This week, our focus was all about performing music with technology. We interacted with our PLNs, watched videos about Digital Audio and Audacity on lynda.com, did a project using Audacity, reviewed SmartMusic and youtube as performing tools, read the chapter in the book on performing, and discussed what we read in the discussion boards. We also discussed last week's projects from using Soundation.
First, I read about performing with technology and got lots of great new ideas for using technology in the band room. I already use quite a bit of technology at the elementary level with performing (to the point where if my technology is not working for some reason, I am at a loss as to what to do sometimes), but I have been greatly struggling with teaching band. I sent home a survey. It seems that most of my band students have access to what I would consider the normal types of technology at home, including a working computer and internet access. I am considering looking into pricing for SmartMusic, because I think it would greatly inspire my students to practice at home.
I contributed my pinterest board about school-related projects on my PLN, and I've gotten several kind remarks about it's helpfulness and several new ideas for things to pin from others. Pinterest is a great social media tool because you organize and permanently post whatever you want to remember in a place that is easily accessible and can be seen by many others. I have found it to be a useful extension of my PLN.
I found the videos on lynda.com related to Digital Audio Principles to be much easier to follow this week, primarily because I have so often used the technologies describes such as input/output devices, misers, and microphones. I found the course about Audacity to be wonderfully helpful. I would have been remiss without its instruction, as I found the Audacity project to be rather taxing.
The Audacity project involved using a lot of features of Audacity that I have never before used. For the most part, I have simply recorded into one track whatever I've needed. I have never used Audacity for mixing tracks because I use a mac and am used to and know GarageBand better. I found Audacity to be quite comparable to GarageBand, however. The most complex part of the project was undoubtedly trying to cleanly edit an extremely syncopated piece of music, all of whose musical phrases seemed to start on beat two of the measure instead of beat 1. Overall, the project was very informative and helped me to become familiar with software that I would not have originally chosen. I could see it being very useful in my classroom since GarageBand is not readily available. I have already talked to the technology person at my school about downloading the software into the students 1:1 mini laptops.
Bauer, W.I. (2014). Music Learning Today. New York, NY: Oxford.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Module 3 - Creating Music with Technology - Focus on Composition
This week, we continued our discussion of creativity with technology, but this time with a focus on composition. First, we read in the textbook about composition with students and technology, including finding five reasons why composition is an important part of a child's music education, the usefulness of critique and revision (which is something I think is very important for students to learn), and the importance of developing audiation skills, which happens with both graphic-oriented software like GarageBand and notation-based software like Finale, since students can hear the music and watch a cursor follow it. There was also a list of helpful music composition and improvisation activities that could be used in the classroom, of which I have done some already and plan to do in the future.
In our discussion board, we discussed the use of NTM classes. The primary discussion seemed to be based in the concern for money or resources to create courses like this for students in middle and high school and the concern that completely technology-based music courses will be an "easy fix" for students, who will not learn to understand the hard work and dedication that it takes to master an instrument like the ensemble participation students would learn. It was an enlightening discussion.
We also spent time on twitter and google plus interacting with our PLNs. I found an article about why music is important that was aimed toward music advocacy with administrators, which I found to be very helpful. Both our principal and assistant principal are leaving at the end of this year, and I want to make sure I am ready to support music in case the new administration does not value it the way my current administrators do. I also found an excellent blog called "Beth's Music Notes" that includes great music lesson plans. I would love to have a blog just like that, completely full of music lesson plan ideas and resources for other teachers.
The next part of our coursework this week involved lynda.com. It was a course on Principles of Audio in music, and it was very interesting. The course explain a lot of basic ideas about audio and the way it works. Most of it was completely over my head. I tried to watch and follow along, and the instructor did a great job trying to simplify things, but I simply do not have enough background knowledge to really understand what he was talking about. I did understand the portion about waveform, I was pleased to realize. I understood the concepts of higher quality sound as well, but I did not understand the "whys" of the terminology, such as the language.
We also completed the soundation project. I found it to be pretty similar to GarageBand, which I have used quite a lot. In some ways, it was easier to use than GarageBand, but in other ways, I had trouble figuring out how to do things since it worked differently from GarageBand. I found Soundation to be rather limiting since I could not record my own voice without paying for a subscription. I will likely do some kind of composition/arranging project in Soundation with my students using loops, although I think I liked Incredibox better.
Here are references for the websites I mentioned and materials I read:
Soundation
My Soundation Song
Lynda
Beth's Music Notes
Bauer, W.I. (2014). Music Learning Today. New York, NY: Oxford.
In our discussion board, we discussed the use of NTM classes. The primary discussion seemed to be based in the concern for money or resources to create courses like this for students in middle and high school and the concern that completely technology-based music courses will be an "easy fix" for students, who will not learn to understand the hard work and dedication that it takes to master an instrument like the ensemble participation students would learn. It was an enlightening discussion.
We also spent time on twitter and google plus interacting with our PLNs. I found an article about why music is important that was aimed toward music advocacy with administrators, which I found to be very helpful. Both our principal and assistant principal are leaving at the end of this year, and I want to make sure I am ready to support music in case the new administration does not value it the way my current administrators do. I also found an excellent blog called "Beth's Music Notes" that includes great music lesson plans. I would love to have a blog just like that, completely full of music lesson plan ideas and resources for other teachers.
The next part of our coursework this week involved lynda.com. It was a course on Principles of Audio in music, and it was very interesting. The course explain a lot of basic ideas about audio and the way it works. Most of it was completely over my head. I tried to watch and follow along, and the instructor did a great job trying to simplify things, but I simply do not have enough background knowledge to really understand what he was talking about. I did understand the portion about waveform, I was pleased to realize. I understood the concepts of higher quality sound as well, but I did not understand the "whys" of the terminology, such as the language.
