Saturday 25 February 2012

Professional communication technologies...1b

After the first campus session I attended for BAPP, I read and noted down some thoughts about reader 1 and web 2.0...
Upon first learning of the term 'Web 2.0', I had a blank with no idea what it was. Yet looking at the reader 1 I realised how the majority of us use this range of technology discussed in our everyday life, making me acknowledge the importance and power the platforms have in aiding both professional and social circumstances.
I am rather afraid to admit that the only tools I seem to be literate and savvy with are social sites such as Facebook, Youtube and search engines like Google for instance. The networking sites both initially started out for me as social methods of communication and expression, these have developed overtime into a core element of my professional networks. The reader lead me to thinking how I use and integrate the Web 2.0 platforms to aid my life as a dancer and how the development of further skills and knowledge a wider variety of such tools will propell my practice and career ( as the title of the reader is 'Professional communications technologies' not social communications).
Currently I rely on Facebook to communicate and stay in touch with friends and fellow dance professionals and companies. The architecture of said site allows the user to tailor the groups, pages, profiles etc to their specific needs; be it audition information, the advertising of new works, discussions of specific techniques and learnings, and creative ideas, to name a few. As the active audience lays 'in excess of 400 million', 'each average user having 130 friends', and the said average user 'being connected to 60 groups' (source http://facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics found in the Bapp reader 1) it makes for a very convenient and financially accessible means to communicate and collate material.
The other public forums I mentioned offer unlimited resources to learning varieties of new skills and a further accessibility to typically unknown areas, as Gruber (2007) mentions when speaking of such search engines offering ''a message in a public forum in which someone has asked question similar to one's query'', a site  otherwise difficult to find without knowing of its existance, proves to aid personal enquiry.
The wide spread benefits of Web 2.0 platforms can be further proven by the long distance learning courses such as BAPP that we are undertaking, as they would not function or be able to support a students learning without such formats and technology.
With having touched lightly on positive impacts and traits the web 2.0 tools have, along with must come negatives. Some of these negatives can be in the social communications bracket where by becoming so used to interaction through sites such as facebook, the human social skills and characteristics are being effected, tainted and sometimes lost, for example eye contact and the understanding a tone of voice. Also many people aswell as myself use these social networking sites for professional contacts as well as social, but this can be difficult to seperate the two if only one profile is used. A possible employer may not take too kindly to seeing the 'real you' on your social site, causing a detrimental effect to your career opportunity.
Despite this, there is an ever growing demand for a new ground breaking technology to satisfy the publics 'need' to interact . I began to wonder is it in actual fact the exisitance of technologies in web 2.0 that made our society interact differently or was it our evolving style in human communication that urged the technology developments in web 2.0? Is it a conitnuing development where the two are in tandem or is one a driving force to make this change?

Finding the right balance for me

Over the last few months I have had a difficult time in finding a mutual balance between my work and the time to study. As like many others I have met on BAPP, balancing my full time performing and extra teaching career with the 'spare time' to actively put my mind to the elements of this course, has been frustrating to say the least. I must admit when I discovered BAPP and found it was classed as a part time course I expected the work load to be managable and easy to juggle with my professional work, yet in reality I admit that I have indeed struggled. With my weak knowledge and experience with some web 2.0 platforms, blogging has and still is a very new task for me to become fluent in. Facebook for instance is the opposite. This slight 'addicition' I have with checking facebook and updating my profile, is something I hope to transfer across to other technologies as this will no doubt improve my development in these areas. The first being my blog site. T o my excitement, I have found that there is a app for the iphone, where I can upload and edit my posts. This new, close to hand option may be a break through for me (I do expect this to be old news for many, but I am proud with my find, haha! Keep an eye out for my first 'on the go' post!)
I have however, been writing entries to a journal when being away on tour, (I seem to have a better connection with putting pen to paper) so I guess at least I have some material to reflect upon.
When reading Nina's  post, titled 'Quantity or quality' it got me to thinking about myself and my balance. I too had queried the best option for the blogs... Is it better to either post little and often or less frequent but with ground breaking content? I have decided that I am going to use mod 1 as an experiement to find this happy medium and figure out what is the best way for me and my practice.

How are you finding the balance so far?