Lesson Plans Rock. No, really.

The first lesson plan I wrote for this prac took me at least three hours, which seems crazy for one class. But it’s going faster now, and feedback from my mentor teacher has been encouraging. I guess I’m sort of an intuitive thinker, not used to organizing my thoughts quite in the way that you have to to be able to state learning outcomes, resources, timing of activities, etc. At first it was really hard for me to translate what I wanted to do in a class into that kind of lovely, clean PLAN. I like the thrill of the unknown--but there’s enough of that in teaching even with the most solid lesson plan ever. Ironically, having a plan virtually set in stone makes me feel ready for anything.   

STS is Rad.

I loved STS during the weeks when I had started my prac early--and not just for Kerrie's jokes or the drinks at the Lighthouse afterwards! Walking into a school every day felt like going down the rabbit hole—totally fascinating and engrossing; meanwhile back at UC, I was missing classes and totally out of the loop. So staying connected with my classmates and the Grad Dip course was hugely helpful. I heard some people saying they were nervous about planning for their pracs and dealing with the quirks and challenges of their schools. I realized I would absolutely have let my nervous energy run wild and freaked myself out; but because of my schedule variation, I simply hadn’t had time for that. The whole thing just took off like a shot and...ha! I enjoyed it.  I hope I can remember that heading into the next prac, relief teaching in one new place after another, starting a new job, etc. Panic won’t help. Prepare, relax and do your best.

ICT's: Theatre Revolution in the Drama classroom?

AESTHETIC PEDAGOGY AND DIGITAL RESOURCE DESIGN
By Kylie Readman and Josephine Wise
 

This article discusses the “the design of the CD-ROM “Physical Theatre, Performance and Pretext” developed for Drama Queensland in 2004” (Readman and Wise, 89); in this case, drama teachers participated in the development of digital teaching material. The authors assert that when teachers and students are involved in designing ICTs for use in the classroom, the benefits are “more fully realized” (89) It’s interesting that this should even have to be said: who normally designs arts-teaching resources?

I found the specifics of the CD-ROM quite interesting and was persuaded that it’s a tool I could certainly use, but the authors discuss some other very compelling background issues around aesthetics and social interaction that I’m responding to here.

Readman  and Wise point out that, “many instructional designers consider virtual space as performative” (Readman and Wise, 92). It’s hard to ignore the obvious connection here to Drama. To what extent are we performing in every digital context that requires us to say something about who we are? When we post pictures and status updates on Facebook, aren’t we performing a role--enacting a version of ourselves over which we have a greater degree of control than the self that others can see, hear, smell, etc? Of course, real life is also performative. We have many selves—public, private, partner, professional, friend, daughter, parent, etc, and we play all our parts, some better than others. So digital environments are certainly not the only performative environments in our lives, but they may be especially liberated ones. The potential, then, is for inhabitants of digital environments to make their own rules for those environments, which is obviously empowering.

Repeated references to Augusto Boal, the remarkable Brazilian theatre teacher, author of Theatre of the Oppressed  and great figure of political theatre so essentially democratic that performers and spectators are the same people (“spect-actors,” cited in Readman and Wise, p. 94), effectively link discourses of Drama with the subversive/ democratic potential of ICT’s: if ICT’s help students have greater agency in determining how they participate and on what terms, the benefits are profound. Referring to Boal is a great way to get the attention of even the most skeptical Drama teachers out there. If it's about democracy and access, we want it.

Reference:

Readman, K. and Wise, J. (2004). Aesthetic pedagogy and digital resource design: some considerations. In Change: Transformations in Education. Volume 7.2, November 2004

Accessed 18-4-2011

http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/4525/1/Vol7No2Article8.pdf

Drama Teacher ICT Survey

DRAMA AND TECHNOLOGY: TEACHER ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS
BY KIM FLINTOFF
B.A. (Theatre and Drama), Grad Dip Ed (Secondary Drama)
A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Award
MASTER OF EDUCATION
At the School of Education, Edith Cowan University 2005

The author believes that there is “a changing paradigm in Drama education” (Flintoff, 11) and Drama teachers are reluctant and/ or unprepared to incorporate ICT in their classrooms. In this study, he surveyed drama teachers in an attempt to gather feedback that would describe their attitudes toward ICT. None of his respondents were staunchly opposed to ICT in general, but were “reserving judgment” (Flintoff, 92) until they understood the issues better or evidence was clearer; under half of the respondents were using any ICT in their classrooms (Flintofff, 93). Among many concerns, access to technology and insufficient training or knowledge were identified. I identify quite strongly with this population, and I wonder how much just the act of discussing their attitudes for this study prompted these teachers to reflect on them, as reading the report has prompted me to do.

