A Sample Entry

You can just start typing! It's exciting!

Bold

This is a link to our Wiki!

• sdfg
• sdfg
• sdfg
• sdfg

If You Can't Beat 'Em (??)

Sorry for the long delay in posting. As members of my class know, things on the personal front have been a bit busy (hospital visits, birthdays, house buying, house selling). All of this does bring up an important idea or two regarding media such as blogs, wikis, etc. If we want our students to tap into the information we're providing via such very dynamic and immediate types of media, then we're responsible for giving them meaningful, useful, helpful, interesting (etc.) information on a fairly regular basis. RSS feeds help this of course. Students don't need to "check the website everyday". Instead, they can subscribe to your feeds and be alerted when new material is present. Maybe there's a balance there - You don't want to overload them with new things every day if they aren't significant. You also don't want them waiting too long for content or they will lose the desire to check it out when it is posted. I suppose it depends on what kinds of things you will offer to your students, your expectations of them to connect with those things, and their expecations of you to provide those things.

Of course, many of these issues are exactly what we try to reconcile every day in our classrooms. This is just an extension of being an excellent teacher in the 21st century.

In class last week we watched a video that suggested the concept of "if you can't beat them, join them". It was in regard to using technology to connect with students. One of the Vandercook grad students emailed me the following comment/question:

I was wondering about that video you showed today on technology. It said, "why not use Podcasts if we can't reach kids during school?" Now, I totally agree that this is the way of the world and a great way to reach kids now, but isn't it "giving up" majorly to say we "can't reach them during school anymore" so let's do all this techno stuff after school to reach them on their turf?

So now, I pose this question to all of you out there - Vandercook grad students and anyone else within reading range of this blog - What say you? If there are any students out there of ANY grade level (Kindergarten - College) I'd appreciate hearing from you on this subject.

MobileCasting #4

Gabcast! MobileCasting #4

Open House

I'd like to encourage you all to visit the list of blogs I posted over there on the right. They are the blogs that my Vandercook students/music education colleagues have started to develop as part of thie classwork. And if I do say so myself, I think they're off to a great start! I'm sure they'd appreciate your constructive comments and ideas not only about how they can use technology to further their teaching, but also anything specific to their area of interest.

I'll be adding a few more links once I get them emailed to me (hint hint).

A Bump in the Blogging Population

Well today we got everyone in the class started with their own blog. It's a dramatic moment... deciding what to call it, deciding what those first words will be... The realization that anyone and everyone in the world can see and comment on the ideas presented. Wow. Scary, but the potential is so great! The ability to share ideas with other musicians and educators around the world is simply amazing.

I encouraged the class to develop a "professional development" sort of blog first. This class is filled with outstanding music educators with specialties in many areas (different grade levels, different subject matter, etc.). I encouraged each class member to share what those specialties are as well as their thoughts so far about integrating technology into their teaching. It will be interesting to see what kinds of connections are forged - within our class community and of course, the blogging community at large. I'll link you all to their blogs as soon as I can. In the meantime...

While the class has begun to look at ways to use technology to reach out and make connections with our colleagues and our students, there is also a flip side that should be explored. Email has allowed us to sit at our desks and "communicate" with our colleagues at a frightening pace. Perhaps even more frightening is that this increased level of communication may actually hurt our ability to meaningfully connect with the people right down the hall or right across town.

This has been a topic for discussion lately for me and my colleague at North High School, Brayer Teague (you can see a lot of his blogging handy-work on the North High Fine Arts Dept. Blog link over there on the right). He composed this incredibly thoughtful e-mail check-list which he has pledged to post over his desk:

Before I hit "Send"

___ Can this wait? Will I see the recipient for face-to-face communication before they have to have this information? (If so, they will appreciate the face-to-face communication and one less email today.

___ Can the recipient get through their day successfully without this correspondence? (If so, do they really need another email to read today?)

___ Is the topic going to be contentious in any way? (If so, email is not the way to handle it.)

___ Is the email related to a topic that could generate a negative emotional reaction? (If so, give it some time, and reconsider sending tomorrow .)

___ Is the recipient within a 1 min. walk of the computer terminal I'm working from? (If so, get up and go talk to them.)

___ Have you and the recipient already exchanged 3 + emails on this topic/thread? (If so, it's time to put it to rest.)

If you answer "Yes" to one or more - don't send the email.

If you can answer "No" to ALL of these - hit send.

Exceptions

• The email is a thank you note.
• The email is a letter of congratulations.
• You have been directed by a superior to forward the email.

Thanks Brayer, and thanks class for a really great session this morning. See y'all soon!

Welcome to MusicEduTech

A special welcome to my friends/students (can they be both?!?) from VanderCook College of Music Instructional Design: Integrating Arts and Technology course! To catch the rest of you out there up on what we're doing...

We will be looking at some ways to meaningfully connect students in a deeper way to their music making and music appreciation through the use of technology. There are SO great tools at our disposal - blogs, wikis, podcasting, online learning communities... even some of the tools that our schools tend to block us from like YouTube hold some real potential for our students.

So, my eager, wide-eyed students... let's get going! To the rest of you, we hope you come along for the ride and offer some of your thoughts about the subject!