Unfortunately, little has happened since my last post because I have been busy with other subjects and also chasing down an advisor to aid me in structuring a documentary. But I am sticking to plan of my Gaant chart in a sense that I have completed September, October and November's activities and am now focusing on plagiarism. I will research what I must do to use other people's resources legally and without their dis approval and then ensure I do this before gathering features for my documentary.
The only thing I can really take note of as progress for this week is an email from the WRU and RFU about my letter, confirming that they have sent on the individual letters and now all I can do is wait on a reply. There is little more I can do than this otherwise I will have to settle with primary data from an source which is not useful to me such as a fellow student etc.
I have recovered the sites in which I have taken information from and have placed the addresses/information on the page in to a document which I will complete a source analysis on at some point. The images on the right simply show the screenshots of images from Bill Treadwell and Jan Hill confirming that my letters have been forwarded to the required address, aside of one player who has moved to South Africa and they have been unable to track his whereabouts.
 

I have recently been working on my organisational skills, which was one of my weaknesses which I discovered through doing the skills audit earlier on in the course. To help with this, my first step was creating a Gaant chart. This is basically a chart which outlines all of the main activities I need to complete over the next few months and highlights how long is reasonable to take with each task. This way I am working to small deadlines each month and I'm not going out on a limb and improvising, hoping that what I do is correct and I have time to do anything else I need to do. In addition, I can show development on my project by printing out a copy of the following image on the right and over time, altering it as I go because the decisions I made on the length of time each task will take were not justified. They're simply off hand a reasonable length that I feel each task would take, I will not know how long each will take me until I begin to perform the task. I can then alter this chart to show the development of my project and review. 
I have also sent off the letters I have wrote to the RFU and WRU which they will then forward on to the players which I have written to. This is a step towards receiving the feedback and primary data I'm looking for, it also shows potential communication skills because I have to show respect because, after all they are heroes of mine and have accomplished things beyond my capabilities. But I also must be slightly imperative in a way that will get things done. I enclosed a stamped envelope with my address on the front to urge that sense of guilt upon them if they do not reply, this will make it more likely for me to receive a reply.
My future plans are simply to review and analyse my data in order to pick out what will be useful for me to use and I then need to justify the selection, but I feel that I have not collected enough because there is little fact on the matter, it is simply down to opinion and emotion my topic so it will be fairly difficult.   

Finally I am making progress in contacting players to receive primary data to contribute towards my project. As in my last post I said how I was to contact a much broader address in order to contact players through them such as the RFU or the WRU and finally I have got a reply from both, initially from the RFU to contact a specific person who deals with such enquiries as this and I did. He replied saying that he was limited to the contacts he has of players wit a career at such time, but he does have addresses so I am to send a written letter to him of who I want to receive the letter and he would then forward them on for me to the address. Instantly after I got a reply from Jan Hill who practically said the exact same thing so I assume that these are common details that agents have of players. I have worded a letter for 8 different people to send to the WRU which will hopefully get sent on because it will cost me a lot of money to send! My next step is to analyse the data I have collected from online and in books to see if it is reliable and to create a small document as evidence for this process. To the right are screenshots of the email from Jan Hill, and the email which I have sent to the WRU. 
   

Since my last post, I have not made too much progress in a sense of contacting individuals about their rugby careers from around 1995. It is unfortunate that I am unable to get hold of many because it would provide valuable information to add to my project, but because of their vast amount of fan mail, it will be very different to obtain an enthusiastic reply. I have decided to change my approach and contact more active websites which will have ways of contacting specific players more directly such as 'LeciesterTigersOfficialPage' or the 'RFU' or 'WRU'. Hopefully they will acknowledge my purpose and (if I pester them enough) they will send me ways of acquiring this information and see me as responsible enough to use it. I have little secondary research left to do now, it is just a matter of organising it in to a structured project because I have the books and have printed off the pages I need. (The picture on the right is a print screen of my e-mail to the RFU and a tweet to Gareth Thomas- this is the only form of contacting I seem to be able to do)

