Thornwood Music

After 11 Tools: Reflections

2010-08-01T12:33:00.000-07:00

1. What are your favorite tools you now have in your personal technology toolbox?

Probably my favorite tool will be with the social bookmarking. I also hope to become proficient with Jing.

Briefly describe a particular activity that you will plan for your students using at least one of these new tools.

I hope to arrange a Skype conversation between my students and some professional musician friends of mine and/or a Skype conversation between my students and some acquaintances overseas. I have friends in Germany and in Uganda.

2. How have you transfomed your thinking about the learning that will take place in your classroom?

I used to rely on posters to show instruments to students and to sound recordings to let students know what instruments sounded like. I used to rely on videos of music in other countries to show students about music in other cultures around the world. I am seeing that soon, my students will be able to see nearly firsthand about these things via YouTube or Skype.

I used to rely on endless supplies of paper in order for students to collaborate on projects. This paper was a challenge, to say the least, to keep organized! It contributed to my very cluttered room! I am seeing that soon, I will not need paper for students to collaborate on projects, that the students participating in these collaborations may not even all necessarily be students at my school, and that keeping track of these projects will be infinitely easier.

3. Were there any unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

Despite having been in SBISD for going on 9 years, it never ceases to amaze me how in tune with the needs of students that our district is. Some districts have all of their students and even the teachers on a very tight rein on internet activity. I believe that shows an inherent lack of faith in the integrity of the teachers and a lack of a sense of duty to help impart good citizenship skills to the students when it comes to internet behavior. It makes me feel valued as a teacher that my district trusts its employees enough to assume they've got integrity and professionalism instead of installing policies which assume the worse about their intentions. It makes me feel valued as a teacher, too, that the district trusts me to teach these internet skills to our students and help them to better function in this new world of technology. As a parent, it makes me feel better knowing that the school my kids attend sees this world as their world and doesn't try to pretend it doesn't exist or doesn't affect them. For example, I doubt I could do any of these collaboration techniques with my mother's class in rural Pennsylvania because their internet policies are so restrictive. We shall see!

Tool 11: Digital Citizenship

2010-07-26T19:48:00.000-07:00

In YOUR blog post, discuss at least three things you would want to make sure your students understand about being good digital citizens. Explain briefly how you would "teach" the idea of digital citizenship to your students.

1. I want students to know that their conduct in the digital world is not something they should be in the habit of separating from their conduct in the real world. Some students post things on Facebook, for example, that they would never say IRL ("in real life"), and it's as if they don't realize that who they are in the digital world reflects on who they are in the real world.

2. Students need to be able to discern genuine, trustworthy information. Not everything out there that you read may be true and accurate, and it should be standard operating procedure to check your information against several different sources. Students should also learn about not clicking on advertising links, especially at school, and avoid clicking on other extraneous links that could cause problems. For this reason, I am glad that less things are blocked in our district compared to some others because that gives us the opportunity to teach students how to filter sites themselves.

3. I would talk to students about actually using the information that they're finding. They should now about plagiarism; that their sources need to be cited and cutting-and-pasting should include quotes and can't be overdone. It would be all too easy to simply cut and paste everything! Are the days of 3 x 5 notecards gone?

As far as teaching digital citizenship, I would share my experiences with students, walk them through how I proceed with finding good, usable information, and I would also use interactive sites to teach it such as BrainPop. I want to have candid discussions about how to conduct oneself on social networking sites and address cyber-bullying and its real ramifications. There is nothing digital about cyber-bullying! The people on the receiving end are real!

Tool 10: Exploring Mobile Technology And Apps

2010-07-26T19:37:00.000-07:00

I attended the iTouch class in June, and this was very exciting. It was my first time getting to play with such a device. I know that I will be able to quickly pick up the ability to navigate through one and have already started grooming my iTunes here on my computer to get ready for it.

Regarding the apps, I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned on the assignment for this blogpost that we're only supposed to use apps that have been given a thumbs up by the Technology Department...at least, that was my understanding.

Here are the apps that I have my eye on (and suggested for addition to the SBISD list):
Pandora Radio
Gibson Learn & Master Guitar
MiniPiano
PocketShaker
Metronome
NoteBrainer

All of those are free and can be found by entering the name of the app into the search bar.

