Podcast - Online Tutorial 1 - 190510

Below is the audio recording of our tutorial on the 19th May 2010. Should you wish to download the file, click on the link and save it to your computer or your drive. Hopefully future conferences can do away with the techincal preliminaries once we become more familiar again in using Skype after an absence of some time since we last met over Skype.




Click here to download the mp3 file

Preparation - Therapeutic Use of Dramatic Role Playing - Online Tutorial 1 - 19th May 2010

Preparation - Therapeutic Use of Dramatic Role Playing - Online Tutorial 1 - 19^th May 2010

Hi all

I am delighted to see you all have now set your Personal Learning Journals, and I am sure the one remaining will have it up before the weekend. Not all of you are been shown up as following each others blog.

No	Name	Google Mail Account	Personal Learning Journal (Blogspot.com)
1	Ding I Ling	dil5410@gmail.com	http://ilingtuodrp.blogspot.com/
2	Melinda Leong	msleong072@gmail.com	http://melindatuodrp.blogspot.com/
3	Lim Seok Binn	seokbinn68@gmail.com	http://seokbinntuodrp.blogspot.com/
4	Seow Hooi Cheng	chengjad@gmail.com	http://chengtuodrp.blogspot.com/
5	Chin Phaik Nie	phaikniechin@gmail.com	http://phaiknietuodrp.blogspot.com/
6	Elaine Wong	elaineijwphyeen@gmail.com	http://pyeentuodrp.blogspot.com/
7	Mary Chuah	amchuah@gmail.com	http://maryctuodrp.blogspot.com/

Remember having your Personal Learning Journal means keeping a regular entry of your reflections, try not to procrastinate, challenge any inner voices you may be harbouring; somehow  imagining you are going to accumulate enough material to display how ‘excellent’ your are in your ‘student/learner’ role  before you enter the perfect entry. The learning is in the ‘process’ not ‘product’ ….learn to give up unnecessary anxieties and stress yourself out. I know, been there already J,  after all, we are learning to invoke and evoke our inner creativity and spontaneity, so learn to capture the inner thoughts of the moment without too
many self censorship in giving birth to your inner expressions , that’s the only you are going to get to know your ‘Self’ …. well…...at least you know that this will be contained within the safety of this ‘playing and learning space’ as you engage with the materials. This process is no different than what you hope to achieve with your clients as you consider the creation a similar ‘therapeutic space’ where they can feel safe with their own creativity and spontaneity.

Preparing for the online tutorial

The rules of giving apologies to your group applies if for whatever reason you are not able to attend, maybe when you all meet as an ALS group as in my earlier suggestion to go through the ground rules again.

Task One

Have your role play character ready– see attachment for the Profiling of the Fantasy Character. I have given a suggested template and an example of how I’d developed my own fantasy character – Shape Shifter. A copy of an blank template has been send via attachment.

Guideline in using the template

To help yourself, use the technique of‘role interviewing’. A useful process is creating a visual representation of the character first. This can be easily achieved by gong to the various links which have application for you to play with as you create a character  DON’T worry too much about the background details for the character, just be intuitive and go with your ‘gut’ feelings and let yourself be drawn by what you have put together. Next, like any piece of art that is created, not only look at it but ‘into’ and ‘through’ it. Let the details of the image tell you its story, the eyes, its clothing, its gestures, let the image suggest what it is attempting to tell you, to communicate to you, there is a story waiting to be told. Really open yourself to it and contemplate and reflect on your impressions. This will really help you to connect to your own creation more meaningfully as the uniqueness of your creation comes from a place that is deep within you. Don’t dismiss what may initially seem alien, strange thoughts, images and impressions that may spontaneously pops into your head, go with it. Take some risk with your imagination, go outside normal convention,  outside your narcisstic, comfort zone, play a character of someone that is ‘not you’, experiment beyond  the sweet young cute, pretty, handsome, prince charming, socially acceptable, run of the mill ‘nice’ one-dimensional  fantasy type of character. This could be an opportunity to explore your rejected, disassociated, projected, ‘split off’, shadow part of you in a relatively safe environment. As you put yourself in unexpected role playing situation, you learn to improvised and you can therefore you  appreciate why ‘improvisation’ is greatly valued in role playing as it is the germ/virus for spontaneity and creativity…..its fun too as you learn to trust in ‘letting go’ your ‘normal’ constraints on your ways of behaving and thinking and experiencing….after all its only pretending, playing only lah, not real, not me…just being the character !. This is the advantage of improvised role playing as it let you discover alternative outcomes and ways of being from which insights can then be integrated into your everyday reality..……or maybe what I am suggesting could be a leap too far for the group at moment, if that is the case, ignore all of the above as just my inconsequential rantings when I get carried away every now and again.

