Music Tech Week 7

The focus of week seven was assessment and using technology to be professionally productive and organized. I found the readings and activities this week to be interesting and I can see that information I learned this week will help me, especially with organization and communication. 

The assessment section of the reading reinforced my thoughts regarding assessment, especially where Bauer (2014) discusses the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning statements that feedback should be corrective in nature, timely, be specific to criterion, and that students should be able to provide some of their own feedback.  These are all great ideas for making sure that feedback is productive and helpful to the students. 

In music, sometimes students do not understand the feedback that is being given by the teacher.  Feedback like “the flutes are out of tune” or “the trombones are playing the wrong notes” does not give the students much information with which to correct their errors.  Teachers should be specific in their corrections and should tell students what they should do, not to stop doing something incorrectly.  Feedback like “flutes listen to each other and try to match pitch” or “if you’re not sure if it’s in tune pull the head joint out and see if it sounds better, if not, push it back in further than it was before” or “trombones E natural is second position” gives the students specific information that they can use to make corrections. 

Feedback should be timely.  If a teacher does not correct students in a timely manner, students might not realize they are making mistakes and will continue to make and learn those mistakes thinking they are correct.  Music teachers are able to give feedback almost instantly during rehearsals and they should offer feedback quickly to students so that they do not learn mistakes.  There is a delicate balance between correcting errors and correcting students every single time there is an error.  Teachers cannot correct every error they hear and expect the flow of a rehearsal to go well.  Teachers must weigh the importance of fixing errors against bogging the rehearsal down.  Teachers should make an effort to give individual feedback in as timely a manner as is reasonable while taking into consideration the class as a whole.

Feedback should be specific to criterion.  This allows students to think more clearly about what they are receiving feedback about.  If students receive a grade on a project but do not know what they have been graded on, they might think they got a good grade because the teacher likes them or a bad grade because the teacher does not.  This does not allow students to reflect upon their learning, which is another important step in the learning process.  Using rubrics can provide more information to students about why they got the grade they did.  Using criterion also makes grading much more clear for the teacher.  Instead of a student getting an A on a playing test because they “sound good”, if a teacher has criterion for rhythm, correct pitches, and steady tempo, the grade can more accurately reflect the student’s performance.

The use of technology can help teachers stay organized and increase professional productivity.  This week’s assignment involving Google tools like the calendar, newsletter, and Google Forms opened my eyes to new ways of staying organized and communicating with families.  Technology also allows teachers to grade assignments in a more efficient way than using traditional pencil and paper assignments.  Almost all of the written work in my classes is done using paper and pencil and this can impact grading because of not being able to read student writing and the large amount of time it takes to read and grade papers for hundreds of students.  Using Google Forms to create a test that students can take electronically can eliminate the issue of not being able to read student responses and using programs like Flubaroo can electronically grade a massive amount of student work in a fraction of the time needed to traditionally grade it.  I also liked using the newsletter template Google has in Google Drive because teachers can quickly create a nice looking newsletter that can be distributed electronically to families.  I currently use a paper newsletter that I send home with students and sometimes students forget to give them to their families so the families are not updated on events.  The use of an electronic newsletter would ensure that families with accurate email addresses get the needed information.

Reference

Bauer, W. I. (2014).  Music learning today: digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Music Tech Week 6

The focus of week six was instructional design.  Instructional design is an important part of teaching because it allows the teacher to predetermine the sequence of instruction in a way that is best for students.  Understanding how people learn is an important part of instructional design.  I found the concept of constructivisim to be important when thinking about instructional design in music classes.  “Driscoll (2002) describes learning as contextual, active, social and reflective” (Bauer, 2014 p. 147).  This description of learning is constructivist in nature.  All four of the concepts described by Driscoll in the quote from Bauer (2014) are important to consider when designing units or curriculum.  Students must have a context within which they can process and understand new information.  In music, if a teacher is trying to teach the concept of syncopation but students do not know the difference between a downbeat and an upbeat, explaining syncopation using those terms is likely not going to be effective.  Understanding a student’s or class’ prior knowledge is required to understand what contextual knowledge that student or class has related to the topic and can guide instruction in a way that allows the teacher to teach new material within a context the students will understand.  Learning is an active process, especially in music.  Active music making is at the core of much quality music instruction.  It is not enough to simply describe how to play an instrument or sing, students must actively participate in order to truly understand the concepts or skills being taught.  Learning is social, even with the use of technology in modern classrooms, students do not learn in a bubble, they interact with other students and the teacher to learn new material.  This is important to remember as a teacher because a teacher cannot simply expect the students to understand material from reading a book or using a website.  The reflective step of learning is one that some teachers might overlook because it does not require much action from the teacher and it is after the learning has supposedly taken place.  It is important for students to reflect upon their learning so that they can evaluate their learning.  An example of a music student reflecting on their learning would be to make an audio recording of them playing an instrument and then listening to the recording with a rubric or other evaluation tool.

