Sunday, December 15, 2013

Technology Integration Plan



           My Matrix was created off of a recent lesson plan I had created for a second grade dance class on Non-locomotor and Locomotor movement. My lesson is made to increase my students ability and understanding of Locomotor and non-locomotor movement. I want my students to understand the literacy behind the vocabulary and also be able to create there own movement sequence using the the two movement types. This lesson plan will take place over four different class periods, I will introduce the lesson, then have them use improvisation to figure out ways they can incorporate locomotor and non-locomotor movement into their own body language. I will use youtube videos to provide examples of the two types of movement, along with a smart board presentation, and music. I will use a video camera, and a recorder as well so the students can see themselves dancing, to then truly differentiate the difference between movement that is taking place in ones personal space, and movement that is traveling through space. I will ask my students to support their intention of the phrase they will produce by supporting there choices of movement with technological embellishments. I will stress to my students the importance of using technology in a way that supports their intent, and not just use random youtube videos that do not help support there ideas. Throughout the project I will give them time working with their partners to research using the internet, video taping and recording each others movement to then create some type of collective presentation. Keeping in mind that this is a second grade class, I will be open to many different idea that my students may come up with when incorporating technology into there presentation. The use of technology will be fairly new to some students who are in the second grade so I plan to be extremely encouraging and supportive of all there ideas.
          The first section of my Matrix is the introduction to my lesson plan. The first standard that covers my lesson plan is Identifying the elements of dance in planned and improvised dance sequence. This will be the access part of my lesson, to get my students involved and interested in the lesson. I will identify and introduce the lesson plan by showing youtube videos on examples of locomotor and locomotor movement. I will also show a smart-board presentation explaining the lesson in detail. For this part of the lesson my students will simply listen and understand the lesson. The second row of my Matrix will be the analyzing and the creating part of the lesson, now the students will get involved. The standard that supports this part of the lesson is the students working in small groups creating and performing improvised movements using locomotor and non locomotor movements. For this portion of the lesson I will film the students, and have them watch themselves dance. The third part of the lesson will be the analyze and creating part. The students will further their research by trying to incorporate technology into their movement. The students should create their own sequence of movement using technological embellishments to support the intention of their phrase. The next section of my matrix will be the performance part of the lesson. This will be the most important part of the lesson so the students can execute the movement phrase they produced with technology to back it up. This is most important because this is the part where I can assess the students understanding of the material that was taught for the lesson. Performance is very beneficial in dance because when students are learning material the best way to see if they are understanding what they are learning is to physically do the movement with their bodies. When students are capable and comfortable physically articulating the movement, it then becomes natural when language and literacy becomes involved. Students can then explain what they did because it is embedded in their body language.
            An ideal presentation I would expect to see from my students may be a video presentation of themselves doing their movement phrase and then actually showing it in person. This would be a good way to critique themselves and compare and contrast the video to their live movement. Another potential project a student might present would be a smart-board presentation of photos of they found on google of examples of locomotor and non locomotor movement, and then pictures of themselves duplicating the shapes they found on the internet. I feel this lesson plan is very exciting and will increase my students understanding and ability of technology and dance. It will give them a way to create their own phrase that incorporates technology while using dance at the same time. This lesson plan has opened up my eyes to new ways that technology can be naturally incorporated into my lesson plans without force. I am really excited to see where my future takes me with teaching and am thrilled to find ways to incorporate the use of technology.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtTz1mNYo61vdFp6LTJnVFhYOXJ3aU83aW92cU1LRlE&usp=sharing

