The music education blog carnival

I stumbled upon a pretty useful online source the other day called the Blog carnival. This is a useful site that many people can use, especially educators in any subject. Being a music education major, I looked for their music education blog. The Music Education Blog Carnival  is a useful blog that has a good amount of posts that have a variety of information and articles within them all pertaining to music. It has things like music in general, music technology, music education, and more. I think it's a good resource to have if you want to look up information and know of different resources within music or other fields. 

Interactivity #5

For my teacher interview, I interviewed a high school (grades 9-12) music teacher who teaches concert band and marching band. He was unaware of what both the NETS-S and the NETS-T. In my follow up e-mail I sent him the information of what they both were and I also put a link to a site that tells him what they are and for further information on it. After he was more familiar with both the NETS-T and NETS-S, he told me that he wasn’t sure why both his district and himself were unaware of these. He said how the school is not very technology savvy nor do they really utilize or encompass really any technology in it. As far as the music curriculum is concerned, the only technologies being utilized are a television, vhs/dvd player, CD player with surround sound, electronic tuners, Dr.Beat metronome, loud speakers, audio systems (used for marching band), and an intercom system. For performances, they use a microphone, soundboard and recording device used for prevention of feedback and to assist with clarity.

            He continued to tell me how he wasn’t sure if or when the school was going to integrate more technology in general in their school or programs. The teacher said how it’s hard to always incorporate technology in a music classroom, especially one for band and marching band. It would be easier to do so in a music technology class or a music appreciation class. He said some technology at times is good to have for a music class, but overall it’s hard to utilize it on a daily or constant basis, especially in his school with they programs they don’t have. The teacher I interviewed said how it would be more beneficial to incorporate technology in a homework setting, and how it is something he had thought of possibly doing prior to this year. Overall, he said how he would like to add more technology in his program eventually, he just isn’t sure when and if it would ever happen.

            After talking to this high school teacher, I wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t heard of NET-S or NET-T. I also wasn’t really surprised about any of his responses. Since I am very familiar of this district, I knew that this was going to be the type of response I would get. I also figured this because Professor Domine stated how most teachers are not trained or are unfamiliar with the NETS. Since I became more familiar with the NETS-S and NETS-T, it makes me want to reach out and try to get more schools in on it because technology is a very important part of education. I definitely think that more schools should familiarize themselves with the NETS.

            As a future educator, I would inform other teachers about NET-T and NET-S through email, speaking to my colleagues, talking to the principals and deans about it and furthering myself to talking to the board of education in the town to make them both familiar and hopefully proactive about NETS. 

Spreadsheet: 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkuZwWHCq6ZKdGo5OWJjZi1PdEd3ZkRhc2lfby0yRVE

Great site for teachers and students: Edmodo

Even though its not music related, I found a great technology resource that looks ideal for teachers and students to use. There is a website called Edmodo that allows teaching, connecting, collaborating, and learning. This site is a great tool for extra help for students with things like projects, assignments, or anything really. It's great because it is a resource for them to go to outside of school if they need additional help before something is due or in general. This site is secure and used by many educators and students around the world. There is so much that this site has to offer and it has so many features within it that it makes it very helpful.

             Another great thing about Edmodo is that the students on it love it and they find it extremely easy to use. It says how they really like the ability to post messages to everyone or directly to the teacher if they have a question. I like the fact that students can help each other. Edmodo is safe, secure and doesn't require any student emails. I feel that it is a great mix of social media and a student management system. I think it seems great how useful and beneficial it is to both the student and teacher.

            After looking at features in this site and reading about it, I think that it is a great reference for future educators to sue in any curriculum and it is something I definitely think I could use in my future classroom. Definitely check out this site, it’s a great educational technology resource. You can read about it and all even if you don’t sign up, it is free so if you like it maybe make an account too.

The link for the site it: http://www.edmodo.com/

Interactivity #4

The reason why I chose this lesson on sound waves was because it looks like it is a good lesson overall. It also incorporates a lot technology within it like, computers, notation systems, digital keyboards, computer microphone, and other related material. Since it uses a lot of technologies within it, it could help my students attain knowledge of how to use these in their musical studies, or for anything else. This lesson also utilized several NJCCS music standards.