Backward design is also a concept that I found to be important in the reading this week.  This seems like the best way to design units and instruction because it establishes a goal or learning outcome for students before instruction begins.  With this goal in mind, the teacher can backward plan a sequence of instruction that will logically build upon itself so that students can achieve the learning outcome that is required.  The value of backward planning is that it allows the teacher to plan ahead of time what the sequence of instruction should be so that it establishes a context within which students can learn new material.  If students do not understand subdivision of a beat, playing a piece that has 16^th notes in it would not make sense to students if they have not seen the relationship between 8^th notes and quarter notes.  If 16^th notes are a learning outcome that a teacher has determined is important, using backward design would allow the teacher to set up lessons in a way that allows students to understand the concept of subdivision in a systematic way and students would have experience with subdividing beats before the 16^th notes are introduced.  Without backward design, teachers run the risk of haphazardly introducing concepts as they appear in new pieces of music without a logical step leading to the new information. 

This week we were also introduced to WebQuests.  These projects are learning activities where most of, if not all, of the information students interact with comes from the Internet.  The website has a great list of examples of WebQuests and describes in great detail how to design a WebQuest.  I have assigned similar assignments to students in the past, but the easy design strategies on the WebQuest website make this a good model to follow.  I will likely use WebQuests in the future in my classes.

Reference

Bauer, W. I. (2014).  Music learning today: digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Music Tech Week 5

Week five’s focus was responding to music with the use of technology.  Through the readings, I realized that I already use technology to get students to respond to music more than I thought.  I frequently have students in my general music/ukulele class listen to/watch professional ukulele players perform and make written observations of the performances.  Students answer questions that range from technical (strumming pattern, muting of strings, etc.) to musical (tempo, dynamics), to the emotional message of the song.  This activity corresponds with the listening and responding activity types listed in Bauer (2014).  In this class the students keep all of their responses after they have been graded and this effectively becomes a journal.  I would like to add a reflection piece to this final product which would fit with the listen and reflect activity type listed in Bauer (2014).

I also have my ensemble students listen to music performed by professionals or college level groups.  I try to find recordings of the sheet music we’re playing using sites like www.jwpepper.com or I find recordings of pieces that are from a similar style.  Students listen to the recordings and use a rubric to evaluate the performance in relation to concepts we are learning in class.  The main point of these listening/evaluating exercises is to have students actively listen to music that they are playing using instruments that they are using so that they can get a mental representation of what each piece or style should sound like.  When we go to festivals to perform, judges often want to hear specific, characteristic sounds from the groups.  Many students are not familiar with the sounds judges listen for because they don’t listen to the type of music we play in class, or if they do, they rarely focus on elements like tone quality or characteristic sounds for the various instruments.  Asking students to produce these sounds and play in these unfamiliar styles is similar to asking someone who has never heard a Boston accent to speak with one.  A person could describe the accent very well but unless the other person has heard the accent being used, they are not likely to produce an authentic sounding accent.  I find this to be similar to asking students to perform with the appropriate sound for different styles of music.

This week we also used Spotify to create a playlist.  I had never used Spotify before and did not know much about what it offered until this week.  I realized after doing this project that Spotify would be a good resource to use to provide free listening examples to students.  Instead of having to use iTunes or other software where music is saved to a specific device, with Spotify, students can use any device with an internet connection to access playlists that have been put together for listening assignments.  Teachers could use these playlists to help students understand how music from different styles or genres sound when preparing to play pieces so that when students play the pieces they do so in the appropriate style.  Teachers could also use playlists to enable students to listen to music from all over the world.  These listening experiences could be combined with written responses where students evaluate and respond to music from other countries and cultures.

Reference

Bauer, W. I. (2014).  Music learning today: digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Music Tech Week 4

Week four’s focus was performing music with the use of technology.  While I am familiar with groups like the Stanford Laptop Orchestra and the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra, I always thought that expensive or complicated equipment or software was needed for these ensembles to exist.  After watching the video of the iPad Ensemble from Baker Middle School, I am thinking much more about trying to incorporate this type of performing using technology in my program.  While I would not be able to establish something like this as a class in the near future, I would like to try and integrate a unit about digital ensembles like this into my general music class, if there is enough interest from students, a digital ensemble club might be an option where students could create more sophisticated projects and perhaps even perform at our school concerts or assemblies. 