The only WOW moments I had were in realizing that I could use this to help me with planning and scheduling, I can use the PocketShaker app to hand to a student to cover an instrument that we don't own (such as a cabasa), I can use it to entice reluctant students to communicate with me....the opportunities are endless and certainly there are many applications for my classroom that I have not thought of yet.

Tool 9: Sharing Information Through Jing & Skype

2010-07-26T17:30:00.000-07:00

Jing was the biggest surprise of the day.

Even after I read the description, I had a rather embarrassingly negative attitude towards it (which is very unlike me....I blame the rain).

But then I watched the video
and immediately the wheels started turning in my noggin. My first application was to think of make an instructional video for the students about tasks they seem to always be needing help with (at the computer center, for example). Then, I realized "Ohhhh, I could use this for sub plans!" LOL!!! In the past, subs have abandoned my plans because they didn't know how to operate my equipment, and to instruct them to in a written form was very tedious.

So, yes, Jing is now downloaded on my computer.

I am not new to Skype. When my brother-in-law moved to Italy last year, he began asking all of the family "Got Skype yet?" Finally, at around Christmas-time, we began using Skype.

My two neatest examples of using Skype happened this summer. My best friend and her husband had to go to Pennsylvania for a funeral, and they couldn't afford to take their 4 boys. The boys stayed with my husband and I, then, for the week that their Daddy and Mommy were in Pennsylvania. We used Skype with the children and their parents so that they could keep in touch. I even let the ids take the computer to bed with them, and their Mommy sang them to sleep.

The second neat use of Skype that I experienced this summer was Skyping with a man named Jimmy who at one time in his life was a sponsored child in the program called Compassion International. Jimmy was able to talk to a small group of people at our church who sponsor children, and we were able to hear first hand of his experiences as a child in the program and how he is doing now (he is in college).

In my family, we also use Skype to talk to some missionary friends in Africa, former exchange students/friends in Germany, and we were able to talk to my sister when she went on a mission trip to Tanzania.

In a classroom setting, I would like to use Skype to have our students form interview questions and interview professional musicians and others in the music field. I have a friend who is a recording artist with the alto saxophone who would probably be my first guinea pig.

I think it would also be neat, given my contacts around the world, to have the students Skype with other students in other parts of the world...about the music they listen to and the games they play, etc.

Well, this was indeed a rainy Monday, but I fun with this exercise today! Maybe I'll make a Jing movie giving my kids instructions on how to clean the house!! Ha ha!!

Tool 8: Video Resources

2010-07-25T20:16:00.000-07:00

Video #1: Video of Jay

Jay is just a young guy who lives in Tennessee, is very talented and has many videos posted to YouTube. In this video, Jay is only in 8th grade. I like to show such videos in my class when we're talking about instruments. It inspires the students to see young people like themselves doing really amazing things on these instruments.

Video #2:

'Star Wars (John Williams Is The Man)' medley - Corey Vidal and Moosebutter - a cappella tribute

We absolutely adore this video, and it has so many things in it to learn from. First of all, not many people can disagree that John Williams is the greatest composer of our time. He has composed the music for so many of our favorite movies! So, when we talk about John Williams in class and listen to his music, we also like to look at this video. It's nice, too, for the students to see a guy just singing and having an absolute blast. It's also interesting to talk about the procedure by which this video was made (and perhaps we'll even have the means to make such a movie this year ourselves).

I use videos so much in my classroom! They are indispensable for showing the students parts of the world that they don't otherwise get to encounter even when it comes to something as simple as music instruments! For example, in the past, all I had for demonstrating music instruments were sound recordings and posters, neither or which gave the instrument justice. Now I can show them videos of these instruments being performed, and it is so meaningful to the students! I've also shown them interviews with musicians, videos of students performing music in other parts of the world, choirs singing around the country and locally. We even found a video on YouTube of the Memorial High School Orchestra performing. Hey, just for kicks I'll add that, too.

Tool 7: Digital Storytelling

2010-07-25T19:57:00.000-07:00

Well, I got it done, but I cheated a little bit, sorta!! LOL!! In doing so, I did learn something new!

Here's what I did. I have already created movies in the past and thought that I would just upload one of those onto my blog. Nothing new learned there! The problem was that the movies I created were not the correct format for uploading into a blog. What I found out was, though, that I could download a program which would convert my movie to WMV. WinFF was the program I found, and I am pleased with the result. So in this area, I learned something new!! Yay!!