Recently I have been attempting to contact past rugby players which could be of use to my project in a sense of providing first person information. Unfortunately I have had little luck because I have sent several messages to players' websites and their twitters but have only recieved one reply from a man named Matt Hampson, who was only a last resort really because his career was after the icon event which I am researching, but he was still worth a message because of how active he is. I have been pestering him since about how I could possibly contact other players but to no use as he seems to be unable to contact them or have ways in which I could so it's back to step one for me really.
It appears extremely difficult for me because I am messaging legendary rugby players who played top flight rugby but they obviously have very busy lives now with motivational speaking and commentating over games etc. Perhaps in the future I will need to aim alot lower at players who were not international or well known but would be willing to answer the same questions as more famous players.
My research is going... average because there isn't really anything else I need to know, there may not even be anything else to know, I guess I will find out when it comes to planning my final piece; but before that I will need to produce a gant chart.

Since my last blog entry, quite alot of progressive things have happened to contribute to my EPQ project. To begin with, I attended a presentation evening where past EPQ students presented their topics and explained the things they had to go through to achieve their final result. This was very useful to me because I was able to ask any queeries I had and recieve feedback which wasn't from a teacher but from a student with first hand experience. It also gave me an insight as to how to present my project once it had been completed and that it is vital to present the project with as many resources as possible to grab the audiences' attention. In addition I have filled out parts of my production log which keeps records of my initial planning and also plans for my project proposal. Its a basic outline of the progress I have made and a small presentation of my idea to head of EPQ to see if my idea is feasible or not. It is an electronic log which makes it more simple to fill in and refer back to. Finally, I have also contacted Matt Hampson. My reasoning for this is that, despite the fact his debut was after 1995 when rugby union turned proffessional, I have decided to stop trying to recieve my primary information so directly, I should take steps up to acquiring that information. Matt Hampson is well known for being active to his audience's enquiries and because he is in the same field (no pun intended) as the people I wish to interview, he is a good starting point. I feel I have enough resources to educate myself now in this transition (for secondary information) and so I will now put my focus solely on researching ways in which to approach creating a documentary because at the moment I am unsure how to even begin.  

Recently in class i took a self assessed skills audit in order to show myself and my advisor what I feel my strengths are and what I feel I could improve on. They were split in to seperate categories such as planning, communication skills and creativity etc. Within these categories were statements in which I was to put a number in relation to my experience of the statement from 1-5 (wide experience to no experience). From this is is clear to see that my strengths lie in the communication area when it comes to proposing my ideas to others in a way that makes them see it from my point of view. Also, when it comes to developing a good relationship with fellow workers/spectators so that if I ever require a favour off of them, (such as advice or information) they would be obliged to collabrorate. In addition, motivation is a skill which I pride myself in. If I have a set goal in my head then I will stop at nothing until I have succeeded, in my life I have never left anything unfinished or stopped before I have reached the end. This will be a useful skill to apply to my project because if things ever get difficult I can get past it and complete it. That brings me to my weakness, it has been clear to me for sometime and confirmed though the self assessed skills audit, that my organisational skills are poor. I have never been good at planning my time effectively, I simply sit down and work until I'm physically unable to do anymore. I can never set out specific sub-tasks to be completed to achieve an overall goal and I can especially not set my own deadlines because I can barely work to ones set for me. However, this is not a problem that cannot be overcome. Through advice from fellow students and a small bit of research I have found that a chart, mapping out all the tasks that must be completed on a weekly basis, would be useful as I can tick it off when each small task has been completed in the allocated time period. So my future plans would be to create one of these to become more organised and map my progress towards finishing the project. In additin, there is a workshop after school tomorrow which will show presentations from previous post 16 students about their EPQ project and hopefully I will be able to find one which relates to my topic.  

I have been researching about how to approach my 1000 word essay and have come across an advice page which suggests certain ideas such as how to structure an introduction, the first paragraph, follwoing paragraphs and then the conclusion. By using this 'checklist' as such, I can refer back to it whilst writing up my essay to ensure I have included all the necessary points. It also provides the main stages for producing an essay. It is a simple 10 step method including a plan of what actions to perform, a first draft, editing the first draft (with structure and content as well as style) and proof reading before producing the final copy. 

