’s right-I just have to be patient and remember to look at the ClustrMap where the dots are starting to multiply and grow bigger-someone besides me is really reading this blog!  Cool!

I guess that only a very small percentage of elementary school dance teachers are into technology for 2 way communication and collaboration, I guess, except for email, Facebook and Myspace.  I really wanted my students to communicate via the web with one of my former mentors, the choreographer Merce Cunningham, who I have often written about on this blog.  Merce at 90 was still choreographing using special software he helped invent, and I know he would have loved to see my kids doing their versions of Chance dances.  But he died in late July before I got back to school to set anything up with my students.  So it’s back to the drawing board but I’m sure we’ll think of a project soon-all the kids are very interested in doing something “web 2.0-ish” with dance.

As far as this blog goes, I may have to broaden my topics to connect with more people-but I know there are other teachers out there who do relate to what I’ve said here-they’ve told me so…and some are people I would never have met if not for this blog, who have exchanged information and ideas with me, so maybe our students can collaborate long distance, even though no one I have met yet on the web is a dance teacher or choreographer like I am.

I don’t get a lot of comments from “regular people” or teachers as much as I hear from “places”-they’re either reading my blog and emailing me or linking to some of my posts, or contact me after I comment, or ping me–it’s  been funny to notice my own child-like excitement to other blogs and “places” mentioning my posts-when Digitizor first mentioned one of my posts I said, “Whoa!  This thing is real!”  I got so excited I called up everyone in my family to tell them, and then really felt like a computer wiz since no one knew what I was talking about.  No wonder the kids at school get so excited when anyone comments on their classroom blogs!  But I’d rather one person noticed than a whole lot of computers that  are programmed to look for keywords and tags.

Zemanta’s been linking to my posts quite a bit lately, so that’s been kind of funny too-it’s probably only because aren’t too many other dance teachers and choreographers out there blogging who use Zemanta as much as I do, but it’s such a fast and easy way to find pictures and links to related articles-and a lot of them are good ones too!

Twitter keeps trying to get me to blog with them too, even though I haven’t ever been to their site-I guess they’ve been to mine! I ought to try Twitter just to learn how to write in 140 words or less-as you can tell if you’ve read this far, that would be extremely challenging for me!

I’ve started commenting sometimes when I read my “feeds” and that’s been interesting too-some people write back and keep up the exchange, so if you’re a newbie-blogger or web “Reader” like I am-Comment-you might be surprised at the reactions you get!  I can’t even remember the name of one place I ended up, some educational newsletter linked to some teaching website I visited as a task in the k12learning2.0 course-where I responded to a survey asking if people used cell phones in education-and if so, to comment and tell them how they were using them. After I reported how I texted choreography to some of my teenage pointe students-and how much the students liked that ,and actually worked on what I sent them, the survey author asked to quote me in another article she was doing about the results of that poll-so that was a surprising, positive development, but uh-oh–here’s where I showed my “newbie-ness” -I got to that site through some random path of links that I kept clicking on, and have no idea where I was!  Since school started, I’ve gotten so many emails that I can’t seem to find that one now- so I can’t go back and read her article (!!!)…

But that experience did get me thinking-maybe my students and I should do a poll this year -perhaps, “How Many Dance Teachers and/or Dance Classes Blog?” that would be a great way to attract comments and find out what other dance people are doing and thinking!

2nd Graders Make a Dance Comic Book about Dress Rehearsal!

I know we’re going to make a couple more pages for our Dance Comic Book this year-that project was a HUGE success thanks to the cooperation of two very creative, constructivist 2nd grade teachers and especially helpful IT staff at my school.

Two girls and I wrote everything that needed to be said, and the girls in one second grade class dressed up, acted everything out, took pictures to go with all the instructions, and all the members of that class helped even cut out and staple the books together!

