It is more than obvious that various forms of technology are highly significant to the success of today's music educators, and of these, the internet is of the utmost popularity these days.
Over all, coding language fascinates me - I think it is the idea that pictures and words can be translated from strings of numbers and commands. Understanding the world of pixels, bits, dpi, PICT, etc is like becoming fluent in another language. But through understanding this language we are capable of having a "prominent Web presence", making our music available everyday, at any time. Any many web-based editing tools allow even those without much experience to easily create and edit our own web pages, provided they have a server that will host the files.
Personally, I am excited to work more with html. Though I am almost embarrassed to admit this, my first experience with it was in middle school on my "Myspace" profile, which could be edited by manually entering html tags. I quickly learned about many of the basic commands for text and pictures through my own research - who knew a social networking site could teach you so much? However, I am now looking forward to using these skills to develop websites I can use professionally to share my music from any location.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
PLN - "Reedmusic"
If you are a saxophonist looking for good solo and/or duet/trio/quartet repertoire, this website is for you! There are hundreds of audio clips from professional recordings of classical repertoire. (click here) I have used this a number of times and would highly recommend it to saxophone students who are searching for good music to play and are having trouble finding something they like. There is also a catalog of music for other woodwinds as well.
Check it out!
Check it out!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
PLN - "MusicMoz"
This website is full of various resources for the educator, including online magazines and books, worksheets, and dictionaries. There are sections for the students, links about different instruments, and ideas for lesson plans. Some of the student websites are flashy and interactive while others are about different music programs that they can become involved with. Every link comes with a description of what it entails, and there are no pictures on the main site, mainly because of all of the links on it. The links lead to websites that have music playing and are full of pictures and much more detailed information. Overall, this is a great resource for parents, teachers, and students.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Thoughts on Delicious
With so much information readily available on the internet today on virtually any topic, having something to personally organize it all becomes almost imperativel. "Del.icio.us" is an excellent way to do just that.
Del.icio.us is a system for archiving information and discovering new and useful sites, which is constantly adding, reviewing, and filtering new information. The community of del.icio.us allows you to find some of the best resources on the Internet without having to sort through all of the junk, while giving you a centralized management system for organizing information from around the internet.
However, many people are unaware of it’s complete list of features and valuable add-ons. For example, the Del.icio.us Firefox Extension allows you to quickly and easily add sites you like to del.icio.us with a bookmarklet. This tool puts a “My del.icio.us” button at the top of your browser, allowing you to view your save pages at the click of a button. Also, if you’re a fan of Google Reader, then you’ll definitely want to start using Google Reader + del.icio.us. This is a Greasemonkey script that puts an “add to del.icio.us” button at the bottom of each post in Google Reader. With a single click, you will be able to transfer interesting posts from Google Reader into your del.icio.us bookmark collection. There is also a Greasemonkey script called Newsmasher that places a small “del.icio.us” tag on the upper left corner of your browser. When clicked, a small window appears displaying what del.icio.us users are writing about the page you are viewing. This is a great way to get quick feedback on any website you’re visiting.
In addition to all of the features mentioned above, you can also share your latest del.icio.us bookmarks on your websites for all of your readers to enjoy. You can do this using Linkrolls and Tagrolls. (Linkrolls display your latest del.icio.us bookmarks while tagrolls display all of your del.icio.us tags in a tag cloud)
Consequently, of all of the detailed and useful features of del.icio.us, I think this capability of sharing your bookmarks with others is especially relevant to the field of education and music education. Building a social network of resources for teaching and learning is critical since educators must continuously be learning, updating, and increasing their "pool" of knowledge. As colleagues, we can help students through helping each other 'sift' through and utilize the very best of the seemingly infinite amount of data that can be found through the internet.
Del.icio.us is a system for archiving information and discovering new and useful sites, which is constantly adding, reviewing, and filtering new information. The community of del.icio.us allows you to find some of the best resources on the Internet without having to sort through all of the junk, while giving you a centralized management system for organizing information from around the internet.
However, many people are unaware of it’s complete list of features and valuable add-ons. For example, the Del.icio.us Firefox Extension allows you to quickly and easily add sites you like to del.icio.us with a bookmarklet. This tool puts a “My del.icio.us” button at the top of your browser, allowing you to view your save pages at the click of a button. Also, if you’re a fan of Google Reader, then you’ll definitely want to start using Google Reader + del.icio.us. This is a Greasemonkey script that puts an “add to del.icio.us” button at the bottom of each post in Google Reader. With a single click, you will be able to transfer interesting posts from Google Reader into your del.icio.us bookmark collection. There is also a Greasemonkey script called Newsmasher that places a small “del.icio.us” tag on the upper left corner of your browser. When clicked, a small window appears displaying what del.icio.us users are writing about the page you are viewing. This is a great way to get quick feedback on any website you’re visiting.
