Ipad in the classroom

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently; the music classroom has changed so much since I've gone through it. The technology available to us as students and educators has progressed so vastly in the past few years that its definitely hard for us to imagine how to properly integrate it. I stumbled upon a blog by Dr. Christopher Russel called Technology in Music Education and his experiences utilizing iPhones, iPods, iPads, and other technologies into the music classroom. I've found many of his posts interesting, informative, and though-provoking about how I could use any, all, or none of these in my classroom.

Recently, I've found myself seeing YouTube as a very hit-or-miss addition to a lesson. If the lesson has a video thrown in to "fulfill a technology requirement", they're often lacking in content and doing just that - fulfilling a requirement. I came across this post from Dr. Russel and was completely blown away. Here's why:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/tt6oc1frNsQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

My primary instrument is French horn. This video, while only 1 minute long, is inspiring and I'm going to go practice. Now.

Max MSP

I've started to develop some curiosity about integrating Max MSP and many of its wonderful manifestations into the classroom and into homework assignments (assuming the school system has blackboard or some sort of digital classroom interface).
Since most of us have taking Music Technology at this point in our degree programs, I'm wondering how we all feel about the program. VJ Manzo had a lot of great programs for teaching music theory, which otherwise could be more than a little bit boring and tedious for students to learn.

Interactivity #5

For this interactivity, I interviewed a band director for the Northern Valley Regional High Schools (I am not stating which school this teacher is in as it will reveal his identity). He directs three ensembles, the Symphonic Band (the freshman band), the Wind Symphony (the sophomore - senior band), and the String Orchestra (all grades).

I contacted him on April 1st asking if he would be willing to participate in this survey and he was happy to assist in my development as a future educator. I sent then him the PDF files in the next email I sent along with the following questions, which I modeled after the suggested survey on the directions:

1. Have you heard of NETS?
2. Has the department or district begun to implement any of these standards? (Since this is only one of the high schools in the district, anything that is implemented in one school must also be implemented in the other).
3. Do you follow any of these standards on your own accord?

His response was not surprising. He had not heard of NETS before I had sent him the document, to which he replied:

I have never heard of these standards before, and quite honestly I do not see how this could be utilized in the music classroom over a long period of time. There are instances where using the technology in the classroom is necessary for the lesson, such as using the projector for a brief lesson on a composer or the recording equipment to playback a previous rehearsal. However engaging anywhere from 45 - 90 students in using any kind of technology in the rehearsal is more or less impossible to control.

He continued to say that he was working on a separate project that would integrate technology into the curriculum, but it would be based around practicing (homework for musicians). There is a program called SmartMusic that he is trying to have the district purchase for each student which has students play along with their computer and it grades them on accuracy of pitch, rhythm, and intonation. This program would replace his former method of grading homework, which was having students come in twice a week during their free periods and practice in the band room while he was there.

I intend on teaching in a high school setting when I begin my career and I can say that the only technology that could effectively be placed in the band and orchestra setting would be the previously noted SmartMusic.   This is efficient to the rehearsal, as it forces students to practice at home in their own time and allows the ensemble to work on focusing on the NJCCS for performing and the creative process.

Google Spreadsheet

Other ways for Sibelius & Finale

I've been thinking recently a lot about other ways to incorporate composition programs into the band or choral classroom without necessarily having students compose. I remembered that there is a feature within Sibelius and Finale that allow a score to be scanned in; this gives us the ability to isolate individual sections in the score.

This capability allows the creation of .mp3 files of one section (i.e. flutes, violins, trombones, etc) for solo practicing as well as creating a file with the entire ensemble minus a selected section. This is excellent to help the student learn how to listen to the rest of the ensemble outside of the classroom.

I know that many choirs have and use practice recordings for at home practice and being an instrumentalist, I believe that this could be very effective for younger ensembles but I'd love some input on this.

Interactivity #4

I chose this lesson plan on MusicTechTeacher.com because I believe that if I had instruction in this format as a student I would have learned a lot from it, and therefore my students could take a lot away from the lesson. The entire lesson is based around the usage of technology, whether using midi keyboards, computer software, or video camera, and utilizes many NJCCS for music.

There are several small gaps in the lesson plan, and here's why: the first gap lies within ensuring that the students actually understand what the G major scale is. It is more than likely that between grades 2 - 5 that the class knows what the notes are called, but they do not understand how these notes function within a scale and which notes are the important ones. The second small gap is a mistake that many musicians make: not everyone knows how to improvise. Yes, it should be self evident what exactly is necessary and how one goes about improvising, but if a student has never seen or thought of how to improvise, they won't know how. Using the "Think Aloud" strategy will give every student the opportunity to see how to go about improvising by allowing them to see and discuss how it is done. The final gap lies within the usage of the notation software for composing the phrase: in doing so, it allows all students to participate in the same capacity and to easily edit and adjust their work with feedback from their peers and from the teacher.

The curriculum goal for this lesson is learning how to compose. The technologies used in this lesson are essential because without a piano, the students have no basis for understanding pitch or musical literacy. The notation software decreases the time needed to write the music and generates clear and accurate results from the students.

Lesson Plan
Google Spreadsheet

Interactivity #3

It is often assumed that you need to be a musician in order to participate in the music making process. Part of our jobs as music educators is to open doors to students to experience music in ways they had not anticipated before as well as in ways that we cannot currently anticipate. Western music specifically has been known to function within certain boundaries that have been established over hundreds of years, so those who are not familiar with the musical notation or vocabulary may have a very difficult time finding their way into the music world. It is our jobs as educators to find ways to make our subject matter accessible to every student in our classroom.

The tools that we've gathered through our collaboration can be used in any classroom that we may find ourselves in. The benefit of these technologies are that many of them are found online and can be accessed from any computer at anytime, allowing the creative process to continue outside of the classroom, whether it be by homework assignment or by choice of the student.

Some of these tools can be used in our CURR 314 module to as a tool for intermediary assessment throughout a unit plan to determine how effectively we are teaching and well our students are retaining the information discussed in class. There are valuable resources on our database as well that can easily speak to our READ 411 in terms of developing literacy and critical comprehension in the discourse of music and creating music. 

Skype Lessons

          For our READ 411 class, we had to meet with our students and perform an assessment to determine the best way that we can help them improve their reading (and also improve our skills to recognize these traits). I chose Lauren, a friend of mine, to be my student for this project.
          Lauren and I had been trying to set up a time to meet for about a week and we had a lot of difficulty finding mutual free time, so we decided to meet on Skype and set up a video chat session. This maximized our free time between events (we each were coming from work and were headed to something else shortly after) and I was able to seize all of the advantages of meeting in person with the additional challenge of having a seamless lesson plan and needing to do a lot of preparation. 
          This proved to be immensely efficient and helpful, which gave me the idea of how this could be brought further into the music classroom. I was thinking about how private teachers could feasibly teach a private lesson to a student over Skype; to prevent any legal issues, it would probably be best to have the parent present during the lesson. This saves a tremendous amount of time and money in traveling and, if the parents of the student see necessary, could record the lesson and refer back to it at a later point to assist in their child's practicing that week.
          This could also be very effective to "bring" a guest speaker "into" the classroom. Again, this saves time and money on both ends of the spectrum with all of the benefit.