Every single dancer got a small color copy well in advance to read every night before bed at home, and we read my big copy in each dance class, so on Dress Rehearsal Day, no time was wasted answering questions-everyone knew what to do- and every dancer felt “large and in charge” of themselves and their costumes.

Dress Rehearsal is a huge event here every year.  Last year 140 girl dancers and 21 boy dancers in Grades 1-3 had to get dressed in their costumes at school between 8:30 and 9:oo am in 8 differnt locations in the school that we turned into temporary Dressing Rooms for the occasion, then they got on buses to go to our theater where 12 different dances were performed in one hour for the rest of the Primary School students and teachers, got back on the buses, changed back into uniforms, packed their own costumes and dance shoes into handle tie trash bags, tied them tightly to their book bag handles for transport home that afternoon-and got to Lunch—all by 11:30.    It’s a major undertaking, but the Dance Dress Rehearsal Comic Book saved the day; the para-pros who supervised the kids getting dressed said they stood back and watched in amazement as even the 1st graders knew what to do and where to go!  With 141 girls and 31 boys dancing in Grades 1, 2 and 3 at my school this year, you can bet this is one web 2.0 project I want to do again.

Another thing I can do is more “flip videos” to help my students. Only a few of the dance teachers I know video rehearsals and email them to their dancers for personal review, though it’s easy to see on You Tube that everyone is posting dance.  Here at school I know some teachers post choreography they want rehearsed on Edline, and I plan to post things to practice too this year-probably on my wiki.

I emailed a video of a student’s part to her when she was in the hospital and when that little 2nd grader returned to rehearsals after 3 weeks away, she knew her special recital part better than the dancers who were never absent-so that’s definitely a good use of web 2.0 tools that I plan to do more of in the near future!

Have I developed a sort of Personal Learning Network from this blog? I didn’t think so at first, just because I wasn’t getting very many comments, but I’ve realized from communicating with a few colleagues in other states that almost everyone that teaches-and anyone who has anything to do with performing arts- is almost always incredibly busy during the school year, especially –we might as well live each in our own little worlds.  And not everyone takes the time to comment if they don’t have a question, perhaps because they don’t expect to get a reply, much less start a long distance networking relationship from a comment-but it was only halfway through the summer that I began to understand that’s what web 2.0 and blogs are really all about-someone had to write me back and forth for me to figure that out –just reading about it happening to other people just didn’t convince me, I guess!

Educational social networks are more than just me and you emailing or trading comments with each other though, so maybe I do have a network of sorts going now that I’m reading blogs and going to different links based on the recommendations of people I have learned to “know” through their blogs!  I’m commenting in several places on the web, based on the encouragement of bloggers who I have never met in person, so that’s a PLN, I think.

Has k12learning2.0 had any other positive effects on me that I think will last-and/or taught me at least 3 things I’ll use all year with my students? YES!  I’ve already talked about some of them but every time I go back and read this I think of more! 

For myself, I now “read my feeds” everyday using Google Reader on my iphone, and Walt Mossberg’s “All Things Digital” and the “Walt Street Journal” apps on my iphone almost every day too-and expect to continue that.

I’ve learned a lot by reading the coolcatteacher blog- I always click on lots of Vickie Davis’ links that she posts there and PBS Teachers is another resource I use all the time now too. (Where do I find the time??? I hate to say it, but I gave up reading the 2 “real” newspapers that land on my driveway every day, but feel somewhat less guilty for not cancelling my subscriptions because now my husband is finally reading them).

My school wiki is here to stay-the parents and the kids love it and I plan to figure out a way to make it more interactive this year-though I hope I can do that without me having to read more emails every day- that would be Great!

And I’m keeping this blog going too! The time I spent on this blog and the whole k12learning2.0 course was definitely worth it-even if I did have to take it twice to be able to “get it”!  Perhaps this sounds like a cliche’ but where web 2.0 is concerned, I say, “Our kids are the future, and we teachers really do light the way”!  (And those that don’t feel like that are going to be left in the dust-sorry, but that’s the truth!)

