Summary of My Professional Inquiry

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

For my inquiry I looked at using the Internet, You tube, video feedback of students own work, power point, DVD clips and Cinema. I strived to discover the effectiveness of using technology and media in the dance and education sectors.

Reading literature brought new ideas to my attention about how technology can be used effectively in dance training. I managed to find some good evidence to support my arguments for my inquiry. For example I observed a dancers working day at the Royal academy of dance that they had posted on YouTube. (See RAD link). This gave me the idea to post my own students work onto the schools website (under the secure learning section). Students can then observe and evaluate their own performance, catch up on work missed and self-reflect to make further improvement to their own work.

I completed two surveys, a student survey and an on-line survey for other professionals to take. On-line survey - Results from this survey showed 95.7 % of people (twenty two out of twenty three people) believe that media can distribute dance to a wider audience. Such media could include cinema, the worldwide web and dance films. The same number (twenty two people) agreed that showing students a DVD clip of professional dance work would be beneficial to their learning. A large percentage of nineteen out of twenty three people (82.6 %) also think that video feedback can benefit the training of students in a dance class.  

As predicted technology tools can help support teaching and learning in dance, when used appropriately. Showing a DVD clip was a good use of time management as my students could observe and analyse professional dance works promptly. Through use of video feedback they had greater opportunities to improve their dance work. Every student could recognise their own strengths and weaknesses from the video footage of their own performances. From this, they were then able to set individual targets for each individual pupil to achieve in the lesson.

From my inquiry findings I have decided to devise a scheme of work for my sixth form groups called “Creating a pop video”. I have chosen to use a Power point for my Artefact as I can add links to ‘You tube’ clips, add photos of my dance students and upload video footage of their dance performance, to clearly show my target audience examples of how technology can support dance learning. This style of Artefact will be suitable for my target audience and to benefit my students and other teachers at my institution. Also it can be distributed to a wider audience through the Internet, being loaded onto my SIG groups and social networking sites to share among a broader audience of professionals.

I took on this inquiry, as it will encourage me to continue to use the technology tools, which I find most successful within my own practice, securing greater student progress and increasing student’s grades within my workplace. I will be using evidence for the positive outcomes of using technology in class to request new resources to be purchased for my dance studio at work.