I moved to
Costa Rica in the year 2000 ready to dance, teach and learn. I am the daughter of Costa Ricans raised
abroad and with an international dance formation. I was excited to bring my dance experience
and enthusiasm to my parents’ lovely country.
However, Costa Rica is a tiny country in the middle of the American
continent. Back then it was easy to
become isolated of the international dance discourse. Receiving magazines and books was costly and
slow. With the arrival of connectivism
to the world of Dance academics, to our delight, dance professionals around the
world have been included in the conversation in real time. Connectivism, for those spread far from the
cosmopolitan cities in the world, has proven to provide a true democratization
of the information and a gigantic privilege granting access and inclusion.
However, we should not idealize this
availability of information and believe that it leads to a true democratization
of education. Students need to be academically and technologically
literate to be able to participate in such rich and international
exchange. The importance of brick and mortar schools are still important
(except for the few students that may have the capacity of being
auto-didactic). In dance, there is no substitution for dance studio life
and theatre experimentation. Yet, the student´s experience is not
limited to the teacher faculty of the dance studio but rather extends to the
rest of the online world. Access and the possibility of connectivism is
the first step of connectivism democratization of dance education.
Hi Marianella, thank you very much for your post and the video links, very interesting and lots to think about. I agree, that there is no replacement for studio and stage experience and thats actually also one of the reasons I love dance. To allow a space where you still experience and learn through and with your body, in our digitally driven world seems really important to me. Embodied learning. All the input and information you can access online, is great and valuable, it can add another layer of knowledge/learning. But as you say, you need to be digitally literate, to being able, to find and integrate that information into your learning process. Which leads back to connecting. It seems like connection/connecting is a concept, that is fundamental to learning on all levels (not just in the connectives theory of Siemens) and I wonder how we as teachers can become more attentive/senstive to it. How can we as teachers accompany and support this process of the students of connecting all the informations they get from different sources: classes, different teachers, internet, books, friends.... so it becomes meaningful to them.
ReplyDeleteAgata thank you very much for your comments. In Costa Rica we are still working on this. There is still a need to promote the idea of high-level dance to be attainable no matter the geographical location of the dancer. In Costa Rica many dancers still shy away from being connected to the international dance community because they feel overwhelmed. However, dance is a universal language and greater exposure will just refine our understanding and enrich our learning.
Delete