If nothing else, maybe one day, my own children will look back at these blogposts and understand at last why their “technology-obsessed” Mom was up so late at night, and stayed so long after school.

Thanks to all the things I learned and bookmarked this past summer during the k12learning2.0 course, I think I can create my own professional development for years to come!

Through struggling with some web2.0 tasks, I have definitely learned I need more time than most people, and will choose my courses carefully and also make sure I have checklists like the End of Course rubric I had to sign today for the k12learning2.0 course, at the Beginning of the Course-not just at the end, so I can make sure I stay on track.  Or else I may have to sign up for a professional development course that is offered through a learning disabilities organization of some kind; no one at my school doubts I qualify now, and goodness knows, my k12 learning2.0 coach and others in the IT Dept here at my school can certainly verify that I need “accommodations” too!

Other “Things” I learned about that I will try to use this year myself or with my students are some of the Cool Tools in this k12 learning2.0 course-making the Slide Show was fun and there are a lot of things that I have Simply Boxed that I will use for a long time to come for school and personal projects.  Google Docs just might save my life AGAIN the next time my school computer acts up and/or is accidently wiped clean!  And I love Delicious bookmarks!  My Delicious bookmarks are

I also hope to find time to make a wiki this year for the nonprofit dance organization that I founded, DancerKids, Inc. I can’t tell you how helpful it would have been to have a wiki when the main computer server went down with a virus over at the church where the DancerKids program is in residence!

In addition to showing You Tube clips of great dances to my students, I hope to post some of the kids’ dances online  too where they can be viewed with a password, and I think just between all of my different 3rd grade classes, I’m almost ready to get a choreography collaboration going as an “online movement experiment”, where one class makes up a few moves, another class looks that video up on the web and learns the steps, and comes back to class to show me-then I help them add their moves onto the first class’ moves and film them and post to You Tube, etc etc back and forth.  That could be really cool!

Flickr and Creative Commons and Gcast-are also very cool things I want to use with my students.  I’m even glad, I guess, that I learned the hard way that it’s possible to take off your own podcast from Gcast if you accidently violate a copyright law, but the fact that I might have done that by accident just goes to show how easy it is to do.  Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that copyright protection is something I strongly believe in-(though lawyers will tell you that copyright law is very poorly written for Dance).

Thing 22 was about Nings and should have had it’s own blogpost but I almost forgot it skipping around to finish all my web 2.0 tasks the way I had to do here at the end, so I’m squeezing it in here. NINGs I don’t think are for me…not yet. I joined Classroom 2.0, and The Strengths Ning that the Gallup organization has going now, but really haven’t had any time to play with those much after setting them up!   When school started in August, I thought I would never be able to do anything extra ever again, but lately I’ve at least had time to be thinking about how to make more time to blog, and have found a way to read my feeds even when I’m really busy… now if I could figure out how to get time to update my wiki more often etc…it is getting a little easier after a month in school-but I have to be careful.  I got so excited about having time to go back to update and add to my blog that I totally forgot about some school paperwork I was supposed to be working on (so that’s where the “free” time came from–oops)!

As far as this web 2.0 course is concerned, I must say I won’t miss trying to finish everything by the deadlines, but I will really miss having a bunch of assignments pre-selected by someone who knows what she’s doing, just sitting there on the web waiting for me anytime I am ready to go do learn new-and sometimes I really needed my coach’s help to know how to do some of the technical stuff-but I also know a lot more places to look for that kind of information now too.   And I am much more confident than I ever was before!

I know that even if things I try don’t work out for me as easily as they do for most other people, it isn’t the end of the world, for one thing.  If I keep trying, I eventually figure stuff out, and if not-there are loads of people to help me-in and out of school (my PNL!)

I don’t think I’ll stop this blog-it’s a good way to think out loud and remember what’s important and communicate that to whomever is listening.  I’m  glad for the contacts that do come my way, but if you’re too busy to comment, don’t feel bad-I know exactly how that is!