Role Interviewing is a technique for fleshing out your basic character and giving it breadth and depth. You can make your character as simple or complicated as you want you character to be. Firstly distance yourself or dis-identify yourself from the created character and take on another role maybe as an investigative journalis, or TV interviewer and interrogate or interview the character, write down the interview questions that are more likely to reveal the fullness of the character. This can be in the context of time…… past, present, future……motivation and intentions…….. social-c ultural  context……….strengths and weaknesses ………hopes and dreams  etc etc Then answer your own questions in character and this will provide substance to your character and make the ‘suspension of disbelief’ easier  as you enter the imaginary realm. The development of the ‘interviewing technique’ will sharpen your skills in bringing out your clients role play character.  We will be doing some practice with each other during the tutorial. We will be engaging in synchronous or real time interaction in role for part of the tutorial session. Give some thought to how you prepare your ‘ritual’ to get into your character (role-taking) for role playing. Remember my earlier email to you with an example of how I use an everyday object like a marble to mark my transition into virtual space as I proceed from everyday reality into dramatic reality. It also helps with the role-taking process as I begin to inhabit the role and such a ritual will also help me to de-role myself when I finish and
engaged with my everyday reality.

The Drpworld forum I have set up is to be used as a virtual space only to be entered in role as your character and not as ‘you’ so keep the boundary between Drpworld and your everyday world. Writing will be in first-person,  present-tense, whether in dialogue or monologue. When you enter, your Keep the space ‘sacred’ ……. Just like you maintain and respect the boundaries of your therapeutic space where you do your therapy with your clients. This is not a forum to ask for clarification, discussion about the role playing task at hand, reflect and analyse on the process etc . as a student of this module. This happens in the main learning portal for this module at Module Blogspot and within your Personal Learning Journal or Emails to me or your ALS. Drpworld allows the development of the extended role playing asynchronously whilst the Chat room provide for synchronous role playing.

Task Two

Could you also prepare very brief vignettes of work with individual children (we will start with one to one work with children before we progress into group later) you may be working with, from previous or current cases where you may consider how best to move into role playing to achieve your therapeutic intention or the your role playing efforts had come across some hiccups in your attempt. (Maintain the
confidentiality, annonimised all personal references) The main teaching point here is primarily to explore the skills that could be applied or be implemented generally with children. Supervision later will look into the unique dynamic of the individual case presented in relation to your work in using therapeutic role playing. I was thinking about the problem scenario for the ALS and may be incorporate a Case Study. We will discuss this further in tutorial.

A task for your Personal Learning Journal

Apart from your reflections and evaluations of the skills workshop, your questions, goals and aims for doing
this module, in you PLJ, you are also given a prescription to another small task. I will be posting the relevant books in anticipation that you will be referring to it. The only requirement is that you provide a Chapter Review in your Personal Learning Journal which you will have selected from the book “Clinical applications of drama therapy in child and adolescent treatment / edited by Anna Marie Weber, Craig Haen.

The review will contain your very brief summary of the chapter (e.g. say in no more than 50 words what’s its about) your reflections on it (e.g. what were the ‘good’ bits and how has it contributed to your thinking about therapeutic role playing) That’s all for now. This email will be uploaded onto the Module Learning Portal as well and I am thinking to put on AlexCPPD.Blogspot.Com as well to give those who have attended the skills workshop a flavour of what happens in the Second Half of the module with the Action Learning Set.

Best Wishes

Alex

Welcoming Message - Action Learning Set for the Therapeutic Use of Dramatic Role Playing Module

I have posted below what I have sent to you as an email. At least now the information is on this portal should you misplace your email in your Gmail folder.