We also completed the soundation project. I found it to be pretty similar to GarageBand, which I have used quite a lot. In some ways, it was easier to use than GarageBand, but in other ways, I had trouble figuring out how to do things since it worked differently from GarageBand. I found Soundation to be rather limiting since I could not record my own voice without paying for a subscription. I will likely do some kind of composition/arranging project in Soundation with my students using loops, although I think I liked Incredibox better.
Here are references for the websites I mentioned and materials I read:
Soundation
My Soundation Song
Lynda
Beth's Music Notes
Bauer, W.I. (2014). Music Learning Today. New York, NY: Oxford.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Module 2 - Creating Music with Technology - An Overview of Creativity and Improvisation
This week's module was lots of fun! The primary points of the week were a discussion of creativity and a discussion of improvisation. Additionally, we used free software programs for music notation. And, as we will always, we interacted with one another on our PLNs, finding useful information that could be immediately applied to our positions regarding music and technology incorporation.
Our discussion of creativity was very similar to the course that many of us were part of in the fall semester. We discussed the basics of creativity, such as its utmost importance in well-rounded students and future workers. We also discussed how difficult it is to assess creativity, and that it is born in every person, but must be developed. It was good to review these concepts of creativity as we ventured into the next topic, improvisation.
Our discussions of improvisation took place on the discussion board. Our creativity class in the fall talked about improvisation as part of the creative process, and, as we discussed in that class, many of us have not had much experience with improvisation. For most of us, it was completely ignored unless we were part of performing jazz ensembles. In our PLNs, many people posted excellent sources for the incorporation of improvisation in our classrooms, and the textbook discussed a 7-step model for the steps of teaching improvisation to our students.
Undoubtedly, the most purely fun portion of our assignments this week was our use of copying scores from MuseScore and Noteflight applications. I found that both of these applications were much easier to use than Finale and Sibelius, and, as an added bonus, they are both free to access. MuseScore is a downloadable application, and Noteflight is on the internet. I think I will create a Noteflight project with my students since we have 1:1 laptops for 3rd and 4th graders, and they can actually notate music that they compose for me into "fancy form," as I'll call it, print it off, and take it home to show off to parents. I think the "official-ness" of the formally printed music notation will help the students feel even more proud of their work.
Overall, this was a fun and insightful week. I look forward to expanding upon our discussions of improvisation and creativity along with other uses for technology in our music education classrooms.
Our discussion of creativity was very similar to the course that many of us were part of in the fall semester. We discussed the basics of creativity, such as its utmost importance in well-rounded students and future workers. We also discussed how difficult it is to assess creativity, and that it is born in every person, but must be developed. It was good to review these concepts of creativity as we ventured into the next topic, improvisation.
Our discussions of improvisation took place on the discussion board. Our creativity class in the fall talked about improvisation as part of the creative process, and, as we discussed in that class, many of us have not had much experience with improvisation. For most of us, it was completely ignored unless we were part of performing jazz ensembles. In our PLNs, many people posted excellent sources for the incorporation of improvisation in our classrooms, and the textbook discussed a 7-step model for the steps of teaching improvisation to our students.
Undoubtedly, the most purely fun portion of our assignments this week was our use of copying scores from MuseScore and Noteflight applications. I found that both of these applications were much easier to use than Finale and Sibelius, and, as an added bonus, they are both free to access. MuseScore is a downloadable application, and Noteflight is on the internet. I think I will create a Noteflight project with my students since we have 1:1 laptops for 3rd and 4th graders, and they can actually notate music that they compose for me into "fancy form," as I'll call it, print it off, and take it home to show off to parents. I think the "official-ness" of the formally printed music notation will help the students feel even more proud of their work.
Overall, this was a fun and insightful week. I look forward to expanding upon our discussions of improvisation and creativity along with other uses for technology in our music education classrooms.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Module 1: A Conceptual Framework for Technology-Assisted Music Learning
This week, we began our course on Technology-Assisted Music Learning. It was an eventful beginning to the course, as, in seemingly all technology-related projects that I attempt, there are problems with getting the basic technology to work. This could be related to the fact that I am in rural Tampa Bay and do not have internet access unless I try to connect through the bluetooth hot spot from my husband's work phone. Or it could be related to the fact that I just seem to have terrible luck with technology as a whole.
After completing the readings and establishing my personal learning network, music education related twitter account, and feedly page, it became clear to me that I have been missing out on all of the excellent affordances that involve technology in my teaching experience. I have used technology with my students, including the interactive whiteboard and other basic technologies, on a regular basis. However, I have never thought about using the connections that are readily available through social networking to ask for help or new ideas from other music educators. It is evident that the music teaching experience is quite enhanced through social networking.
I am rather overwhelmed at the amount of information that I suddenly find at my fingertips about music education. I have searched the web before for lesson planning ideas, but I have never used an RSS feed to be regularly updated and informed from blogs that are music education related. I have been forced against my will to teach band this year, and I have been highly overwhelmed since I do not have any idea how to play about half of the instruments I teach, so as I delved into the information provided by many excellent and highly-experienced (and trained) band directors, I have found a plethora of new ideas or toolbox tricks and tips that can help me know what to do when my students' instruments aren't playing correctly. With the ready connections of twitter, for example, I can ask my colleagues a question with a hashtag and receive lots of new ideas. I can also create a music education group on facebook and add my friends who are music educators so that I can "pick their brains" with questions and lesson planning improvements.
Overall, it is already abundantly clear that this course on technology in music education will be very beneficial to me as an educator, which will in turn benefit my students greatly and directly apply to their saturated technological lives. I'm looking forward to learning lots in this course.
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