Google Docs

For this assignment, I was to research Google Docs, Skype and Nings. As someone who is pretty interested in technology, I had heard people talking about these technologies, but had never seen them in action. I was most excited about Google Docs. After watching a short YouTube clip about it, I thought the idea was brilliant! I, too, struggle with trying to make sense of various multiple copies of a document as it gets passed around from contributor to contributor. What a great way to have participants all enter data in one place.

I plan to use this personally for things such as church activities. I think that I will use this in the classroom in units such as 'Instruments of the Orchestra', while I am in the computer lab with my classes. It is a great way for us music teachers across the district in different buildings to update documents and forms together. I am excited about the possibilities.

Social Media

As an assignment for my online technology course, I am trying out a social media site called PLURK. My goals for participating on this site are to connect with other professional music teachers and perhaps discover interesting ways to use this site for educational purposes. I am definitely still learning!

As a diehard Facebook fan, I am trying to cope with the change in format. I like the timeline feature on the site, as well as the ability to have postings show up on other sites, such as Twitter. I also like that you can search for keywords that you might find in another's postings, such as the title of a musical composition. When I did a search for the compser Carl Orff, I found postings from people all over the world.

Find me on Plurk!
username: KimRudd

VoiceThread

http://voicethread.com/share/994697/

I just created a brief VoiceThread account to complete assignment 1 of the Web 2.0 course. I like that this is a media that allows many people to comment and record voice clips all in one place. I think that this is what some educators thought Facebook might be useful for, until it became so mainstreamed. I can think of many ways that teachers could use this site to involve students in a conversation about many different topics. I like some of the ideas that I read about on the VoiceThread site. I am definitely interested in learning more.

Web tools I like to use

Being a music teacher, I love the internet because it gives me access to many different recordings, resources and different video clips of musical performances. While I don't allow my kids to search YouTube, I love that it has so many clips on it that I sometimes like to show under my control. My fourth graders recently learned to sing the song "Kookaburra" in canon, and I was able to show the kids a clip of a live kookburra bird, along with the "laughing" sound it makes. I have used clips to teach famous songs from American history, as well as instruments of the orchestra. The amount of clips on the site is virtually limitless.

Since I have so many clips that I like to reference, I was so excited to learn about Delicious. What a great place to keep all of these links! I love that I can tag the links and find other links based on shared tag names with other Delicious account holders. It also keeps me from having to do a search each time I want to find a clip I once used. Now if there was only a place to remember all of the various passwords needed to maintain all of these accounts. :-)

Using wikis in the classroom

I just listened to the clips on using wikis in the classroom and think it is very exciting. I am still trying to differentiate the differences between using a blog and using a wiki. I like that the wiki appears to be one step futher down the path of using technology in a collaborative way. The history feature also seems to be a great benefit of the wiki. For children, who are spending an increasingly large amount of time on the internet, this is a great way to be able to post assignments and get students involved in getting feedback and reviewing work. I like the idea that when your work is on display for others, it encourages you to put forth a lot of effort and to do your best work.

The login and password process is an essential element of both the blog and wiki. Also, as our culture moves toward being "green", this is a great way to review and refine student work without increasing our paper consumption.

Video Resource Review

I recently checked out some online video sites for teacher and student use. I looked at them from a music teacher perspective, to review what types of videos I might use in the elementary music classroom. My favorite was YouTube because of the amount of performance clips I am able to view. I have used  YouTube clips in my classroom before; specifically when I was teaching instruments of the orchestra. It is important to note, however, that I would not give my students access to the site, as there is plenty of inappropriate material on YouTube. The videos would need to be under the control of the teacher and presented using a tool such as an averkey or projector.

I also reviewed both TeacherTube and School Tube, and found material that I could use in my classroom, although not in the same quantity as You Tube. When searching for a specific topic, such as "Beethoven", I found several clips that were created by students, as well as by adults. This would be so fascinating to a child! I feel that these sites would be a much safer alternative to You Tube if students were to be at their own computers and in charge of their own ability to navigate.

I reviewed MovieClips, and while it looked interesting, there were not many clips that I would find useful in the music classroom. I looked for video containing songs from popular movie musicals, and generally came up empty-handed.

The final site I looked at was Next Vista, a non-profit site. The greatest advantage to using this site was the lack of advertisements, making it very student friendly. I found some wonderful instructional video clips, particularly in learning about some of the less recognizable instruments of the orchestra. I am already considering how I will use these when I teach that unit this spring. And while there may not be as extensive a list of music clips, there were also may other instructional clips in the areas of math, careers, and other arts.

Thoughts on blogging

I think using an educational blog has benefits in two realms; as a teacher using a blog with students and as a teacher blogging with other teachers.

When a teacher creates a blog to use with students, it enables the student to learn about concepts outside of the classroom setting. By continuing the classroom discussions beyond normal class sessions, a student is encouraged to be curious about what they are studying and to make connections in their own learning. It adds depth to the content area as the learning becomes less defined by the parameters that are in place in the classroom.

I have found numerous blogs that enable me, as a music teacher, to network with other music teachers and learn about tools, strategies and resources that others are using in their classrooms. This is a remarkable benefit to educators who can expand their own learning as professionals and really get 'plugged in' to what else is available to them.

Music Education and the Brain

I recently read an article on MENC (Music Educator's National Conference) about how music instruction has a positive impact on brain function, entitled Facts and Insights on the Benefits of Music Study. It talks specifically about how children who receive a music education benefit in four ways; by experiencing success in society, success in school and learning, success in developing intelligence, and success in life. It reiterates what research has shown over and over - that music changes the ways kids think!