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Merce Cunningham “Rockefeller Award” is one of my favorite video clips on You Tube for educational purposes for students aged 7-18.  It’s short enough to hold the interest of younger students, but interesting enough that it never fails to spark lively discussion about “what dance is”, and how different cultures decide what relationship dance “should” have to Art, music, and to lots of other subjects too.

The video is short retrospective of Merce Cunningham’s career, filmed to be inform to the audience that was watching when Merce received the Rockfeller Award.  Merce talks a little bit about who he is, where he came from, how he was the only person in his family who danced, and how got started dancing in high school because he wanted to learn to Tap Dance.  Short film clips and photographs illustrate his evolution from dance student to modern dancer to choreographer, and though the younger students don’t always understand when he talks about where his ideas come from-and how he choreographs-it’s easy enough for me to re-explain in words that children can understand.

Web 2.0, and computer and other technologies are a major emphasis at the private college prep day school where I teach-and they’re being integrated more and more into every subject area- (which is the main reason I began this blog to begin with-that and the fact that it was a requirement of the k12learning2.0 course). That’s why I always like to start with Merce at the beginning of every school year with my 3rd Grade modern/jazz classes.

“Chance Operations”, which the composer John Cage first encouraged Merce Cunningham to use, early in his career, when Merce was experiencing an artistic block.  The “Zen” inherent in both chance and ordinary, everyday random events were great influences on Merce’s work throughout his lifetime, and this film is a great way to introduce a study of “Chance Dance”-or “Chance Operations”, which is a method lots of teachers use everyday-if only to choose their “Line Leader”, or put students into groups.

Here in my classroom, and wherever I work with dancers, Chance is used like Merce used it-because Catherine Kerr, one of his long-time partners, was one of my most influential teachers-and her descriptions of how Merce applied his methods and personal philosophy to dance were the most intriguing ideas I’d ever heard.

As Dance is traditionally passed from one generation to the next, I Like to think I’m passing my choreographic tool box along too so that even my 3rd graders learn how to use Chance as a way to make up dances, and as method to solve problems-including problems like indecision, fear, and procrastination, and sometimes, they figure out how to use Chance the way I like to use it best- just to shake up everyone’s “usual” way of thinking from time to time!  This movie helps me to begin to explain all that.

Merce Cunningham’s “collaborations” with both “up and coming” and well-established avant garde’ musicians and abstract artists, as well as computer programmers, videographers, and motion capture photographers helps to broaden students’ views of the connections that exist between dance, music, art, technology, science, math, and many other subject areas and disciplines-many that before Merce weren’t considered “artistic”, or even related in any way to dance-(and as some students’s first reactions to the video clips of Merce’s work clearly demonstrate, still aren’t always appreciated-another topic for discussion)!

One of the things that’s unique about Merce is the way he kept on being creative and expressing his artistry integrating technology with dance in surprising ways all thoughout his entire career.  Merce Cunningham even helped invent special dance choreography software that allowed him to make incredible dances for the members of his own dance company until he was 90 years old-long after he himself was unable to dance or even demonstrate his dances!  Merce is my personal hero because he kept on being interested in “new ideas” right up until the very end of his life, last July 26, 2009, when only a couple of months after his 90 birthday, he died peacefully in his sleep.  What an amazingly creative and original life he led-and what an inspiration he has been to me and countless other dancers, choreographers, and other artists, scientists and idea-lovers!

Merce is a lot older in this film than any of my students are used to thinking of when they think of  famous “dancers” and “choreographers”, which is a good thing, because the sooner they understand how inappropriate and unfair age bias can be, the better,  as technology will probably lengthen their life spans far past mine and their parents!

I especially like how this short video clip about Merce and his work challenges students’ preconceived ideas in many areas; it could be used as an appropriate introduction to various lessons in other subject areas besides  Dance, such as Music, Visual Art, Art History, Modern American History, Comparative or Eastern Religions, Technical Theater, Video Production, Computer classes, as well as in Math and Science.