Let me extend my welcome to you all as we begin to embark on an experiential learning journey together for the next 8 to 10 weeks. The essential ingredients that I ask of you to bring along this learning adventure is your sense of creativity, imagination, fun, playfulness, curiosity ….well you can leave the kitchen sink behind .......we won’t be needing that :)

Let me introduce you to your fellow travellers. I apologise if I have included you in the group by mistake as this is the initial list given to me by Josephine on Saturday of those who have expressed and confirmed their interest to complete the full module. I have yet to receive the final confirmed list from her in the meantime I need to make a start, as the tele – transportation portal is ready and waiting to take us….and we need to make some preparations for our adventurous journey.


1 Ding I Ling                   dil5410@gmail.com                    http://ilingtuodrp.blogspot.com/  
2 Melinda Leong             msleong072@gmail.com   
3 Lim Seok Binn             seokbinn68@gmail.com              http://phaiknietuodrp.blogspot.com/
4 Seow Hooi Cheng       chengjad@gmail.com 
5 Chin Phaik Nie            phaikniechin@gmail.com              http://phaiknietuodrp.blogspot.com/ 

6 Elaine Wong                elaineijwphyeen@gmail.com

7 Mary Chuah                amchuah@gmail.com                   http://maryctuodrp.blogspot.com/

 

I have outline the tasks as various sections, firstly for those who are joining this Action Learning Set (ALS) for the first time since your forays into the initial CPPD programme, let me update you on what the baseline ‘ICT’ (Information Communication Technology) necessities in equipping you to engage with the group in virtual space. We don’t want to you feel ‘Lost in Space’ and find it hard to maintain the warp speed (or may feel like it) that the group may be proceeding. Let’s do our equipment check –

• Have a google mail account. Set in up your Google Mail Contacts your group email for your Action Learning Set (to include me – alexwpchew@gmail.com) making it easier to include everyone in any email loop discussion.
• Google calendar – Have shared CPPD Penang calendar you can add this to your own google calendar as well as your group members in helping you organising your schedules for future web conferencing or meetings. You will note that our first online tutorial will be 19th May
• Google Documents – This is where I will be posting relevant academics articles to share in reference to your action learning tasks. This is were your Action Learning Set will posting files of your group ‘work in progress’ as you share and address the group task of the module.
• With your Google Mail Account you can then create your Blog at www.blogspot.com Create a blog for this module that follows the following protocol (yourname)tuodrp.blogspot.com. (See Ding I Ling e.g. above) This is your Personal Learning Journal (PLJ) where you will maintain your learning reflections (thoughts, feelings, actions, learning insights, links, understandings, evaluations etc. to be shared with your Set. Ensure your settings can accept comments and create links to your ALS member’s blogs by following their blogs as ‘friends’.
• Because Disted College hasn’t come back with a confirmation on hosting the modules learning portal in their Moodle server, I have decided that the learning portal for this module has set up using the familiar blogspot at http://cppdroleplaying.blogspot.com/ instead of Elgg which we had used for earlier modules. This is where our learning tasks will be posted, discussions, questions and answers, links to resources, etc, etc will be posted. This is like the main reception area to all the various areas of learning. So DON’T FORGET to add this also to your own blogs (PLJ). It will show up on the blog if you have managed to achieve this. Could you do this asap as all future communication will be via the portal.
• Skype – Ensure you have a Skype account although if you have no access to the internet to join the web conferencing during one of our scheduled online group tutorials and supervision, you still can join in if you provide me with a landline telephone of where you will be so that I could include you into the conference. Please let me know in good time. Please be aware that you have audio communication with the rest of the group, you may not have access to any URLs where an internet connection is required as some of the tutorial may include going to sites e.g. Whiteboard or other Web 2.0 application etc as necessary.
• Useful to remind yourself as a group again what are the Ground Rules for the Action Learning Set given the changes in membership. Its up to the group to negotiate, establish and make explicit what those ground rules are to avoid any misunderstanding of what is expected and the responsibilities as a member of the learning set to the group. You may decide to use group email, Skype conference etc to achieve that. Better to get this out way first before the Problem Scenario is issued to the group as any accompanying stress may distort our perceptions and lead to misunderstanding.

  

Learning Tasks

For your Personal Learning Journal

Refer to the intended learning outcomes in the module information at the url below (I have replicated them as well) http://cppd.onlineuk.org/Modules/roleplay.htm Bear this in mind over the next couple of weeks and stay focus during your reflections as you attempt to integrate your experience with the outcomes below. So start by reflecting on the skills workshop that you had just attended last Saturday.
Facilitate the role playing process for individuals/groups in bringing about the desired intended outcomes.