Flintoff points out that this study does not attempt to say whether ICT should be taught in Drama classrooms; in fact he acknowledges that “there may be equally valid arguments suggesting that technology may be anathema to Drama education, indeed it may even prove to undermine the very nature of Drama education” (Flintoff 15).

The author sees new possibilities with the use of ICT in drama classrooms: “To begin with, physical laws need not apply, bodies and voices are optional, gender is not fixed, and space becomes one of the elements we construct rather than simply that in which we work. This is one sure way to extend and diversify the scope of Arts, and specifically Drama, practice” (Flintoff, 12). I would argue that everything in this statement is essentially true of the imaginative “space” of theatre with or without ICT. Drama is all about these conceptual leaps, and I’m not persuaded that our imaginations are any more free in a digital context. Suspension of disbelief has worked like a charm for millenia; we like to be told stories, and we know they’re not exactly real, but we want to be told them anyway. Gender has never been “fixed,” bodies and voices can change miraculously in performance, and the literal and figurative construction of “space” in theatre is nothing new either.

Flintoff engages briefly with this question of space, asking rehetorically, “What happens to drama when it is removed from the physical and temporal – does Drama still happen if it can somehow occur independent of the here and now?” (Flintoff, 32) For me, it’s an essential question we must try to answer. The ephemeral, here-and-now quality of theatre cannot be replicated, approximated or simulated. There may be other, wonderfully teachable kinds of drama than live theatre, but it’s still the original human experience of storytelling, and in the end, much less esoteric and specialized than anything that requires the use of tools.

He offers a lengthy list of ways in which computers can be used before, during, after, and in the drama (Flintoff, 28), e.g., to research, to write script material, to practice role-play in games, etc. I imagine this list might be very useful for someone like me, with a pretty skeptical position on ICT in Drama classrooms, based on some knowledge of the subject and a lot of ignorance about the technology. Maybe I’ll find something I can really use, and improve my outlook. It’s clear that having a bad attitude about it isn’t good pedagogy.

Reference:

Flintoff, K. (2005) Drama and Technology: Teacher Attitudes and Perceptions. Master of Education Thesis, Edith Cowan University.

Accessed 18-4-2011 at :

http://www.drama-education.com/site/file.php/1/drama_and_technology_teacher_attitudes.pdf

Advice to the National Curriculum Players

National Curriculum in the Arts: MPA Companies 2010

This is “a position paper submitted by the education network of the Australian Major Performing Arts companies to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) during the shaping phase of the National Arts Curriculum” (MPA Companies, online). What a great find!

The authors argue that drama (along with dance and music) should be offered to students K-12, and that by providing access to professional productions on at least a yearly basis, several curricular needs will be met. Embedded in a comprehensive statement of the outcomes, they specifically mention the value of seeing multi-media theatre, which addresses the ICT curricular requirement (MPA Companies, online). They offer their partnership in bringing school audiences to the theatre and developing pedagogy. This is welcome news to me—that ICT literacy outcomes can be built into taking students to a theatre production. Brilliant! That’s something I know how to do, or at least feel confident I can figure out. I’m reminded of a New York Theatre Workshop production of a Moliere play that projected live video of the action onstage on a screen overhead throughout the play, and then when the actors ran offstage fighting, the camera followed them into the alley behind the theatre, taking the action of the play into a completely transformed notion of space—was the audience with them in the alley? Had the screen itself suddenly usurped the “stage”? Unlike some of the more contrived attempts to reconcile a purist conception of theatre with the imperatives of integrating new technologies, this kind of use of ICT creates possibilities for very deep and interesting discussions of the conventions of the art form itself.

Further discussion of the relevance of ICT’s in drama suggests that ICT’s legitimize the art form in a new way, or may introduce more measurable, academic standards: “No longer is drama in high school simply about ‘putting on plays’. Students are now budgeting, marketing and lighting their own work. Students that shine in the technical side now have the opportunity to excel at this subject which was once performance based. Drama is now recognised as an examinable subject for university entrance examinations.” (MPA Companies, online). Drama has long been an “examinable subject;” students have written papers, auditioned, interviewed and been admitted to Bachelor’s and Master’s programs in Acting, Stage Management, Directing, Dramaturgy and other theatrical disciplines for decades. Nevertheless, I take the point that the use of technology can expand the application of theatrical knowledge and skills, and in fact make Drama a broader subject that reaches more students in different ways: “Students can use technology to expand, record, manipulate and demonstrate their understanding and skills in drama” (MPA Companies, online).