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Relying On Technology

              In one of my dance classes I am required to take for my major, my teacher assigned us a day where we had to teach the class using the Horton technique. I teach dance on daily basis and have a set playlist that I choose directly from my itunes library to then use for my classes. I literally hook up my phone to the sound system in the dance studio I teach at and teach my class relying on my iphone. This past week when I was teaching in my dance class at school, we were using live music as our accompaniment. I was excited by the opportunity of finally having to work with a live musician rather then simply pressing next on my I pod when a specific song I needed wasn't working with the movement that I was teaching. Working with a live musician was much harder than I thought it would be. I had to thoughtfully prepare my movement and count it out so the musician could understand and then play it as we danced. Since I am constantly relying on the technology of my ipod and the sound system in my studio, I never really have to count my movement out because I can just change the songs on my ipod until I find the right song that works for the combination I am teaching. Since I am constantly relying on technology for music purposes it was extremely difficult for me to adapt to a live musician. I would like to further my education working with live accompaniment and learning how to adapt and function without using an ipod or sound system. I never realized how much I rely on technology for musical purposes that I lost touch with my interaction with live music. It is extremely important to be versatile and adapt to anything that is being thrown at me when it comes to teaching. Technology is not always the way.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

The Change of Dance and Evolution

              Dance and technology over many years have worked hand in hand in the process of change and evolution. They both have evolved so much so far and continue to. Dance was greatly effected by technology because now for instance people don't need to go see a live performance anymore when they can just simply go on the internet and see a live performance right there in front of their eyes. This helps to show a dance companies work to a vast audience and communicate more effectively. Although you'll never get the same effect of a live performance experience, through a computer you can still experience a virtual one. This also can be very convenient and cheaper to some. Another great improvement made by technology to help and effect dance positively was the technological advancement of pre-recorded music. Now instead of a live orchestra which many dancers do still work with today, you can replay a song, pause it, or even stop it to add on to a work your trying to create. This also creates an easier and more effective way for dancers to rehearse and practice. Pre recorded music is a technological advancement that is very beneficial when I am teaching. I can literally look up any song that I want and connect it to a sound system in an instant. In conclusion these are just two ways out of many that technology helps and will continue to help advance dance in the near future.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

The Impact of lights on stage

       One of the biggest and most important aspects of performance other than music is lighting. Lighting is very important when creating a production. Lighting production is used in both dance and theater. We use lighting for many reasons in dance, the most important factor being is to simply make the dancers look flawless. Lighting increases body appearance from an audiences perspective. Certain colors used on the stage can increase the muscle structure on a dancers body, making one look much stronger then they may appear walking down the street. Lighting is also used to compliment the costuming that the dancers are wearing to support the intent of the piece. Lighting can be very complimentary if used correctly, but can also create conflict on stage when rushed or not planned out. Special effect lighting can also be used to create imagery on stage. In some cases the lights will be flashing to portray the intent that the choreographer is trying to investigate and show their audience. Spotlights are used a lot during performance to focus the audiences attention on a specific dancer or group of dancers. Spotlights can be very effective because it really focuses all the attention on the dancer and distracts the audience from the rest of the other movement happening on stage. Lighting is very important in stage production and makes a big impact on the dancers. Although the dancer is the prime importance on the stage, the embellishments of lighting, music, and other technological media make an extreme impact on the stage. 
 

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Remixed Canvas


          After viewing many of my fellow students lesson plans on their canvasses I came across Miles Cody's very successful lesson plan on The Underground Railroad and how it relates to music. This lesson plan he created was very creative and informative. It allows the students to truly understand the history of the Underground Railroad by referring it to the song “Follow the drinking Gourd”. I felt an immediate connection to dance when I saw Miles' canvas and lesson. I felt that The Underground Railroad would be an excellent lesson not only in music but in collaboration with dance as well. Dance and music are very essential to one another. I took the basis of Miles' lesson and incorporated dance. I will begin by introducing the history of The Underground Railroad to my students, I will then introduce dance and music. I will use a dance Piece as the base of the lesson. The dance piece I will be using is called “Revelations”, I will be using a specific section from the piece called “Wade In The Water.” This dance piece was choreographed and performed by the Alvin Ailey dance company. “Wade In The Water” is a piece that holds great symbolic meaning and historical value that relates back to The Underground Railroad. The song and dance both represents a signal sent to the runaway slaves. This movement performed by the dancers represents somewhat of a storyline of the Underground Railroad, in the end the piece is upbeat and high energy representing Freedom. I feel that there is no other way to better represent this extremely important historical event then find symbolism within art. This will get students involved emotionally and physically, while truly comprehending the history behind it. I will also incorporate the song that Miles had chose for his lesson “Follow the drinking Gourd,” I will have the students really breakdown the lyrics and create symbolic movement to the song.
Overall this time around remixing Miles canvas was much more difficult then when I created my own.               The PLAYground application was not cooperating at all. It was not allowing me to publish the canvas until I continuously retried. It also would not allow me to rearrange where I wanted each text box. It would not allow me to drag any of the widgets, so unfortunately I had to keep the current format with no change. Although remixing the canvas gave me a lot of trouble, I feel that Miles lesson really opened up my eyes to ways that I can incorporate the history aspect of dance more into my future lessons.  
Here Is my remixed canvas

