Module #1 Reflection Blog

                This is the first of what will be several weekly blogs during the course of the class “Technology Assisted Music Learning”. The following paragraphs will reflect on what I learned during Module 1 of the class. I am looking forward being educated more on technology in music education. I do not have a great deal of technology experience in this subject.

                Incredibox was a fun music creating website that I did not know of prior to this module. It has several preselected beats and vocals that you can use to create a basic song. I found it to be user friendly and easy to pick-up. This would be a great program to use if you are teaching about composition to students in 6^th or 7^th grade. I know that my students would like how each sound has the guys on the screen dress in different styles. As for this program relating to my teaching, I am going to use this program in my final grade 7 cycle class in the spring when we talk about musical form and creating a composition. I think that it will be a fun and interactive lesson with this program. Here is the link to my Incredibox creation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR6Uhi_C9ug

Personal Learning Network or PLN, is where a student uses several internet resources and social media to become better educated. For our class, it is designed to help us become more educated not only in technology but music education in general. Each week, we will continue to contribute and grow our PLN. We set up several internet resources such as Feedly, Twitter and we joined the Digital Musicking Group on Google. At first I found the PLN confusing but the more I studied about it and experimented with the different aspects, the more I am beginning to feel comfortable. This was my contribution to the Digital Musicking Group this week: http://www.amparents.org/my-childs-teacher-recommended-smartmusic-now-what/

 

                During the week of Module 1, we had some readings from Dr. Bauer’s new book “Music Learning Today.” In Chapter 1 on page 5, Dr. Bauer talked about many of our young students today being “technology natives” meaning that they have grown up with social media, internet and cell phones since their birth. Ones that have not been with these electronic Medias from birth are called “technology immigrants”. I find myself somewhere in the middle of being a technology native and immigrant. I am in my early thirties and I think people my age spent the first 15 years of their life without this media and the last 15 years with it. Chapter 2 of the book begins to talk about several electronic Medias that we are going to be using during the course of this class. Some examples of these are: Computers, Blogs, Digital Audio, Video and Instructional software.