Week 7

The topics this week turned to what is somewhat more familiar territory for me.  Many of the administrative tools covered are already familiar to me since I already use many of the Google tools to keep myself organized and on track.  I have used Google Drive for some time to store my compositions in the cloud and to share them with collaborators as well as transmit them to colleagues around the country and the world.  I started using this after Google began restricting the size of files that could be sent as email attachments which made it difficult because score files would often exceed those limits.  I have used Google Calendar also because it syncs directly with my cellphone so that once an item is entered on any of my platforms all notifications come to me wherever I am.

That being said, I did have a little learning curve regarding the presentation and newsletter assignments.  The main reason for that is that I am more familiar with the Microsoft Office programs than these particular Google versions.  I usually work in MS Word and create presentations with PowerPoint.  The Google versions are not that different, but it still is a bit of a challenge when one is used to one procedure to adapt to a slightly different command structure.  In some ways this was a similar challenge to what we experienced in the transition from using Finale to Noteflight or Musescore in earlier assignments.

The creation of a quiz in Forms was an eye opening experience.  I had not been aware of just how easy it was to construct this interactive type of form and the process the grading through Flubaroo.  I did find that the grading in Flubaroo doesn't work as well for short answer type questions as it does for multiple choice or checkbox items.  Short answer still requires more judgement in scoring the questions than the program is able to provide.

I still continue to be amazed at the number of creative apps that we are being made aware of through the PLN.  The value of this tool is becoming more evident all the time and this is definitely something that I will keep up with even after the class is complete.

Week 6

The most interesting concept of this week is the Webquest.  I have had students use the Internet for research before but I have not pushed them to take things to another level through encouraging them to synthesize and apply that new knowledge into a specific problem solving project.  It took a while and several readings of the various materials to get a real grasp on the unique nature of this project as well as the possible benefits to our students of this type of active inquiry.

The "Top 5" format of the discussion prompt this time was an interesting twist on the format.  It was a good way to generate thought not only on what stood out, but also as to why it mattered.  Reading some of the lists compiled by other students caused me to rethink some of the things I had left out.  This type of interaction has also proven valuable through the PLNs where others have helped make me aware of resources that I never would have been able to uncover on my own.

It is also interesting how the content from other courses we have taken previously in this program is starting to cycle back around into these discussions.  For example, we took a full course in Instructional Design last fall which was heavy in the process of backwards design.  This topic came up again in this week's reading section with a similar rationale and explanation.  In addition, issues related to assessment are starting to loop back to the Student Assessment class of last summer.  I suppose it is a good thing that the various pieces are starting to come together for me since I am almost 2/3 of the way through the program.

Week 5

One part of the reading for this week (Bauer, 2014) that really resonated with me was the description of the various ways that human beings intuitively respond to music.  The outlining of Hallam's research into the types of responses to music (p.105) made a lot of sense.  Physiological responses are the very reason that we employ things such as fight songs or stirring national anthems.  Motor responses have been the reason for work songs and dance music.  Intellectual responses explain the continued popularity of Bach's fugues and inventions, while I have an aesthetic response every time I hear Barber's Adagio for Strings or Daniel Barenboim's Chicago Symphony recording of Nimrod.  While I accept that these reactions are culturally conditioned, they are still very real to me and thousands of others.  Part of our responsibility as music educators is to help our students understand why these responses are appropriate in our culture, while also helping expand their awareness of how these same type of responses are generated in different ways by the music of other cultures.

The piece of music software that I ran across and chose to use for the evaluation review (EarMaster Pro 6.1) was one that I had not been aware of previously.  The more that I worked with the free trial copy, the more impressed I became.  In my opinion, it is a tremendous tool to help students with ear training, sight singing, rhythmic and melodic dictation, theory and many other aspects of musicianship.  I definitely plan to purchase and make use of this technology in my classes.

Learning to properly use Diigo was another technical challenge for a "digital immigrant" like myself.  I am starting to get the basics, but I am sure there is a lot more for me to learn in order to be able to make effective use of it.  This does provide another nice addition to my PLN and adds one more way to become acquainted with other resources that can enrich my teaching strategies.


Bauer, W.I., (2014). Music Learning Today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing and responding to music. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press.

W eek 4

Chapter 4 in Music Learning Today covered quite a range of technologies, but the thing I appreciated most was covering the imperative of considering the need for psychomotor development of our students through practice in order to improve their ultimate performance.  We have all been taught the importance of slow practice but it was helpful to read of the research that backs that up.  Once that is firmly understood, we can then move on to find technology solutions that can help develop those psychomotor skills in appropriate ways.  Specific technologies such as digital metronomes and tuners can help in keeping slow practice consistent and helping develop the muscle memory needed to perform at high levels once things are worked up to proper speed.  Smartmusic's looping feature can enable us to help students to learn how to focus on difficult passages repeatedly for more efficiency.  Digital recording can make it easier to record student practices and performances so that they can better hear themselves and begin to learn how to better evaluate and improve their own performances.  The multi-page chart provided by Dr. Bauer makes for a great reference tool to keep on hand to find suggestions for solutions to a number of different problem areas.  The discussion posts relating to these issues also helped provide a number of other possibilities beyond what are listed in the book.

