music and technology

We had a chance to tell our colleagues about this course in our elementary faculty meeting yesterday.  What we shared fits nicely into this blog post.  It was a lot of work and was occasionally stressful, but overall it was worth it.  Learning anything new is rarely easy.  Perhaps we’ll have more insight into what it feels like to be the learner rather than the teacher.  There was too much information to take in for the ten week period, but I found most of it will be useful in my teaching life.  I’m just starting to imagine how my music web page will change  now that I know about so many new tools.   Burning question:  What will this “stuff” be called when our grandchildren are adults?  Web 1,000? 

I can see the end in sight!!! I did not think I had any more mental energy left to absorb new ideas, but I liked Ning and Classroom 2.0.  I think they provide a way to combine many ideas from this course.  Here’s what I liked:

•  Web 2.0 learning:  great discussions, smart board ideas, and new ideas for me such as Wetpaint and diigo  (I think diigo might be the answer to my organizational issues with all this new tech stuff.
• Musictechnology blog:  I found this in the web 2.0 site.  This blog shows kids how to do podcasts with step by step instructions.  Simple enough that even teacher could understand.
• Music Educators Looking for Collaboration:   I found a rotoball project that would be great for middle/upper elem. music students.  Schools from around the world participate by having kids create music (garage band style) for the animation.
• A music blog that was set up strictly for kids to write opinions and reactions to music they listened to.
• Voices of the World:  This site sets up a new task each month using Voki, animato and podcasts.  Kids record and make pictures for a specified song and share them.  At this point there are 8 different countries, so there is a huge variety of languages.

I’m trying to brief, but it’s hard to synthesize all the ways I observed people using the social network.  Many of our students are already huge users of social networks and many of the networks have been geared towards them. With two teenagers in my  home, I have already experienced how places like facebook can be both wonderful and harmful.  Not all kids have a clear idea of how to use this public forum appropriately.  That said, I think a network like Ning is awesome because it can allow us,  as teachers to tap in to the fascination with social networks, but in a much more focused way with academic topics.  Hooray!  Best of all, it’s easy.Smiley face egg by marimar 

 FROM QUOTIKI:   Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. Mark Twain  snowflake by Howard J Duncan   I have become increasing overwhelmed by the amount of new information I have been exposed to in this class. (Great class, but it should be split into two parts with a long space between)  Pageflakes, however, seems like the tool that could help create order out of the chaos.Through my pagecast search I found ME Bloggers Best in Musical technology site.  WOW!  If you teach music, check it out.I added the Mother of all podcast feeds, Netflix (although the link did not work well), my personal favorite, Space Invaders game with no educational relevance, universal video search, suite 101.com music education articles and quotiki.  Suite 101 had articles such as fantastic drummer and singing tips.  At first try it seems I would use this in a personal and professional way more than directly with students.  If I had more time with my kids I can imagine lots of ways to add this to music instruction.  

Wow!  I have had such a good time learning tons of new things, but I feel like I am on overload.  I’m not sure my brain has room to absorb any more new ideas.  I did not know anything about google docs before this course and I must say I am glad to know about it.  I tried out the presentation tools and found I could easily add YouTube videos to the presentation.  Pretty cool.  I was not able to get any  photo images to upload, but I attribute that to user error.  They were all jpeg files and I guess I have to use something else.  I created a spreadsheet that I could share with the music teachers who get my kids after I am done teaching them in 4th grade.  I can’t wait to try it this summer.  3 ways I could use google docs:

1.  sharing evaluation info with other music colleagues
2.  organizing a group of kids, teachers, or parents by Invite people to fill out a form.  For example, I used to organize class camping trips.  How much easier it would be to get everyone to sign up for different food and camping gear tasks! 
3. create the most awesome presentation for a part of a program I present to parents.  If we did a music curriculum night this would be a great tool.   I imagine this tool could be used to make a listening map for a piece of music that I want to show images and words together.  