I look forward to getting MAC units so that I can try out iMovie. I'm sure that's what I would use with the students anyway.

I hope you like the movie. We had teachers all over the school take pictures of their kids showing respectful choices and later put these together into a slideshow.

Tool 6: Wikis

2010-07-18T17:04:00.000-07:00

For your Tool #6 Assignment:

IN YOUR BLOG post, discuss how students might use wikis to aid in their learning. Did any of the sample wikis you viewed give you any particular ideas for using a wiki in your classroom for students. How about for and your team or department?

Shortly after learning about wikis a couple of years ago in my capacity as Campus Technology Rep, I created a wiki for use by faculty who would hopefully collaborate with me in helping to plan a play. Specifically, it included roles that needed to be filled for planning purposes, props that needed to be located, etc. It didn't really work because IF anyone looked at the wiki, they didn't reply or otherwise didn't participate. A wiki will only work for collaboration amongst teachers if the teachers really do look at it and pitch in. This is especially important for me because I am in a separate building from the rest of the school and almost never have the chance to collaborate with anybody face-to-face. We will be doing 2 plays this year, and I plan to bring the involved teachers in on a wiki to help plan it. Hopefully, this time it will be effective.

For students this would be nice, as well. At the outset of thinking about it, I can picture the computer equivalent of the old activity where students wrote their thoughts down on chart paper all over the room....this activity all ending up on one wiki.

Tool 5: Tagging and Social Bookmarking

2010-07-18T16:06:00.001-07:00

Weird that this techie-nerd had never heard of "social bookmarking" until today!!

Using tags such as "music", "technology", "education", and "elementary, I joined a group called musictechieteachers.

The websites I bookmarked were:
Classics for Kids, well known to be a great website!
SFS Kids, a website for kids by the San Francisco Symphony
Noteflight, Online Music Notation
Metronome Online, it's a metronome!
MakingMusicFun.net

Not all of these websites were new to me thanks to some wonderful past staff development pointing out these websites! I wanted to share them here anyway. Noteflight.com is one new (to me) website which will come in handy! Another one which looks useful is MakingMusicFun.net.

At the last minute, I decided to search using the tags including the word "iTouch" in an effort to prepare for this new equipment, and I found this one: 50 Fun iPhone Apps to Get Kids Reading and Learning.

I am definitely grateful to find all of these new resources! They will be useful in my classroom for so many reasons! For me, I am often jumping between several different computers, and I can never remember which computer has which bookmarks on it! How nice it will be to not have to worry about that anymore! For the students it will be nice, too, because they will be able to look to select from a prescribed selection of bookmarked website that I either set up for them or that they add themselves after researching and with my approval.

Incidentally, I also applied for the special Educator Upgrade which includes these benefits:

* You can create student accounts for an entire class with just a few clicks (and student email addresses are optional for account creation)
* Students of the same class are automatically set up as a Diigo group so they can start using all the benefits that a Diigo group provides, such as group bookmarks and annotations, and group forums.
* Privacy settings of student accounts are pre-set so that only teachers and classmates can communicate with them.
* Ads presented to student account users are limited to education-related sponsors.

Tool 4: Cool Google Tools

2010-06-16T17:02:00.000-07:00

Immediately upon telling some people I was looking forward to applying Google docs and Google reader, I had a friend tell me "even the use of your private information for resale?"

Well, naturally I had no idea what she was talking about, but my immediate response to her was "Well, I view just about anything that takes place via the world wide web to be taking a risk. Considering I'm expected to use google reader and google docs for work, that's a risk I'll take. It's no more risky than participating on FB, I suppose."

But I did do a tiny bit of research into what she was talking about, and I found an article called Google Docs suffers serious security lapse. After reviewing it, I still feel confident that we'll be safe using Google docs. I don't think we should it to post national secrets or anything, but for educational purposes, it'll do.

