Dance and Media Arts

Mel,

I love the video of you dancing! It's great! However, I understand your reservations about dance, especially coming from a generalist's teachers perspective. As a generalist teacher, we are somewhat preordained to be literacy, numeracy and science focused; we want achievable and tangible results as soon as possible. In actual fact, dance has many general curriculum links such as creativity, resilience, flexibility and even subject links such as teaching maths and literacy through dance, as identified in this New Zealand website. Furthermore, (and most interestingly for me, coming from a early childhood based point of view), dance has many human developmental benefits. I argue that these can be listed as the following; gross and fine motor skills, social and cognitive development though creativity and play, spatial awareness, self-esteem, balance, coordination, and physical and cognitive problem solving skills. Deans, O'Toole, Raphael and Young (2009) further this saying that "within an educational context, dance offers children an opportunity to learn by involving the whole body in kinaesthetic exploration, cognitive processing and social engagement" (p. 166).  This is all well and good, but I argue that perhaps dance does not need to be justified though all these formulaic terms -why not just dance for fun?! During my second practicum in a Kindergarten classroom, I would gather the children five minutes before the end of the school day and we would dance to "Somewhere over the Rainbow"  and float around the classroom. The children would hold hands, giggle, close their eyes and drift. Parents would watch though the window with smiles in their eyes and the children would leave feeling good about themselves and their day at school. 

Have I changed you mind a bit?

Steph

Teaching Tool-Kit

A dance warm-up for Kindergarten children which encompasses the realising strand of the Australian Curriculum. 

Middle primary children embodying sea-creatures through dance. This similarly addresses the realising strand of the Australian curriculum as well as the generating strand.

Universal Writing (I tired this one myself but couldn't get the video to upload). This activity could be used to focus on all three strands of generating (through planning movement), realising (through experimenting with movement and shapes), and responding (through group discussion).

Media Arts Week 7

Unfortunately the Media Arts workshop was cancelled this week, but I engaged with animations at home. I found this new way to use PowerPoint a really fascinating and empowering thing to do. I posted mine below (I apologise for the video quality). I got a great sense of achievement and pride from making my own 'movie' and I envisage the upper primary children with whom I work really responding to this in positive manner.  I am considering using this during my final practicum. However, as lovely as this would be, in terms of technological resources like computers, the practicality of implementing effort and time-consuming media projects, (however valuable), may not actually be realistic. This is a real shame. In conclusion, I just want to say that we need more up-to-date and functioning computers in schools if any real and meaningful media arts is expected to happen. If we have these resources, the opportunities are endless. 

Teaching Tool-Kit

My PowerPoint Animation

This is a great website where students can create awesome animations. http://www.zimmertwins.com/splash

References 

Deans, J., O'Toole, J., Raphael, J., & Young, S. (2009). Art embodied and disembodied: Expression, representation and reflection. In Sinclair, C., Jeanneret, N., & O’Toole, J. (Eds.). Education in the arts: Teaching and learning in the contemporary curriculum (pp. 160-192). South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press.