Bauer (2014) mentions that there are advantages to ensembles made up of digital instruments or iPads/computers.  One advantage “to an ensemble like this is that its members need little technical skill to get started, unlike a traditional orchestra that requires players who have had years of study and need hours of individual practice” (Bauer, 2014 p. 92).  Even students who enjoy playing traditional band or orchestra instruments might not want to spend the time needed to practice individually to improve and even if they like music, they might quit because they are involved in after school activities that are also demanding of their time like sports or work.  An ensemble that does not require students to practice as much out of school as band or orchestra might keep these students involved in the school music program.  Also, for the 80% of students who generally do not take part in their school’s music program, “the ability to experience music making with others without the barrier of refined instrumental technique opens up ensembles like these to many students who aren’t traditionally part of school music programs” (Bauer, 2014 p. 92).

For traditional music programs, software like PracticeFirst, Sightreading Factory, and SmartMusic offer great services for practice and assessment of student skills and knowledge.  It would be great for a teacher to be able to give a practice assignment to students and then allow them to practice and turn in an audio recording of their best performance of the assignment for the teacher to genuinely assess the student’s progress and practice.  Playing tests in class can give an indication of how much a student has practiced, or how well they have practiced, but there are other factors that can make playing tests unreliable assessments of the student’s practice or knowledge.  For example, if a student has practiced a piece for hours but gets nervous playing the piece in class for a grade, being able to record the piece without others around to turn in to be graded could better demonstrate the student’s knowledge and practice time.  One issue with sites like PracticeFirst and SmartMusic is that they can be costly and with many music programs having limited budgets, purchasing this software for students could be a daunting task. 

Websites like aQWERTYcon, Virtual Boomwhackers, and Groove Pizza allow students to instantly create music and get immediate feedback, without needing to have any prior musical knowledge.  While I never thought of these types of websites as “performing” music sites, I can now see how sites like these allow students to perform using technologies in ways I did not consider before.  These would be great websites to introduce students to music performance and would not require a large financial investment and would not require extensive training to teach or learn how to use. 

Reference

Bauer, W. I. (2014).  Music learning today: digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Music Tech Week 3

This week focused on composing music using technology.  We were able to use Soundtrap to create a composition using loops, MIDI, and digital audio.  I enjoyed using this program because it is similar to GarageBand and other music sequencers but offers the flexibility of being cloud based so people are able to access their compositions from any device.  Music sequencers and DAWS allow people to create music with prerecorded loops and also allow the composer to record and input their own musical ideas into their compositions.  This is one advantage Soundtrap and other DAWS have over programs like Incredibox because while Incredibox is very fun to use and you can create some great mixes, the composer must pick from prerecorded sounds and does not have the ability to input their own music.  Here is a link to the composition I created using Soundtrap this week called “Floppy Tone Strolls With Friends”.

Using music sequencers is a great way to allow students who do not know much about music theory to be able to compose music.  Music sequencers allow for the composer to have instant feedback regarding the sound of their composition.  Also, music sequencers tend to have a large variety of sounds available for the composer to experiment with and if a composer does not like what they’ve created, they can easily delete sections or tracks without having to laboriously erase notes written on staff paper. 

I also think that music sequencer software allows for students to create music that is more culturally relevant to their lives.  I would imagine that most students in public K-12 education do not listen to classical band, orchestra, or choir music as much as they listen to music that is created in a music studio or on computers that use loops, digital audio, or samples.  Even a lot of live music performances make use of electronics like foot pedals that allow for musicians to record and loop sounds as part of their performances.  Unless a student is in a traditional music ensemble class, they are not likely to have the music performed or composed for those groups as their primary music interest.  They would have little motivation to learn traditional composition because they would likely not see the value in learning about something they would not use in their lives.  Learning how to compose using DAWS could be more relevant to their lives because they could create music that is similar to what they already listen to.

Bauer (2014) lists many composition activities that can be done using DAWS including loop-based composition, using nontraditional sounds to create music, using repetition and contrast, creating a remix, creating a composition, and creating a soundtrack.  Any and all of these activities can be done by students with little or no traditional music theory knowledge or traditional performance skills on instruments or singing. 

There are many students who are not involved in traditional music classes in schools and “a growing number of teachers have found that students who comprise this other 80% are attracted to school music classes that involve a non-notational approach to musical creativity through compositions, often facilitated through technology” (Bauer, 2014 p. 60).  With so many students missing out on the opportunity to create music if they are not involved in traditional music classes, it seems to me that teachers must begin to adjust their curriculum and class offerings to serve more students.  Music should be something that all students get at least some instruction in during their education and if 80% of students are missing out on that due to the fact that they cannot read or write notation or play or sing in traditional ensembles, music teachers should make an effort to add some nontraditional classes to allow for more students to learn about music.

