Reflection, Critical Commentary, Portfolio - it's All Coming Together

If you're a student at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, there's a sporting chance you will be polishing off some kind of portfolio or reflective journal this weekend.  Lots of courses have critical assessments of some description due for submission very soon.

How can the library help?  Do you need to cite references?  Could you do with any more reading matter, just to give weight to a theory or argument? (Or, indeed, to argue with?)

Maybe you could use a book on reflective practice, or learning journals, to see what approach other people have taken?

Or are you wondering if there's anything you could access online, to save having to make an unscheduled trip into the library?  Articles?  Recordings?  Maybe a play or opera production?

We're here for you!  Get in early, ask us today and we'll offer whatever help we can.  And don't forget, there's plenty of information on the library portal, and even more on our e-resources pages.

• Portal (the Library is under Student Support)
• RCS Library and IT pages for our e-resources & contact details

E-Journals, E-Portfolios and Reflective Practice

New arrivals at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland may find they have a whole new vocabulary to learn - and not specifically about music, drama or dance!

This is the age of the reflective journal.  It's expected that we will reflect on our practice, whether it's teaching a subject, learning an instrument, or providing student support in the library or admin departments.  So ... students are asked to keep e-journals and e-portfolios, and - embracing new technology - to make use of the virtual learning network (Moodle), and to explore the brand-new Portal (based on Wordpress), for sharing documents in various formats.

But what if you're not used to this explicit reflection at every turn?  Sure, you think about what you do, but maybe you haven't sat down to write commentary about your practice before now?
 
Don't panic!  The Whittaker Library has plenty of material about reflective practice and reflective journals - both "real books" and electronic resources.  And of course, the great thing about e-resources is that you can access them from anywhere.  So, settle down with that tablet or laptop and have a quick read to see if there are aspects of your performing/compositional/creative practice that you never thought of reflecting upon before.

Reading list for Reflective Practice

Are you Reflective, Reflecting, a Creative Music or Drama Practitioner?

REFLECTIVE PRACTICE | ECITCARP EVITCELFER

REFLECTIVE PRACTICE | ECITCARP EVITCELFER

Has your tutor suggested keeping a reflective journal?  Or they might have called it a 'learning journal'?

Have they suggested looking at the documentation that other Masters students have submitted in previous years?

Here in the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the Whittaker Library can help!  Take a look in our catalogue - we've done the searching for you here.

If you're not on campus today, don't worry - we have e-books which may also be useful to you, eg:-

• Reflective Practices in Arts Education (2006) click here.
• Jennifer Moon - Learning Journals (2006) click here.

Here's a direct link to our catalogue if you'd like to try searching further keywords.  Happy hunting!  

We are the very helpful Whittaker Library staff at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. We first posted this in April 2014, but it seems very relevant to what our students are doing right now, so we're reblogging it!

• Library catalogue 
• Library website 

Library Camp: not a Teddy Bears' Picnic!

Karen went to an "unconference" on Saturday - Scotland's first library camp. 

Curious?  Here's what caught the attention of several dozen Scottish librarians:- http://gltweeps.wordpress.com/library-camp-glasgow/ - and here's the blog about it.  There was also a Storify assemblage collating delegates' impressions of the whole event.

Creativity in libraries was one subject that came up, courtesy of Delphine Dallison at Glasgow School of Art. This prompted Karen to indulge in a bit of reflective writing of her own.  You can read it here, on her Airs and Graces CPD blog.

Being off-duty librarians, we had a couple of competitions - one was to make one's own badge.  The results were quite something, so the organisers made a collage to show you - here.