Adventures in Middle School Music
Multimodal Tutorial
Using different methods (video, audio, written word) to deliver contents to students is an effective way for teachers to reach all different type of learners. O’Byrne’s article on how students listen to lectures and watch video are informative in that regard. Students have trouble paying attention. They tune out mid-way through a lecture during class, and during the first minute of any online video. Posting a lecture online so that students could “scrub” to the part of the lecture that they need clarification on is a great way to increase student learning while being able to hold them accountable for their material.
I teach a performance based class that really requires students to be present in class in order to get appropriate instruction on how to perform the songs properly. Even though most are actively engaged in activity of producing music, there are still students whose attention wander off during the middle of class. This year, I plan to take advantage of the digital tools at my disposal in order to post audio practice clips of every vocal part for my chorus. This would enable students to practice and fix any problems with their vocal part. Again, the expectation would that they would scrub to the part of the song that they need help on. This would allow me to work on higher lever musicality in my classes.
Further, I plan on using technology to help teach boring (from the students’ perspective at least) concepts in order to make learning those tasks more appealing. For example, sight-singing is an essential skill that all singers must learn, yet all of my students resist and complain about spending even the shortest amount of time on it. Using online apps so that students can create their own sight-singing examples and share them with other students can make a tedious activity more collaborative and engaging.
Effectively using technology in my classroom means not shoehorning technology where it does not belong, but to enhance the instruction and make core skills more accessible to students.
Citation:
O'Byrne, William. "TEACHING ONLINE AND THE TIME OF SCREENCASTS." DIGITALLY LITERATE. 13 Jan. 2013. Web.
Online Collaborative Inquiry
One thing that struck me the most about this weeks readings, is the need to feel comfortable taking risks when collaborating both online and off.. In the video “Collaborative learning builds deeper Understanding” Julie Anderson talks about the values implicit in sitting around an oval table and looking other students in the eye. This creates a safe space where everyone feels validated. As a drama director, I need to have students feel comfortable taking risks on stage. I spend a lot of time playing drama games with my students in order for them to develop that type of confidence. I also do some similar games throughout the year in my chorus classes as I feel the same type of characteristics are needed in both instances. Students need to feel comfortable to fail and make mistakes in order to collaborate, share and grow creatively.
Which brings me to collaboration online. While I agree that it is a great resource and encourages students to become self learners, I feel that there are many obstacles in changing the stigma about online internet use. First we should start with teachers and develop a way to teach students to not “be afraid of what others can learn about them online, let's teach them how digital footprints can quickly connect them to the individuals, ideas, and opportunities that they care most about.” And while that’s a good start, I feel that this misses the point completely. I’m not really sure its about being afraid about what others can learn about them online, but how being online in not necessarily a safe space for students in order to share ideas. I’m not talking about internet predators and stalkers, though there is that piece.
My students rehearse for several months in order to perform publicly. While most are still nervous, they are able to fall back on hours of practice that goes on in my classroom. Hours where we laugh, joke, and also vent frustrations, order to take risks, collaborate and make mistakes etc. If we want our kids to post online then we as teachers need to make a safe for them. A closed community, I think, would be a great place for a teacher to start making kids comfortable posting online. That way they can get critique and criticisms from their peers that they know first and not necessarily the anonymous internet trolls that inhabit the internet.
Because what ever goes online stays there forever, this is diametrically opposed to creative a collaborative environment where people can take risks. Adolescence is a time where people make mistakes. I look back at my life and realize that if I had access to internet when I was 14, I would probably be unemployable for the rest of my life. It would be nice if there was a way to safeguard against the immaturity and impulsivity of youth.
Online Reading Comprehension
Reading online requires the various use of strategies in order to enhance the understanding of online texts. Throughout my course work, I have had to read, listen and watch videos online in order to comment and give feed back on them. Overall I have found this type of work to be relatively easy to negotiate with a few caveats. Audio and video. for me, seem to be the easiest mediums to negotiate. Perhaps because I am musically inclined and an audio learner by profession, I find it very easy to process and comment on things that are auditory in nature.
Actually reading online text presents a difficult challenge of sorts for me. When I first started, I had a very hard time negotiating between between the different pages that I was supposed to be reading as well as the page that I was supposed to be commenting on. A few strategies that I have employed was to take notes "offline" on a notebook or scrap piece of paper and then transfer those thought back on to the web in a google doc. That strategy worked well for me and I believe iot is an important one to teach my students especially when with the requirments of the SBAC testing.
Online Content Construction
The internet encourages and drives participatory culture more than ever before in history. Participatory culture could be defined as engaging in the society at large in order to effect change. The internet gives people the power to do that through a variety of different avenues. On the internet people from all walks of life are able to create different types of media. Games, blogs, stories, aps, tweets, innovative new programs are all able to be created by people from all walks of life. In my opinion, this is different from any other point in history. Before, mass media was controlled by only a handful of well off people. They controlled the narrative, delivery and method of how information is transmitted to the masses. Because of the democratization of the internet the masses can now drive media narratives and participate in whichever way that they choose.
Twitter is a great example of participatory culture in how it revolutionized journalism. Instead of journalist/media conglomerates holding the power on what stories get covered, Twitter allows the actual citizens on the ground to drive the reporting. This has a significant impact over what gets covered. We see this phenomenon in all different web mediums. Don’t like the way your favorite TV show is written - write and read fanfic. Don’t like the lack of diversity in video games -use freeware to learn how to create your own. The participatory culture of the internet promotes diversity and different perspectives that would otherwise be lacking in our traditional media.
Because the internet also is a communication tool that brings people together it is a powerful vehicle in which to effect change in the “real world.” Like Dumbledore’s Army in the Henry Jenkins video, the participatory culture that the internet has created has spilled into the real world. By making it easy for people with similar viewpoints to come together people can effect change more easily and quickly in their communities.
We can guide students to expand online skills and interests in their own personal lives by valuing their personal interests. As teachers we can allow these students to use those skills learned online in their personal lives to complete work in their school lives. We can also develop lessons that encourages students to create and engage in media that reaches many people. Gaming and coding as we see in this video or “geeking out” as Ito describes it are ways for adults to interact with students online to help them grow and contribute to this participatory culture. How great would it be if more students were like Rhys-learning, creating and getting constructive criticism online for whatever their interests are? The skills involved would be beneficial in all areas of education and of life.