Reference

Bauer, W. I. (2014).  Music learning today: digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Music Tech Week 2

This week, the focus of the reading was creating music and the importance creating music has in music education.  Two ways in which a teacher can teach students to be creative within music education are composition and improvisation.  Bauer (2014) notes that according to Bloom’s revised taxonomy, creativity can be viewed as the highest level of cognitive complexity.  Bauer goes on to write, “if the purpose of schools is to provide a well-rounded education for students that will enable them to function in the many different roles they may encounter in life, the ability to think creatively should be a high priority” (Bauer, 2014 p. 48).  If this is true, shouldn’t music teachers make creating music a high priority in their classes as well? 

For the purpose of this blog, I will define creating music as composing or improvising.  While technically students “create” music when playing music that has already been written, it is a different process than actually creating unique music through composition or improvisation.  In talking with colleagues who are music teachers, I find that many of them do not do any activities that include creating music, with the exception of their jazz band classes if they have them.  While the students become very proficient at recreating what the composers of their sheet music wrote, coming up with new music on their own is something that is rarely, if at all addressed.  Some of this is due to the idea that the teachers don’t have enough time to begin teaching creative projects or units because they are more concerned with preparing their ensembles for performances or teaching their general music students about music history, appreciation, or teaching them basic music performance skills.  I find this to be sad because all of these aspects of a music education are important, but leaving out creative projects is not allowing students to get a comprehensive music education.  Creating is one of the four National Core Arts Standards, and music teachers should make an effort to address it, even if this means their ensembles won’t sound quite as good, or they won’t get as high a rating at a festival.

Composing is a wonderful way to incorporate creativity into a student’s music education.  There are many ways for students to compose, which makes composition possible in all music classes.  Bauer (2014) lists many different activities that allow students to compose, and they do not all require knowledge of music theory or how to read or write notation.  Activity one is to create a loop-based composition.  Since loops are pre-recorded, students do not need to be able to actually play the instruments or make the sounds they want to use in their composition, but they can arrange these loops in different patterns to create unique compositions.  The use of Incredibox and other websites or sequencing software provides anyone the opportunity to create unique compositions.  This type of composition might not meet the musical objectives of the traditional Western European music education model followed by much of the United States, but it can allow students to be creative within the subject of music.

Another activity mentioned by Bauer is creating or utilizing alternative notation.  This is a great activity for students who do not know how to read traditional notation and allows these students to write their own music or soundscapes using notation that makes sense to them.  The point of notation, after all, is to be able to recreate a musical idea based on what the musician sees written.  Notation could include pictures, colors, shapes, etc. as long as it communicates to the musician what sounds are to be made when.

Improvisation is another aspect of creating music that many teachers avoid or intentionally skip as part of their curriculum.  This is unfortunate, especially in the United States, where jazz is widely accepted to be the first American art form.  Colleagues I have talked with have expressed concern that they don’t know enough about improvisation to be able to teach it to students.  As Bauer points out in this week’s reading, there are many forms of improvisation, some of which could be taught by any music teacher if they want to include improvisation in their curriculum.  Bauer describes Kratus’ seven-level sequential model for developing improvisational abilities well.  Level one is “exploration” and in this stage students experiment with various sounds without any particular structure.  Any music teacher is able to guide this type of improvisational activity because there are no preexisting rules or defined outcomes that need to be followed or met.  This type of improvisation allows students to begin to gain basic audiation skills, which can help them in their musical future, no matter what type of music they engage in.  Even though this sounds very basic, this should be the minimum amount of improvisation students learn in school.  Level two is “process-oriented improvisation” which is more complex, but still easily teachable by music teachers with the most basic knowledge of improvisation. 

While music teachers might not feel comfortable teaching improvisation because they think they’re not good at it, have never been taught how to, or think that it is not applicable to the kind of music their students perform, it is still an important part of musicmaking that students should have some experience with in a comprehensive music education. 

Creating music is an important part of a well-rounded, comprehensive music education.  While not all music educators might see the value in doing very basic composition or improvisation, all students should have at least the most basic knowledge of how these activities are carried out.  Your students do not have to become the next Bach or Beethoven, they might not even be able to notate their compositions using correct traditional notation, but the experience of being creative with music is important to their learning.  Anyone is able to teach these concepts in their music class.  As Bauer writes, “music educators might explore both formal and informal approaches to creative activities as appropriate to specific learning outcomes, the learning environment, and the students involved” (Bauer, 2014 p. 51).  

Reference

Bauer, W. I. (2014).  Music learning today: digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Noteflight Arrangement

Noteflight could be a useful educational tool in the right situation.  One problem that I had with Noteflight that students may also experience is that you have to go back to the palettes very frequently unless you memorize or have a chart for the keyboard shortcuts. I found this to be rather cumbersome. Also, with Noteflight you have to sign up for an account, which could cause issues with students whose parents don't want them establishing online accounts.Two benefits to this program are that the basic program is free to use and since it is based online, students are able to access it via different devices which means they might have more opportunities to work on their compositions than if files were saved to a specific device.