Sound of Music in a Train Station?  You have to see this to believe it!  My students who ride take rapid transit to school all think it would be so much fun to do this-and they’re right, it would be-if someone else besides me could work out all the logistics, permissions, and pay for all the security we’d have to hire to do this in Atlanta-but it’s impossible to watch this whole video without smiling!

Bookmark it to use the next time you’re in a bad mood, or want something you’re working on to go especially well-(a speaker at our school just a couple of years ago told us that scientists at Harvard helped her prove that when you smile for one continuous minute -even if it’s a “fake smile”-you flood your brain with “feel-good” endorphins-enough of them to relax your body, and change your mood into a more positive and hopeful one, and smailing for one minute helps students do as well on their tests as students who have had extra tutoring-well, that’s what we were told-try it)!

For families on a budget, with children who’d have trouble sustaining their attention all the way through a 2 hour dance concert, You Tube videos of professional classical dance, contemporary dance, musical theater, and modern dance companies are perfect!

On my school wiki right now are two clips of excerpts of “Swan Lake”-one is the “Dance of the Little Swans”-which is a great example of teamwork and precision, illustrating a “traveling group shape”, and the ballet step, “pas de chat” (among others), and the other video features the late great dancer, Rudolf Nureyev, partnering “Miss Piggy”-which even the more “socially sophisticated” students among my 1st and 2nd Grade dancers think is hilarious.

Parents who are culturally astute typically schedule an annual family outing to see one of the many  “Nutcracker”s in Atlanta, but it seems very few of my primary age dancers get to see any other story ballets-much less any “real” modern dance, though a few years ago, we did get to take our entire Primary School, (when it was much smaller), to an Alvin Ailey school show at the “Fabulous Fox Theater”-you can see the Ailey Company on You Tube too.

You can see performances by almost every great artist or dance company if you just enter their name in the Search Box on You Tube-or enter the name of the dance you want to see, i.e. “Coppelia”, NYC Ballet’s Nutcracker, Mark Morris, Baryshnikov, “Revelations”, Paul Taylor, “Esplanade”, Merce Cunningham-you can even search for dances that are in some movies or musicals like “Centerstage”, “A Chorus Line”,  etc.

Thinking of kids’ reactions to professional dance:

It’s amazing for me to see how many of my active 3rd grader dancers who were only in Kindergarten or First Grade when they saw that Ailey performance we took them to way back when, will stop improvising to stand listening intently, with a far away look on their faces, if I suddenly put on music from “Revelations”.  They get all excited when I tell them where they’ve heard it before-like they’re remembering something from a long-ago dream and they have to tell me all about what they remember too!  Most of them immediately recognize photos or movie clips from “Revelations”-a piece that the vast majority only saw that one time-despite the fact that the Ailey company comes to Atlanta almost every winter.  I do have to say though, that when I put on my wiki the dates and times and locations of professional dance companies, along with a link to the Box Office, many more of my students’ parents see that info and act on it!  Which just goes to show the power of web2.0!

One of the clips I selected to use in my classes is always especially popular with my 3rd Grade Dancers-who are captivated by the whole idea of props, and who love light effects like “black light”.  Tensile Involvement, was originally choreographed in the mid-50’s by the late choreographer, Alwin Nikolais, but looks extremely contemporary.

I can’t imagine what people thought in the 50’s when “Tensile Involvement” was first presented, but my 3rd grade students said they thought it looked like a strange dream someone might have had about being trapped inside a big machine, or maybe inside a computer, or lost out in cyberspace.  This particular video clip shows The Joffrey Ballet performing the piece as the opening of the movie, “The Company”.

You Tube is such a great resource for learning historical dances too:  here’s and easy to follow clip of the Ragtime One Step, just one of many educational dance video clips from the Library of Congress.

