I gather information for my career from many sources. They vary greatly in how much I use them and how useful an information source they are.
The one I use the most is the internet. I think its main appeal is that it holds so much information from so many different places. As John Seely Brown puts it, this is a fundamental aspect of connectivism, the small efforts of many with the large efforts of few. Also, you can be proactive with reference to your career from your own home so it is easier than other ways of gathering information. The theory of connectivism suggests that each web page is a different node, which I agree with because the internet holds so much information that we couldn't possibly classify it as one source.
The three years I spent at college I spent without internet access in my house. At that point it wasn't necessary to use it on a daily basis because I wasn't relying on it for my career, unlike now. At college my fellow students and I would look in The Stage newspaper to gather information about auditions and so forth. We would rely on it greatly because it was our only way of finding things out. Our teachers would inform us on how to act in auditions what we should wear but rarely about castings themselves. My point is newspapers and magazines can be used to gather information but I would only refer to them if the internet wasn't available because anything one can find out from them can be found on line too. Now, I look at thestage.co.uk for free rather than spending money on the newspaper.
I also gather a lot of information from people. Other dancers especially are great suppliers of information. When working or socialising with other professionals I have found that because our career is common ground we tend to share a lot of stories and experiences with one another. I have found this very useful in the past because it is helpful to have human points of view on the information one is receiving.
Notice boards in, for example, dance studios are another way in which I gather information. There are often advertisements for shows and classes and information on auditions. I check them regularly when I attend dance class and have sometimes found them quite useful.
Sometimes, the television has provided me with information. This source, like newspaper/magazine articles, is not something I would look to right away for information to help my professional career. However, there have been times when I have watched a programme, or in terms of a newspaper, read an article, which has given me information about my career. For example, I once caught a documentary on the Lido in Paris from which I learned a lot about that particular job. The fact is I would not actively seek information from the television or from a newspaper, with reference to my career, but occasionally I have found things out from them that is very useful.
Email and phone calls are another way in which I find out information. This information is normally specific to a job rather than it being general. For example, if there is a company I want to work for and I need to find out about an audition I could call or email the casting director to find out more. At this stage an email is usually more appropriate and as correspondence continues a phone call may become necessary in order to gather information.
I have different methods of organising the information I have gathered depending on what the information is and in what form I gathered it. If I were to receive information via email what I would normally do is keep the email and make a copy to save as a document to my computer. If the information was gathered from a notice board or a magazine or was verbal information I would write it down in my diary/organiser. A method I often use because I don't always take my diary out with my is I write things in to my phone. I do not own a nice fancy phone with lots of applications. I know that many people rely on their phones for organising because they have the technology for that. My phone cost about fifteen Euros and is very basic but I still use it to make notes about things. One thing I do not possess is an address book. This is something I am going to look into buying so that I can make a note of all of my professional contacts and have them in one place. I think this will be a good idea because even though I have contacts saved on my computer, technology can sometimes fail us and a back up could be necessary at some point.
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