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Incorporating Technology in choreographic work


             I have been extremely motivated to create a choreographic work using technological additives to support the intent of the piece I am creating. I feel that my ideas will be very beneficial in supporting the intent of my piece. I have been working on a dance piece I will be setting on a group of high school dancers. My idea behind the piece is Hurricane Sand. I was really emotionally touched by the tragic event that happened a year ago and decided I wanted to do something with it. The hurricane really put a strain on my family because we lost a house, and I was inspired and motivated to create a dance piece with the idea of Sandy. I really want to incorporate the event throughout the dance piece not only through movement but with actual footage of the hurricane. I have been doing a lot of research on the internet and on youtube and have found some video clips of the event that I would like to incorporate on a back drop as the dancers dance in front of the screen. I want the back drop of the footage to be in silence and just simply be a slide show of tragic footage of the storm. I feel this will an an embellishment and background for the dancers to feed off of. I also want the sound to be an actual record of the storm. I have been using garage band and playing around with different youtube videos of families telling their stories during the storm along with the different news reporters updating the world with what is happening. I am trying to create a soundtrack by cutting and pasting different youtube footage to be the actual soundtrack of the piece. Since Sandy was such a devastating historical event it is important to be reminded of what we have overcome. I feel that I need to use technology within this piece to really get my audience emotionally involved. For this piece I think the use of technology with the sound and the backdrop of actual Sandy footage will be very beneficial and serve my intentions well. In most cases dance is very much about the movement that we create with our bodies. For this piece I am in the process of creating I want the movement to be simple so that the footage in the background of the piece of and the recording being played throughout doesn't seem to complex. I think each of these elements will cohesively blend and support the idea of the piece.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Unit Plan Canvas



        My Unit plan was for a second grade class and was on locomotor and non locomotor movement. I want to have my students explore both types of movement using their bodies. I really liked using the PLAYground and creating my canvas. I felt like I could really use my own creativity and ideas, to create a formatted type lesson outline for students. The canvas is an extremely interesting and beneficial way to get not only teachers involved with technology but can really help students at a young age get involved with the idea of technology. I was very intrigued by all the applications that PLAYground has to offer. It is extremely creative and hands on for all types of learners. I feel it can be very beneficial to all types of learners and can be used throughout all content areas. It feels like a very kid friendly website for all students to learn and research a unit.  I also feel like this website can be a breakthrough into the arts. I have been having a lot of difficulty trying to find ways to integrate technology into my dance classes, other than using music. This is an excellent way for dancers to view videos of dance companies and comment and research on what they observed. This website provides video clips, photos, and links to continue ones research. It is very straight to the point and can be a great way to begin integrating technology into a younger age group such as second graders. The only problem I was facing was that the website would freeze and I would have to log in and out of the canvas multiple times. It was very frustrating and time consuming. Other than the slight problems I was facing creating the canvas, I feel that viewing the canvas will be very straightforward and easy to use for just about any grade level. I am extremely excited to use this and integrate this application into my curriculum and future teaching.