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.