My students like trying to do the Tarentella by following along with the New York City Ballet Workout video clip on You Tube.

Here’s something I found on Teacher Tube-a site I really don’t like because of all the ads:  Dance Video for Pre-K.K. Gr. 1.  This video has a catchy little song  with the lyrics on the screen so students can learn to sing along to it-and it might be a memorable way to get across the point to young children that dancers usually don’t talk (or make noises and squeal with delight) when they are dancing-they let the music speak for them, along with their body shapes and movements, use of space, weight, force and energy.

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Image via CrunchBase

How many Bookmarks have you got?  Any idea how many you really use?  Thought so!  Reduce your guilt and share them-someone else might desperately need something you bookmarked in an idle moment and never bothered to visit again!  But do take the time to share a few notes about what you’ve bookmarked, and put on some tags-because that’s what turns Delicious into a really useful search engine for everyone!

I’ve been using Delicious since learning about it last summer (the first time I got involved with k12learning20-  (The course I think of as of as: k12learning20.1, since I’m repeating)!.  By checking out other people’s links, I found several costume vendors I might not have known existed otherwise, professional development resources, lessons plans, you name it.  I was surprised to see how many thousands of people have visited the Quizlet Bookmark I put on Delicious.  It’s interesting to see which of my bookmarks are popular with other people-and which ones Never get looked at!

Today I went back and tagged some things “k12learning20″ that I hope other people in my “class” will find useful or interesting.

I used Delicious to keep up with some of my Flickr pictures for my web 2.0 slideshow project.  Posting the pictures to Delicious definitely made them easier to locate and to attribute-!!!  I figured that little tip out by myself out of sheer desperation after choosing to use a lot of pictures-it was really late at night, and it was taking so long to attribute things every other way I tried! When I started reading about Thing 15, I read that same tip on the k12learning20 page and felt really proud-for once I could say “been there-done that”-and all by myself too!

If you’re really into the social aspects of the web, it’s probably a good idea to stop and click right here to read what ReadWriteWeb’s Sarah Perez has to say about your digital footprint and digital shadow.  Download the free tool that’s provided that will focus your mind in a hurry concerning how much of a presence you have out here on the internet, that you may not even realize!

Most of us are becoming “known” for so much more than just the sites we voluntarily click on- and while some of this is good (it’s helpful sometimes to have recommendations come to us already “personalized”)-it’s still something serious to think about!  Evidently very little of this information can be reclaimed once it gets out there-and it’s putting a huge burden on the IT professionals who’re charged with keeping information private.  Be aware!

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Interested in making your students into Storytellers and Collaborators with others around the world? -click this! My dance students in Grades 1 and 2 sometimes write their own 1-page Ballet stories to perform in class, and this wiki has given me some ideas about how to publish them-on a wiki!

Primary Math Wiki-I loved learning about this wiki-it’s simple, direct, and effective for Primary students.  I got a lot of ideas for making an educational wiki for, and with, my student dancers.  Not only could they use it at home for fun and for practice, but it could also serve as a demonstration or reminder) of how the activities we regularly do in dance class relate to other subject areas.  I actually contacted one of the teachers involved with this wiki and shared Pattern making ideas with her.

Check out this great Toolbox! To me, this is the most interesting page of Jennifer Doman’s-to find it you have to really look though, unless you use this link I created!  This wiki got a Cool Cat Teacher award so I spent a little time looking around-otherwise I would probably not have spent much time on her wiki at all as my first impression was her wiki was just a fancy online resume’.

I know I’m biased but One of my favorite educational wikis is MINE!

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Image by Pat McDonald (away for a few days) via Flickr

Click here to see my Primary Dance Wiki

I had a bit of a problem figuring out how to make the link icon show up-but finally figured it out.  also figured out that tags I list on this blog aren’t Delicious type tags-they are supposed to link to other blog posts I’ve written, so I’m going back and cleaning up all my posts now.  Better late than never, I guess!

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