Blog N°23
Project conclusions
Further development of the present project in the context of a new research project.
In February 2021, I started a new research project -Invisible Wire- which was funded by the aid programme Dis-Dancing-Solo. This project is about creating a new platform for dance artists that brings together different topics through immersion and can also help different teachers to digitise their dance methods. A kind of digital library where one can find interviews, (scientific) articles, tutorials and training programmes on topics such as:
Injury prevention in training, self-care, individual development of dancers in artistic and physical performance.
From February to June the two projects intertwined and enriched each other.
Possible future applications outside emergency situations
The birth of this second project was the natural evolution of the first one. In fact, my aim is to integrate the tools I am developing in this project with the other, in order to provide direct counselling in the future, allowing the communicative system of videoconferencing to be used for distance learning in dance. Several dance educational institutions offer distance learning courses, one of them being the renowned private university Palucca in Dresden, which provides Master's degrees in pedagogy or choreography for professionals. A systematic inclusion of online courses in the programme is not envisaged at the moment.
https://palucca.eu/studienangebot/master-studiengang-tanzpaedagogik
There is therefore a possible future for video classrooms outside the pandemic emergency as a support for dance education, both for distance learning and for exchange meetings with other cultural realities and possibly for internal exchange of information and content between teachers of different institutions of dance education.
As I have already written in my blogs, science has not yet produced definitive evidence on the use of these communication tools. My research also dealt with video conferences between average users followed from home to home.
There is a future to be written about the possibility of using video conferencing to communicate between dance institutions, perhaps by organising lessons given by teachers based on other continents.
Examples of future applications
In September 2021, the educational project with Shenzhen art School in Shenzhen, until before Sars Covid-19, based on one-month-long face-to-face dance camps, will change to a new educational collaboration based entirely on online video conferencing classes.
I also intend to rely on the Invisible Wire platform, which I will finish at least in a basic form by October, for the exchange of information and content regarding the educational project in question.
Although the research project funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia under the 2020 Emergency Aid Programme "Auf geht's!" officially ended on 30 June, I intend to publish more blogs about the project starting in September in collaboration with the Shenzhen School of Art.
I will report on developments in my research into a long-term professional education programme which I have personally written in collaboration with my Chinese counterpart, Professor Mingming.
Acknowledgements
I worked on the project almost continuously from September 2020 to June 2021, dedicating an average of 2 hours a day, 5 days a week to the project. I consulted more than 200 websites and read more than 80 articles about video conferencing and distance education.
For believing in my project and funding the idea I would like to thank the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia with its Emergency Aid 2020 programme.
I would like to sincerely thank all the pupils I taught online during this year and a half of the pandemic, for their patience, energy and for inspiring me and teaching me how to improve.
I thank my wife for being patient with all the online classes I gave in the different rooms of our apartment and for supporting me in my work.
Finally, I thank my three-year-old daughter from the bottom of my heart for having freely offered her room for many of the online classes I gave, but most of all I thank her for all her memorable dancing appearances in almost all the video conference recordings.