In addition to all of the features mentioned above, you can also share your latest del.icio.us bookmarks on your websites for all of your readers to enjoy. You can do this using Linkrolls and Tagrolls. (Linkrolls display your latest del.icio.us bookmarks while tagrolls display all of your del.icio.us tags in a tag cloud)
Consequently, of all of the detailed and useful features of del.icio.us, I think this capability of sharing your bookmarks with others is especially relevant to the field of education and music education. Building a social network of resources for teaching and learning is critical since educators must continuously be learning, updating, and increasing their "pool" of knowledge. As colleagues, we can help students through helping each other 'sift' through and utilize the very best of the seemingly infinite amount of data that can be found through the internet.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Week 8 Reading Reflections
Technology continues to create amazing opportunities for innovating teaching practices in the music classroom. While some teachers choose to embrace it while others continue to shy away from it, as music educators, we are extremely fortunate that such music software is making teaching students more effective and fun - and the best part is that no teacher needs to be highly experienced to utilize this technology.
Known as Computer-Aided Instruction (CIA), this selected software is designed to build knowledge and skills specially for music teaching and learning. It is a vital resource for many music educators and includes programs that can be characterized as drill and practice, flexible practice, guided instruction, games, exploratory/creative, teacher resource, and internet-based.
Additionally, one of the newest forms of incorporating Computer Aided Instruction is through the use of the Smart Board, which has opened the door to diversified instruction and has made various connections to the technology that many students have become accustomed to at home. A Smart Board is an interactive white board with the power of a computer. The touch sensitive display connects to a computer and digital projector to show the computer image, allowing you to then control computer applications directly from the display. Students can use a Smart Board with music notation software programs like Finale to compose music in front of the class and then play it with the option of creating MIDI arrangements as well. Educationally, the Smart Board helps with music literacy and increasing student engagement and learning, as well as meet the needs of learners in the music classroom through differentiated instruction and enhaces lessons with visual and auditory stimulation to help all learning styles.
Consequently, another example of Computer Aided Instruction is software-generated automatic accompaniments, which are vastly superior to the traditional metronome and offer recording and style option with instant feedback. For example, middle and high school jazz band programs can benefit immensely from these because students can accomplish soloing practicing along with accompaniments of jazz band charts, listening to and analyzing solos, transposing, and creating loops to practice chord progressions. Also, Smartmusic allows students of all ages and skill levels can play or sing with professional accompaniments, making practice both rewarding and fun. However, it also helps by providing reference pitches to help intonation and looping practice where students can pinpoint particular measures, beats, or phrases to practice at any tempo. I was impressed to fine that it even has a metronome feature that plays subdivisions and multi-meters to help teach certain beat patterns to students.
Overall, students respond quickly to this kind of technology because not only are they used to usingit at home, but practicing can be more fun and rewarding because of it. Keeping students motivated and excited to learn while getting them engaged in and outside of the classroom is a recipe for success that technology plays a significant role in in today's world of music education.
Known as Computer-Aided Instruction (CIA), this selected software is designed to build knowledge and skills specially for music teaching and learning. It is a vital resource for many music educators and includes programs that can be characterized as drill and practice, flexible practice, guided instruction, games, exploratory/creative, teacher resource, and internet-based.
Additionally, one of the newest forms of incorporating Computer Aided Instruction is through the use of the Smart Board, which has opened the door to diversified instruction and has made various connections to the technology that many students have become accustomed to at home. A Smart Board is an interactive white board with the power of a computer. The touch sensitive display connects to a computer and digital projector to show the computer image, allowing you to then control computer applications directly from the display. Students can use a Smart Board with music notation software programs like Finale to compose music in front of the class and then play it with the option of creating MIDI arrangements as well. Educationally, the Smart Board helps with music literacy and increasing student engagement and learning, as well as meet the needs of learners in the music classroom through differentiated instruction and enhaces lessons with visual and auditory stimulation to help all learning styles.
Consequently, another example of Computer Aided Instruction is software-generated automatic accompaniments, which are vastly superior to the traditional metronome and offer recording and style option with instant feedback. For example, middle and high school jazz band programs can benefit immensely from these because students can accomplish soloing practicing along with accompaniments of jazz band charts, listening to and analyzing solos, transposing, and creating loops to practice chord progressions. Also, Smartmusic allows students of all ages and skill levels can play or sing with professional accompaniments, making practice both rewarding and fun. However, it also helps by providing reference pitches to help intonation and looping practice where students can pinpoint particular measures, beats, or phrases to practice at any tempo. I was impressed to fine that it even has a metronome feature that plays subdivisions and multi-meters to help teach certain beat patterns to students.
