Understanding Theatre: A Sound Business Model

I attended the "Young Choreographers Showcase" this weekend at the University of Oklahoma.  I was surprised to see so many people attending.  It was nearly sold out.  My surprise turned to pessimism though as I begin to see every take out there spiral notebooks and pens.  It appears that students in the "Understanding Theatre" class have to attend these types of events and take notes for a grade.  Well, that's one way to fill the seats.  I imagined how many would be in attendance had all of the students taking notes been removed and there would have only been a handful.  So a student attending a liberal college pays $1,500 to take the "Understanding Theatre" class that they are forced to take as part of their degree (regardless of the degree type).  The class is then forced to attend theatre-related events which help drive up the attendance for events that would be otherwise poorly attended.  That's quite the setup.  Brilliant really when you look at it as a business model. 

The question to me is, can appreciation for the arts be taught?  Should it be taught?  Or can it just be appreciated for what it is, even if no one will appreciate it on their own?

The Five Faces of Adult Education

Today in class we talked about the five faces of Adult Education: Liberal, Behaviorist, Progressive, Humanistic, and Radical.  I liked how they were summarized:

Liberal = ideas

Behaviorist = structure

Progressive = application
Humanistic = individual
Radical = society

These are of course are gross overgenalizations of the concepts but it did help me to remember them and give them a frame of reference. 

During this dicussion we went into the Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy.  This was the first time I had been introduced to this model.  I am still not sure what to think about including the dimension of Fact --> Metacognition to the taxonomy but it is intriguing none-the-less.  I still can't fully wrap my head around how the Internet is impacting all of these models.  For example, facts and remembering is hardly even neccessary now with the instant access to that information at our fingertips.  Does this mean that we can head down the chart closer to metacognition and application?  I don't really think so.  And by saying that, that means that there is something about the model that is incomplete to me or that is missing the mark on an important point.  Maybe it will become more clear what is missing or not connecting as we get further into the class.

How the PAEI is Like a Burger

I completed the paper version and the online version of the PAEI.  My scores all came out about the same across all of the philosophies.  The only score that was lower than the others was the Radical category and even that wasn't much lower.  It's not a surprise though since my personal philosophy has generally been to take the best elements of all of the learning theories and philosophies and apply them to the appropriate situations.  For example, use Behaviorist techniques when the students are highly dependent on me as the instructor or when there is a lot of material, a lot of students and not a lot of time to get through it all.  Or switch to Humanistic techniques when the students bring a lot of experience and knowledge to the learning experience.  I probably scored lowest on the Radical philosophy because I am not often put into situations or with students where this approach would be the most effective.

Another observation I made while completing the instrument is that this particular instrument is very transparent.  You don't have to look into the questions very closely to realize where your answers are going to end up placing you.  I always thought that oversimplified instruments like this were not very helpful. 

To me its the equivalent of answering the following questions:
- Do you like to eat cooked beef? Yes
- Do you like to eat the sliced tomatoes? Yes
- Do you like bread? Yes
Based on your answers, you have been categorized as a person who enjoys eating hamburgers.  You are dominant in the Burgerphile category.  Your weakest category is the Vegansapien.

The Life, The Universe and Everything

Last night in class we watched "What the bleep do we know".  It was a movie that tried to tackle the issue of addiction by using theories of quantum mechanics to try and get the audience to see the world in new ways.  It offered many interesting ideas:
* Objects exist in multiple places at the same time and it is not until we consciously perceive them that they exist where they are
* Water's molecular structure can be modified with positive and negative thoughts
* Matter is mostly made up of nothing

The ideas and concepts were deep but using experts in quantum mechanics made it feel disconnect and less believable.  This is odd to say considering the point of merging the two was to create more credibility.  I just keep thinking that we were only getting the cliff notes on some of these theories and it felt like a lot of them were being taken out of context.   Some of the examples used also did not seem to connect well between the rules of subatomic particles and the macro world we live in.

A Journal is Born

I have created this online journal for my "Philosophies of Adult Education" class. Instead of using the traditional journal I thought it would be more interesting to post my journal entries on a blog. We have not been given our journaling assignment yet so I am not sure what I what I will be writing in this blog.