I have been a user of TeacherTube and YouTube for a year.  My favorite feature is the playlist.  I have saved videos I want to see again, or show a particular class and I organize them by subject, instrument, country or class.  I see there is a friends option on T.T.  I can imagine it would be great to connect with other music teachers to share favorite, useful or funny videos.  I have a video I made of a 4th grade class performing music created out of exploration of Langston Hughes’ “Dream” poems and I combined it with drawings the kids made in their classroom that illustrate Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.  I can’t wait to figure out how to upload it to T. T.  (I have an appointment with one of tech people to help me on Monday!)  I found a listening map of Saint-Saens’ Aquarium.  I would like to make some of my own listening maps.  Does Creative Commons permissions extend to using Flickr images in a video as long as you give credit? I have 5 and 6 year olds exploring Chris Raschka’s picture book  Giant Steps based on music of the same name by John Coltrane.  They are “drawing” the sound of the music.  I could take digital images of the drawings, add the music (assuming it’s okay with copyright) and make a video.  My biggest concern is how do you get around the issue of using video that shows kids?  I can’t imagine this is ok, although I see many music performances (some dreadful) with hundreds of kid faces.  They can’t have gotten permission from all those families.    On TeacherTube I found a fun video to share.  I don’t speak French, but if you watch past the intro it is worth it.  It looks like a French version of American Idol except this guy has special talent.  He can beat box and sing at the same time.  You’ve got to see it to understand it. French Beat Box Download Video: Posted by sdunn at TeacherTube.com.

Evoca was not something I have ever used before.  I really wanted to learn about podcasts, as I can see lots of uses for them in my music classroom.   I watched the how to video, but still had a difficult time getting the html code to paste on this blog.  I followed all the instructions, but it took several attempts.  Otherwise the experience was easy and smooth.  

I have been using podcasts through itunes for a couple of years. I love listening to them as I walk to school on my ipod or on my computer when I have time. I can catch up with world music, NPR music stories, and topics that interest me. I did not realize I could do this through the RSS reader. Thanks for teaching me that. My absolute favorite part of thing 17 was the link to 100 ways to use your ipod.

Who knew there were ipod lesson plans??

highlights:

• ijourneys
  walking tours of different countries
• Merriam Webster dictionary
  check on a definition while teaching
• notepods think cliff notes
• ipod lesson plans

Check out the site to find 96 more ideas……..

I also found “freeware” which is a relatively new concept for me. In the podcast Making Music W/OSX there were too many offers to check out in one sitting. I downloaded a really cool sound called the duni hammer. I’m glad to learn more about podcasts, and I even put a few more on itunes and my RSS reader.

Can you get to the point when you feel you can’t join another group and keep track of another username and password? ( I keep a folder for these)  I know it is optional to join these groups, but I want to sign up for all of them in order to really see which I would use the most.  43 things is an interesting concept.  If you are the kind of person who likes to make lists and receive encouragement from others, I can see this as a great tool.  (Like joining weightwatchers to get support with your weight loss.)  I made three goals starting with #1 be happy.  I don’t think I’m the kind of person that wants or needs public encouragement, but I’m willing to give it a short trial to see what I notice about myself.  It’s encouraging to see other people with similar goals.

I have a lousy memory when it comes to remembering titles of books, music and movies, but I love to read and can usually remember the story.  

 This is a picture I took of Bryce Canyon and it is posted on my flickr page.

  Librarything is the answer to my memory problem.  I tried the stretch activity and put as many favorite books as I could remember on my list.  I’m still working on it.  The 50 book challenge would make a great New Year’s resolution.  You can start at any point, but there is something in my mind that says I would enjoy starting this at the beginning of the calendar year.  Personally I can see myself using this.  Professionally I can also see myself keeping track of books and looking into groups for more ideas.  For my elementary music classroom, I’m not so sure this is really the best tool to use with my limited time.  There have been many other tools that will be of more use.  I can see classroom teachers using this! 

I found this to be the hardest task for me personally. It took me a while to figure things out. Using delicious feels like an new and improved way to search and organize what you find on the web. It also took a while to think about what words to search under beyond education or music. Finding a way to use only one word, and yet not choosing too broad of a term will take some practice. I think I am getting it now!

For professional uses I can already see how it can help me keep track of music professional organizations, workshop offerings and articles/sites that are of personal interest to me. My school and home computer change enough that I am going to love having a way to save my bookmarks. I often start work at school and then finish at home on another computer. This will be helpful.

Here’s a link to my delicious links. http://del.icio.us/music_miranda