The Audacity project was quite a challenge for those of us who are not the most tech oriented like myself.  The tutorials on lynda.com were tremendously helpful in learning the basics of how to work within the program and accomplish the assigned tasks.  The combination of being able to see the soundwaves did make it much easier to work with the sound files than it would have been with just the sounds alone.  Realizing that Finale compositions can be exported as .wav files, it would be fairly easy to create our own files for use in these type of exercises.  These type of assignments could be used with students to help them learn the program as well.  Being a free cloud based program makes Audacity practical for this type of use - even for schools with limited budgets.

Listening to the various compositions by other members of the class was quite interesting.  It is amazing how so many different pieces can be constructed out of basically the same raw material.  I know that this is true in a general sense of all composition, but with a finite number of preprogrammed loops in Soundation it is truly amazing to see the wide variety of ideas contained in those compositions.

I am also enjoying the wide variety of information coming in through the PLN.  I wasn't sure how this would work at the beginning, but I have come to appreciate it more and more as time goes on and others share different bits of information about new things they have discovered.

Week 3

I continue to be amazed at the wide range of new technology we are encountering during this class.  I shouldn't be, but I am.  I know that technology in general tends to increase at an exponential rate and there is no reason why music instructional technology should be any different.  Dr. Bauer's brief explanation in Music Learning Today (2014) of the concept of DAWs was a good short summary, but it was really helpful to have the much more detailed explanations in the lynda.com video segments.  Those segments certainly cover the material in great detail - at times it almost seemed too much - but when one stops to realize it is geared to the person with no prior knowledge of such systems, it makes more sense. 

The process of learning to use Soundation was a lot of fun.  Although it took a little bit of time to figure out how everything worked, once I got going it really became enjoyable.  I have wanted to make use of GarageBand for some time now but have been prevented by not having Apple machines available in my classroom.  A cloud based program like Soundation opens a lot of new possibilities to give students more chances to explore their musical creativity.  In fact, tomorrow we are starting a program we call Spring Break Music Camp.  We will have 30-35 students ranging from 8 to 16 involved in a variety of musical activities.  I loaded links for Soundation on our computers this afternoon and that will be one of the fun musical activities for the week.

I am finding the PLN to really be a source of a lot of interesting information.  As we all share the various new things we are finding, it is becoming obvious that we are a lot more knowledgeable together than any of us could ever be on our own. While there is some duplication as more than one person will post the same things at different times, overall it is helping make us aware of many new apps and websites that we hadn't known about before.  My phone is constantly beeping with new incoming messages from Google+ as I have the chance to learn about something new.  It makes for interesting days.



Bauer, W.I., (2014). Music Learning Today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing and responding to music. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press.

Week 2

This week has certainly opened some new doors in the realm of music technology.  Musescore and Noteflight are both programs that have made me aware of possibilities for use with students.  I myself have been a long time Finale user, but it can be quite expensive to purchase.  I just upgraded to the newest version at the cost of $360 (at the reduced teacher price).  For the students I work with, this is completely out of the reach of their family budgets.  However, free programs such as Musescore and Noteflight would make it possible for them to engage in the basics of composition without that heavy expenditure.

In working with these two programs, I experienced a little bit of frustration, but it was mainly because of my long experience with Finale.  I kept falling into the trap of trying to use familiar shortcuts from Finale and then realizing that they are not the same in these other programs.  I noted that several others in the class had pointed out that the exercises could be done in Finale and exported but I chose to keep working in the other programs. Despite the occasional frustration, I see real value in working through the exercises as close to possible as the way that the students will experience it.  This gives us as teachers a better perspective on what those challenges are likely to be and a better handle on how to help them when they encounter problems.

The PLN is starting to really be a source of a lot of new information - it is almost overwhelming at times.  But as the others in the group post the different articles they have discovered, it does broaden the perspective on a whole host of issues. The combination of what others post and what comes in on its own through Feedly has helped make me aware of quite a number of possibilities that I had not known about prior to this.  It is slightly humorous that a number of the postings of different people in the class start to duplicate one another as time goes on.

The discussion about creativity and improvisation is somewhat similar to one that we had in Dr. Webster's Creativity class last Fall.  However, the main difference is the addition of the possibilities opened up by Kratos' 7 stage model for teaching improvisation.  It outlines practical steps for taking students through developmentally appropriate processes to gain the audiation skills that will begin them on the road to becoming effective improvisors.  Far too many teachers are intimidated to begin to teach the process because they aren't really sure how.  By having a logical stepwise procedure to follow, hopefully that hesitancy can be overcome.

Noteflight assignment

http://www.noteflight.com/scores/view/64d10d817177d3c4076bb61c195d9ccfe26e3354