Hello, Module 2!

As of Monday, we're officially in the new term, which means starting Module 2 for me. I'm taking this first week to pour over the handbooks and orient myself into the semester as a whole. From my first glance through the handbook, I'm getting very excited. When I did three semesters towards my MFA a few years back, one of my favorite courses was called Research and Writing for Dance. It was one of the courses that has been most useful for me long-term. This module sounds very much in the same vein--looking at philosophical frameworks, orienting ourselves in current and historical research, ways of researching and ethics thereof, etc. My old textbook is even on the recommended reading list! So it's very exciting to have the opportunity to dive into all this material again, hopefully on a much different and hopefully deeper way now that I'm further into my professional practice than I was then.

One of my priorities for this module is fully participating in the MAPP communities--blogs, LinkedIn, skypes, etc. I feel like I still have barely scratched the surface of communication with my classmates. Last module I was hoping to get a slack group going, which Adesola kindly created, but I'd like to see that become active and useful to us. 

In the skype this past weekend I discussed attempting to find a more efficient way to interact with others' blogs. There's a lot of us, and so a lot of blogs to keep up with. It's not feasible to check out each blog every week, but if I even tackle a third (a third! so that's what, a dozen blogs?) each week, then I still only interact with each person/blog four times this entire module. Hm. Last semester I managed tackling 4-6 blogs each week, in part because not everyone was posting something every week, so it meant only 2-3 substantial responses. I'm trying to imagine more than doubling that. It's a daunting prospect, but I'd really like to be as active as I can. We'll see how that plays out though as the semester heats up. ;)

I'm going to keep chewing through this and investigating some technology options (like, is there a way to set up automatic notifications of new blog posts? That would save the time of checking but even more so ensure that things don't slip through the cracks) to see if there are things that would help. Perhaps something I find might even be applicable to the group as a whole and make things easier for others too.

When I reread this, I'm afraid my enthusiasm is leaping off the page... well, guilty as charged. I can't wait to get started on the module and get to know those of you I haven't yet interacted with much, and get to know those of you I have interacted with better.