I have also researched for certain local players who were playing top flight rugby at the time in which rugby union turned from amateur to professional and came across rory underwood; top try scorer for England and Leicester Tigers. So I've order his autobiography and will try to get in touch with him to see if I could conduct a small interview with him to see how rugby union becoming professional changed his life. On the subject of researching historical players, I came across a small section of Tigers history from 1990-1999 whcih includes the team turning from amateur to professional in 1997. I've printed this off so I can refer back to it when it comes to drafting my essay and creating my documentary.   

My EPQ tutor is getting in touch with MR Condliffe and so I will soon be asking him questions surrounding the structure of a documentary and so that is something that needs to be done in the future, as well as a scheduled plan of events I must carry out which will contribute to the production of my final copy.         

Recently, I have been researching ways in which I could structure the 1000 word essay to go alongside my documentary and have had little success in finding a project which has a similar theme to mine, which in a sense is a good way as it shows originality. I did find an example of an essay of how the english language has affected the german language and simply referred to it in a structural sense. What I find interesting about the following example is the amount of references at the bottom of the page; this is the same with every page in the document as well. There have evidently been an extremely wide variety of resources used to create the document and so references have been placed at the bottom of the page to keep them in order as appose to a meaningless list in a bibliography at the end of the document.

In addition I have also been looking towards ways in which I can select a question which is open for description, argument and discussion which isn't closed or straight forward. I found the following document quite useful as it gives examples of questions and critically analyses them to pick out how it could be improved and whether it would be worth persuing. It gives me an understanding of how to select a question for my project that will have endless limitations and stimulate an essay that will tick all the criteria that will present me with a good grade.

My next step is to read up on the books I have purchased surrounding the history of rugby and to finally meet Mr.Condliffe and discuss the structure for a documentary and settle on a good project title.

Today I reviewed my performance, planning and skills when it comes to EPQ related events. I discovered that my strengths include such things as showing imagination and inovation aswell as being motivated in a sense that if I am required to complete a specific task I won't stop until it has been done. I also found areas in which I am week that perhaps need improving, for example I am poor at planning and setting myself small goals to complete one step at a time. I have found a way in which I can counteract this weakness, by producing a Gantt Chart. This is simply a document which shows the progress I have achieved up to the present time and also the tasks I need to complete in the following weeks/months etc. I do this by splitting the write up in to seperate segments I complete each week or so ultimately resulting in a controlled, stress-free end project which I am happy with.

In addition I have come across the following document which outlines key skills and areas that I need to be confident with in order to complete the project to the best of my ability. It explains the areas of 6 different PLTS (Personal learning and thinking skills), the focus and how young learners apply these to different situations. I plan to print this out and place it in the front of my folder and refer back to it after each stage of my project is completed in order to see if I am a step closer to being confident with each one.

My next step is to find a few examples of previous EPQ projects which have a similar topic to mine and see what features are included, what is good about it and how I can replicate the skills they've used and apply it to my own project. Still awaiting a reply from Mr.Condliffe so instead I am most likely going to see him personally.

Over the past few days I've researched what being a production designer entales in order to possibly find a question that may be asked about issues/confrontations surrounding it. Unfortunately I have been unable to find such information as all I can find is web pages which simply state qualifications or a brief description of the proffession (such as in the picture opposite). I found this web page relatively useful because it increases my knowledge on the topic, something I enjoy, but it does not put me a step closer towards thinking of a question which surrounds production designing.

I will however, continue searching production designing for a debateable point to present in my documentary. I will do this until I get a definate answer from a teacher/someone well educated in the production designing industry, that there is no need and that I should resort to plan B which is to research the transition of rugby union from amateur to proffessional.

http://www.media-match.com/usa/jobtypes/production-designer-jobs-402758.php -Not useful towards my project but useful for educating me in the production designing business

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-production-designer.htm- Quite useful in informing the younger generation who wish to pursue this career path but not useful in bringing up potential debateable points about production designers.

Currently retrieving information and awaiting permission to meet with Mr.Condliffe in order to be educated on how to produce a documentary with all the necessary components. Still unsure of the topic I wish to pursue as my desired topic and career path I'm interested in is production design, however there is little information on the issues around that proffession and so I am leading towards rugby's transition from amateur to proffessional. I have acquired several books from a library further North and will read through them, I am also planning to get hold of a man named Jonothan Davies, who revolutionised the game and is a class example of how rugby union, going from amateur to proffessional, changed people's lives.