The authors of this paper have deep knowledge in drama education, and represent the education programs some of the finest professional companies in Australia (Sydney Theatre Company and Bell Shakespeare among others); they would be where I would look as a teacher for the most innovative, developed drama pedagogy in the country. Top theatre companies’ education programs are likely to be well funded, and staffed with very strong teaching artists. In my experiences as both a school teacher and a working actor, I would expect the MPA Companies to have higher standards and deeper knowledge of the art form and the industry  than ACARA, and a record of high-quality drama education.  I wonder how much of this has been incorporated into the National Curriculum? My understanding is that the Drama framework hasn’t yet been published. I know I’m taking the MPA Companies’ advice…will ACARA?

Reference:

Major Performing Arts Education Network, 2010.

Accessed on 18-4-2011 at:

http://www.dramaaustralia.org.au/assets/files/MPA_position_paper.pdf

The Reluctant Gamer

New Stages: Challenges for Teaching the Aesthetics of Drama Online

Anderson, Michael.

The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Volume 39, Number 4, Winter

2005, pp. 119-131

The author argues that digital technologies are an important new platform (or “stage”) for teaching drama, and that we educators must embrace them. He threatens that our students are so accustomed to thinking and learning with technology that we’ll become irrelevant if we don’t incorporate it: “If drama educators cannot or will not find ways to work with technology, students will find other places to express their creativity outside the drama classroom.” (Anderson, 120)  He points to a pattern of reluctance among drama teachers to expand their use of ICT’s, while students are increasingly involved in digital technologies; “much of this participation or immersion is actually in the very activities that take place in a performing arts classroom (e.g., role-based games).” (Anderson, 121) In other words, many students may be gaining fluency in some of the conventions of drama in digital contexts, and as drama teachers, we should be prepared to work with that.

Anderson is at great pains to stress that ICT’s are just tools, and the most important factor in successful classrooms is, as it always has been, good teaching. He looks at the relative readiness with which teachers of other arts have incorporated technology and asks, “how might we begin to shift our thinking as drama educators to recognize that drama happens in all sorts of media for all sorts of dramatic intentions?” (Anderson, 125), citing for example Janet Murray’s studies of games; she “defines…games as Cyberdrama if they give human participants agency, immersion, and the ability for transformation” (Anderson 127).

I can appreciate all this, and I want to find exciting ways to work with technology, but I’m afraid of compromising aesthetics or lowering the intellectual bar. I can suspend my disbelief and learn a little bit about online games, but I doubt that I’ll ever be fluent in or passionate about them enough to teach them with any intellectual rigour. Games might be helpful reference points for students when talking about character, setting, action, motivation, etc, but I’m still skeptical of them in a drama classroom, because you can be great at a computer game and not be very good with face-to-face communication. Drama is storytelling, and acting requires great fluency in real-life communication and body language to tell those stories. Maybe I just need to have my prejudice turned upside-down; or maybe I can negotiate a more suitable way to use ICT in my classroom, such as the content-rich CD-ROM’s discussed in the article.

Maybe it’s that my paradigm hasn’t shifted yet, and I still don’t have the skills to deal with these digital forms of theatre: “When digital drama becomes more commonplace, the experience and skills necessary to critically analyze that work will also grow” (Anderson 129). 

Reference:

Anderson, Michael. New Stages: Challenges for Teaching the Aesthetics of Drama

Online. In The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Volume 39, Number 4, Winter

2005, pp. 119-131

Accessed 18 April 2011

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jae/summary/v039/39.4anderson.html

ICT's in drama classrooms????? Yes indeed.

My prejudice until starting this Grad Dip has been that technology was important in other kinds of classrooms, but not very useful in Drama, one of my subjects. It’s about vocal and physical storytelling…right? Then I thought about all of the light and sound technology that’s been standard in theatre for a century, and I felt rather foolish. I’ve used video cameras to introduce students to acting techniques for the camera, and to help them study their performances. Revelation: I only think of something as “technology” if I don’t understand it or haven’t integrated it so deeply that it’s no longer new! So I’ve got lighting, sound and audiovisual technology already in my practice, but what other opportunities could there be to use ICTs in the drama classroom for students of all levels? And how will it help them?

“Drama Online,” by Jennifer Nicholls and Robyn Philip (Australian Journal of Educational Technology 2001, 17(2), 150-168) describes a 2-year study (1999-2000), in which an existing course called Elements of Drama at Macquarie University was modified by “the introduction of a compulsory, online collaborative assignment,” and the results for learning outcomes and student satisfaction were studied, with the following powerful results:

In summary, the authors noted the following learning outcomes for students in terms of the curriculum as a whole:

·      a stronger grounding in the discourse underpinning successful play production;

·      greater confidence approaching and effectively completing the more substantial final assignment (Director's Project) as a result of exposure in the first online task to a variety of views and opinions;

·      for weaker students, exposure to and support from the more competent writing styles of other students (scaffolding);

·      reinforcement of the skills required for group work; and

·      the development of computer literacy. “

Obviously, this is in a tertiary context, but I believe there are clear applications in a secondary setting.

