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.
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. 