Overall, students respond quickly to this kind of technology because not only are they used to usingit at home, but practicing can be more fun and rewarding because of it. Keeping students motivated and excited to learn while getting them engaged in and outside of the classroom is a recipe for success that technology plays a significant role in in today's world of music education.
Friday, October 9, 2009
PLN - Websites for Elementary Students
This website is ideal for elementary students. It features interactive games that allow students to experiment with notes on the staff and composing music. Interestingly, the games are not designed to look like music. For instance, in the composition game, students click on leaves to play a note and when you click on the squirrel he applauds you. The website is full of colors and games which would be highly appealing to Kindergarten through 2nd grade students. Also, instant gratification and no wrong answers help to enhance musical creativity for students and prevent frustration.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
"Picture This, Capturing Your Sound, Technology Strategies for Music Education" - Week 7 Readings
While the amount of applications for technology to enhance music education is great, many require users to have special skills to utilize this. However, many digital recording tools today are fairly inexpensive and not too difficult to use once you have become familiar with the equipment and learn to manipulate the apparatus and the environment. With the right equipment and knowledge, one can capture the sound of your ensembles and create a lasting record of your students' accomplishments.
One way to enhance such accomplishments of student learning is to get them involved in the recording process. Students can begin by learning how to properly set levels during recording, and over time, they can assist in such activities as processing which can help them develop advanced ear training while gaining a heightened awareness of sound quality.
Speaking of sound quality, when recording a live performance, the main objective is to capture the audio experience from a single audience member's perspective, a goal that is best achieved through a process called distant miking which includes the phases of equipment selection, equipment placement and testing, recording, post-production, and project completion. The first stop in the recording process is to build a recording kit, or essentially the hardware that captures the performance. Once again, the highest quality recording possible is the goal and getting the best equipment for your circumstances is the most effective way to achieve this. A typical kit consists of two condenser microphones, a microphone stand with dual mic adapter, audio cables, mixing console with balanced microphone inputs, an actual recording devices, recording media, headphones, electrical cables, Gaffer's tape, small light source, a digital audio workstation or computer, and some type of computer input for transferring date from a recording device to computer. Local music stores are often the best source of expertise and support in finding the equipment that works best for a specific situation. You can also buy the same equipment from many websites online, which also feature great information.
Over all, s simple audio-editing program can do wonders for your music program. Benefits include effective demonstration of sound concepts, student's heightened carefulness of execution when recording, student excitement and motivation for using the technology and the ability to record examples for digital portfolios and other purposes. And they are all relatively simple to use.
One way to enhance such accomplishments of student learning is to get them involved in the recording process. Students can begin by learning how to properly set levels during recording, and over time, they can assist in such activities as processing which can help them develop advanced ear training while gaining a heightened awareness of sound quality.
Speaking of sound quality, when recording a live performance, the main objective is to capture the audio experience from a single audience member's perspective, a goal that is best achieved through a process called distant miking which includes the phases of equipment selection, equipment placement and testing, recording, post-production, and project completion. The first stop in the recording process is to build a recording kit, or essentially the hardware that captures the performance. Once again, the highest quality recording possible is the goal and getting the best equipment for your circumstances is the most effective way to achieve this. A typical kit consists of two condenser microphones, a microphone stand with dual mic adapter, audio cables, mixing console with balanced microphone inputs, an actual recording devices, recording media, headphones, electrical cables, Gaffer's tape, small light source, a digital audio workstation or computer, and some type of computer input for transferring date from a recording device to computer. Local music stores are often the best source of expertise and support in finding the equipment that works best for a specific situation. You can also buy the same equipment from many websites online, which also feature great information.
Over all, s simple audio-editing program can do wonders for your music program. Benefits include effective demonstration of sound concepts, student's heightened carefulness of execution when recording, student excitement and motivation for using the technology and the ability to record examples for digital portfolios and other purposes. And they are all relatively simple to use.
"Music In Schools Today" - PLN
This website includes places to find and apply for teaching positions, information on receiving further educational training, and various ideas to add to your curriculum. The online resources provide lesson plans and places to obtain sheet music and join professional organizations. Several other websites can be found for all grade levels in another section of this website. Students have their own section of the website, which helps them become more motivated to practice, join a band, and have opportunities to contact professional musicians. This website is great for all musicians and is very easy to search through, an excellent website to use for first year music educators and any student with a passion to excel.
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