Students used a very rich website in multiple ways--to post their performances as Quicktime movies, to post their written assessment tasks (e.g., reviews of professional productions), and respond to threads. The authors emphasize how “collaborative” they found the online work to be, because students were engaged in “an authentic task, it actively engaged the students in the construction of knowledge via a process of contextualised and shared meaning making, allowing students to test and evaluate their own hypotheses” (Nicholls and Philip, online).

Collaboration is one of the fundamental features of theatre work. We know that many different artists work together to produce big shows; but even at its most essential, theatre is collaboration between audience and performers, who all agree to play their respective parts in the interaction. Constantin Stanislavsky, the grandfather of modern realist acting, based his famous methodology on ensemble-building, and worked closely for decades with the great playwright Anton Chekhov, so collaboration is in the foundations of the art form as we know it. When drama students begin to think of themselves as part of an ensemble, they bring greater trust, openness, flexibility and empathy to the environment, and the quality of their work improves. I found these collaborative possibilities of web-based learning very reassuring. Learning to work together has clear benefits in a drama classroom.

I had a reservation: this is an inspiring way to use ICT in activities around seeing and critiquing theatre, or researching and discussing theatre history, famous productions or world theatre styles for example, but could you conduct an acting class online? Acting for the camera and stage acting are not interchangeable; they’re usually taught as separate courses. Still, ICT’s would be a great way to bring drama to students in rural settings, or to enhance the work of a class on campus. I’d like to know if anyone is using ICT’s in acting classes specifically, and how.

The authors point out that ICT’s are used by theatre artists “to create art, to retrieve and store information, to publicise and exhibit their work, and to administer arts organizations” (Nicholls and Phillip, online). It’s easy to see that for al students, ICT skills are highly valuable in life beyond school. This has personal resonance for me; I spent seven bumpy years as a professional actor, and if I’d had great computer skills, I imagine I would have had better support-jobs open to me and things might have been a lot easier. “The lack of consistent and reliable access to a computer, failure of the technology, and poor self efficacy in regard to the ability to manage the technology successfully are sufficient reasons for students not to choose an online assessment, given the option” (Nicholls and Phillip, online).  How could I, with my poor self-efficacy, expect to get a different result from students? So this kind of use of ICT has to be compulsory, for the benefit of students and teachers alike. The fact is, there is no career that doesn’t require ICT skills (including teaching!), and we have to give all of our students a shot at sustainable futures, even those crazy drama kids.   

Nicholls, J. and Philip, R. (200). Drama Online. In Australian Journal of Educational Technology 2001, 17(2), 150-168.

Retrieved 18-4-11 at:

http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet17/nicholls.html

And we're off!

I've started my prac early, and I love it! Really, I was terrified--insomnia, etc., but I got on with it and I absolutely love it. I have to put in a lot of time every day after school and early in the mornings to be ready, but it's worth it to feel semi-competent. I'm feeling confident and happy about teaching already, even though there are daily reality checks about what I need to work on.

Today it was a Year 12 student I'll call Nick. The word in the staff room is that his parents are forcing him to do Tertiary English, when he wants to do Accredited English. The head of English thinks he's strategically failing in order to prove that he's no good and should be allowed to do Accredited. I've overheard him bragging that his parents recently bought him a car, and also bribed him not to pierce his ears by buying him an iphone, even though he's literally failing in school and they know it. I listened to my mentor teacher on the phone with his mother last week, speaking frankly about his total lack of output and his rudeness to teachers. So today when students were working independently, I thought I would put in a real effort and stick with him for a while; I had some good questions that had worked well with other students, and knowing that Nick hadn't done much (if any) work on his big oral assessment, I tried to help him make a start and think through some of the issues he would have to deal with in the assignment. I got absolutely nowhere! "I don't know; I don't know; I don't know. I DON'T KNOW." Then lots of nasty looks and sarcasm. This happened several times over the lesson, and badly enough that I decided to give him a point in his planner, according to the school's discipline system, but he didn't have the planner with him, so that was useless. What's the point of little punitive marks in the planner anyway? He doesn't care about that. How do I avoid getting into a stupid power struggle with a student?  What's the real way to gain control of that situation?

On my ride home, I had Steve's voice in my head saying, "you don't have to understand everything about them," from the duck lecture. As a prac teacher, and probably a relief teacher too, there's very little you can possibly understand, so working with what emerges is really the only choice. It's an assets-based approach, more positive than thinking about what's lacking in the relationship with the student, desperately trying to fill in the blanks. I don't know what kind of learning style Nick has, or what his previous experiences with school have been, etc. But he's giving me the stink eye and saying "I don't know," and I have to figure out how to work with that.