This is the fourth of our several weekly blogs
during the course of the class “Technology Assisted Music Learning”. The
following paragraphs will reflect on what I learned during Module 4 of the
class. I am looking forward being further educated more on technology in music
and music education as we progress through the last four weeks of this class!
Audacity is a free online source for digital audio recording
and editing computer software application. Before this week’s assignment, I
never had any experience with this kind of program before. I found this program
not too difficult to pick up after watching some of the tutorial videos. Audacity is a program that I could use with
my students in teaching a music technology or recording/editing class. Even
after working on this week’s project, I feel that I need more experience over
time with learning all of the functions of this program.
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. For
the fourth week of our class, we continued to contribute and grow our PLN. We
also continued using several internet resources such as Feedly, Twitter and we continued
to contribute to the Digital Musicking Group on Google. During this third week
of our class, I am gaining a greater understanding of the PLN and how it works.
This was my contribution to the Digital
Musicking Group for week 4: http://apps.texasbandmasters.org/archives/pdfs/bmr/2005-06-silverman1.pdf
During this week,
we continued to use www.lynda.com which is a free resource that is open to
students in our Masters in Music Education program here at the University of
Florida. We watched several videos that were tutorials on different aspects of
Audacity. After watching the tutorial videos, I felt that I had a better
understanding of the tasks we were asked to perform in the project. Lynda aided
me greatly in watching the tutorial videos on Audacity this week!
During the week of
Module 4, we had to read Chapter 4 from Dr. Bauer’s book “Music Learning
Today.” During this Chapter, Dr. Bauer talked about several technology
resources such as Smart Music and Band-In-A-Box. The one drawback to these
programs is that they do cost money to subscribe to. I have not had personal
experience with Smart Music. I do have music teacher friends to use Smart Music
and say it is a great program as a resource in their classroom for playing
tests and having their students practice technical exercises and concert
repertoire. I found it interesting on page 84 when he said, “Smart Music may
increase students’ motivation to practice.” This was a great point that Dr.
Bauer made. In today’s society, practicing is something that has been in
decline for many music students. In today’s visual appeal, program like Smart
Music may help in competing against video games and other social media forms to
gain a students’ interest and attention to practice more!
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