• Observe, reflect, assess and evaluate role dynamics and the dramatic role playing process in identification and formulation of problem areas, needs as well as in monitoring therapeutic progress and change
• Utilise various therapeutic structures and techniques in dramatic role playing which is appropriate to the individual/group and relevant and its aims.

 

LEARNING REQUIRES YOUR PARTICIPATION - Pay regular visits to your group members Personal Learning Journals and offer your feedback comments on their entries - words of encouragement, reflective prompts, your own views/opinions, links to resources, questions, etc. Without this kind of interaction there is no value to be gain from learning in a group. You have to maintain regular entries in your Personal Learning Journal, learning requires risks in making your thoughts and feelings visible, such self disclosure and constructive feedback from colleagues are essential for ‘real’ learning. I suggest that as a guideline; make at least a minimum of an entry a week besides contributing to your members PLJ.
I encourage you in experimenting with embedding a variety of mutli-media add-ons in your blog, creativity includes finding new ways of playing, in this case, the digital environment, in expressing yourself. Many of your have shown evidence of that in your blogs, thus hopefully, this will be a source of inspiration for you and remember to learn from each other, this is after all your action learning set.

Role Playing Game (RPG)

To be able to facilitate the children effectively in engaging them in therapeutic process of imaginative role playing, the therapists themselves need to experience their own process to be able to appreciate them first hand. You need to allow yourself the permission to immerse your own inner ‘child’ playing in the imaginative realm of fantasy and make belief to gain an understanding of the inner workings of dramatic role playing. To this end, I have set up this component of the learning experience for the Action Learning Set where you will be creating a fantasy character for yourself as you travel into the magical mythic world of an a fantasy world as you engage other characters, meet challenges, and perform tasks etc. How does it work?

• First created a fantasy character for yourself and ‘become’ this character as you journey into the imaginary realm of Drpworld - http://drpworld.lefora.com/ . We are using a forum to support the role playing although we could have use Second Life but my concern is that the broadband might not it and it is not asynchronous. I have already sent you an invite to this private forum set up for members only. To create an avatar to represent this fantasy character go to some of the links which will make the task easier. Just use screen print to capture the image you have created and a picture editor to edit it. Have fun!
• Once you have a character introduce yourself as that character at Drpworld.lefora.com Tips as you enter remember to create a ritual as you enter into the threshold of the virtual world. Perform a simple concrete action and use an object to associate the period you are online whilst in your fantasy role. Example: In my character role as Shape Shifter, I will make a conscious and intentional effort to put a marble (in RP fantasy, that’s my crystal oracle, which the Shape Shifter keeps in the pouch on her belt) in a container next to my computer during the period when I am engage in the virtual role playing. Once I have finished then I remove the marble and return it to the box marking my transition from dramatic reality back to ordinary reality. I am not longer the Shape Shifter, reminding myself that I am back as Alex and the dinner is burning!!!  This helps to keep your boundary and your feet grounded, hopefully decreasing the possibility of potential internet addiction. It is wise to set a specific day or time which you put aside for this task.
• Role playing means you have to dialogue with other characters whilst in character. Use 1st person, present tense in your dialogue. And because you are dialoguing in text, you have to you use adjectives, adverbs to provide the visual details of the action and context. Example

 

Shape Shifter: Who are you and what do you want?
Speaking at he top of his voice with a slight quiver as he quickly turn around looking into the darkness from where the sound and shadowy figure is emerging

• Be clear who you are addressing your statement to because we cannot see the directionality of your eye gaze as we are relying on the text to be able to visualised the imagery in our heads. You can embed images, videos and links as well to support your role playing at Drpworld
• Use your Personal Learning Journal to document your learning and insights as you reflect your character, your character’s development and emerging story line. Developing an ‘aesthetic distance’ between ‘self’ and ‘self-in-role’ will be a helpful process. Useful to see and refer to the character in ‘third person’ to maintain the benefit of externalisation. Also see the other fantasy characters in the same light and not as your colleagues as you know them in ordinary reality. Examples will be provided in the forum to get you started.
• That’s enough for now. We will cover ground again during our online tutorial.

Best wishes

 

Alex