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.