Although this lesson plan was well thought out, I think there were some small gaps within it. When the teacher is teaching about sound waves, I feel that it would be helpful to play examples of different sound waves after explaining what it is. By playing different examples, it allows the students to hear what a sound wave is so that they can understand what and how it sounds. For composing, I think that it should have a lower minimum then in the lesson. Originally, the students were asked to compose for 48-60 measures, I changed that to 36-60 measures, which allows them to feel less pressured when composing and for them to have even measures per section. Also by demonstrating how to do things first for the students it helps them when they do it themselves. Recording their work helps the students critique it or listen back to it at a different time.

The curriculum goal for this lesson is to learn how to use a sound wave and to apply prior knowledge of composition through technology. The technologies used for this lesson are essential because you need the computer to be able to learn about sound waves and to apply composition to it. It also helps the students hear their compositions so they get a better understanding of what it sounds like.

Here is the link to my spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkuZwWHCq6ZKdGo5OWJjZi1PdEd3ZkRhc2lfby0yRVE

Interactivity #3: Generating a State of the Art Inventory

When I first started adding my technologies to the spreadsheet, I knew that whoever had gone before me probably already chose to use some of the sites/resources I was thinking of. Since we are all music majors and we use a lot of the same programs, or know about a lot of the same programs, it was obvious that we would have used one another's at some point. In terms of this group project being authentic collaborative, I think it was really useful and interesting to see what other members of my group found. I also thought that this was a good group project because the way it was organized made it easy to work with one another efficiently. This assignment also made it useful to learn about and discover new technologies.

         Overall I felt like the final inventory we came up with was pretty good. For the most part, everything within it was what I consider to be technology for music. There were some things on it that were other spreadsheets, documents, places to order instruments and things of that nature. To me, I don’t know if I would consider the things like that to be technology, but I see how those things could be useful in general and could be somewhat technological due to the fact it is offline.

This technology inventory could serve a purpose this semester in future projects or assignments regarding any technology, which focuses in my content area. 

Interactivity #2: phonograph's influence in music

The phonograph is a very important, possibly the greatest technological invention in the history of music. During the late 19th century is when the phonograph was first invented, at that time there were several people experimenting with musical recording devices and ways to record things. The person who is credited for inventing/ who invented the first phonograph was Thomas Edison in 1877. His phonograph was a huge break through in the music and recording world. It was able to both record and play back the recordings, so it was an even greater invention at the time then what people expected.

Phonographs had such an impact at the time it came out that it was used in schools, especially in music education classrooms. This is a very good thing because it allows music classrooms to listen to music from orchestras and such to familiarize themselves with the music. It also is good because music classrooms can utilize it to record their own rehearsals or performances and then listen back to them to learn, critique and grow from hearing it first hand.

Since the phonograph came out to what it has advanced to today is truly a remarkable thing. It went from a phonograph to a record, to tapes, to CDs, to handheld recording devices (for just the recording aspect), to what we have today with ipods. The radio and computer could also arguably be thrown into the mix because you could use the radio to hear the music that was recorded and you could use the computer/laptop to both hear and record music.

To play devils advocate for a moment on the phonograph, people may argue that it was a bad invention and it isn't good for music or music education. People will find ways to take advantage of having this type of technology, for example a student can abuse their privileges with recordings and listen to things that aren't necessarily part of what you're doing in your class, they use it for their own personal luxuries. Students also can illegally download music to listen to rather then purchasing the required music if needed for their music classes, which isn't good at all. It also gives students an "easier" way to hear music or hear great performances, like the NY Philharmonic. Rather then actually going to see the NY Phil, they can just buy music or download music they they've played and listen to it. This in itself isn't good because they are not truly getting the experience of seeing the orchestra and you miss a lot when you just listen to the recording rather then seeing it live and full of expressions right in front of you.

As i've said, the phonograph is a very large part of music education that has technologically impacted it. The phonograph gave us the first way to both record and playback the recording's you made. The phonograph and the technology from it has greatly impacted the way we view/listen to music today. The phonograph is a large part of music education.

Interactivity #2 picture

            From Phonographs to ipods... how music is heard through time.