So, with regard to the assignment, here's what I've done so far:
Create one document in Google Docs and share it with at least one other person in your PLN.
I did three different things here. First, I shared with my team leader at school, the one and only Coach Castillo, what I have submitted for this year's Landrum mini-grant. Second, I shared a meal-planning menu with a gal I had plans to go camping with. Finally, and this one was the coolest, I set up a collaborative exchange with a Ugandan missionary in Uganda where he sends me mission updates from his mission work in Uganda, and I edit it for him for grammar, spelling, etc. That I could be collaborating with him in such a way from across the world is really fascinating. Incidentally, he and I have also communicated with Skype, another very cool thing!

2. Set up your Google reader and subscribe to at least five 11 Tools blogs that you will be following.

Done, done, and done. I've subscribed to at least 7 blogs altogether thus far.

3. Briefly discuss how you think these 2 Google tools will aid you in your particular classroom or benefit your students in their learning process.

At the moment, I am not using Google Reader very much, but I envision I will use it a lot more with an iTouch in my hand! I will also use it when I get my new smartphone (I've decided on a Blackberry) in September. I will appreciate being able to have one-stop shopping, so to speak, to glance at all of my subscribed blogs for personal and professional interest. Additionally, I expect we could subscribe to some blogs as a class and be able to scan them daily for updates.

On to Tool #5! Learning more every day!

Tool 3: Image Generators & Mashups

2010-06-14T18:13:00.000-07:00

Today was about image generators. Hmmm. I'm not sure how I would add them to add to the learning process in the classroom (at least not what I came across in these infant stages). I added 2 pictures to my blog; one at the top and one at the bottom. One was using an app called Motivator and the other was Bulletin Board. They both came from BigHugeLabs.

Using them in the future would, I think, be as part of a blog post and only if the situation called for it. It's nice to know these options are here.

Tool 2: Building Community & Comments

2010-05-30T13:23:00.000-07:00

1. What are your thoughts about building an online education community and participating in a PLN?

I like the idea and have already done it to some extent. I have participated in other online communities which talk about other interests but have not done so yet for the job of teaching. I can definitely see the value of it for the exchange of idea from teacher to teacher and from students to students.

In this era, too, it is important that children learn about these avenues of communicating so that they can have an approach to it that is appropriate and realistic. Cyber-bullying is a large problem in our society and it's because many students are out there participating in this technology and means of communicating without any adult supervision or guidance whatsoever.

So using this technology in the classroom and monitoring the students' posts will hopefully have an effect on how they use it in their personal lives now and beyond their time spent with us as their teachers.

2. What point stood out to you from the commenting advice?

The commenting advice was all very excellent and appropriate.

For a period of time of about a year, I was a moderator of a very well-known website's forum for supporting breastfeeding mothers. I am telling you, a job like that requires a moderator to be gracious, humble, patient, knowledgeable and well-written. In a forum about breastfeeding, controversy and arguments come with the territory with participants in the forum coming with all degrees of grace, patience, humility and understanding. People need to know that they can participate in the community and be treated with respect; they need to know that they can trust the gal behind the blog to treat them with respect.

3. What five blogs did you select for your comments? (you may need to come back and add this information later by editing this post.)

Be a Techie, http://www.beatechie.com/<-----I chose this one on my own.

I interacted with the blog to give and take suggestion on iTouch apps.

Music is Elementary (SBISD music teacher's blog http://mwemusic.blogspot.com/

I let the author know of some music blogs I have come across.

Elementary Music/Music Technology

The author was talking about TI:ME (Technology in Music Education) of which I used to be a member. I think maybe it would be appropriate for me to join again.

Free Technology for Teachers

I thanked the blogger for calling our attention to new design tools on Blogger....and put them to use....hence the cool background on my blog!

Tech Temp, http://techtempo.com/ <-----I chose this one on my own.

I commented about a Boomwhacker activity/idea the author had invented and cannot wait to try it out myself next year!!

Tool 1: Blog Set-up & Registration

2010-05-27T19:34:00.000-07:00

So, I have just undergone the process of beginning a blog. The trickiest part of following the instructions was setting up my avatar because the site wanted me to add a voice; I would have preferred skipping the voice, but it required one. I wasn't too impressed with the Voki options, but oh well. I chose an avatar that I figured represented me well enough I suppose.

I am contemplating ways that I could use blogs in my classroom. Here are some thoughts:

Students journal about their thoughts following the viewing of a classroom movie or live theatrical production.
Students journal to write down ideas for song lyrics.
Students journal to comment about thoughts or ideas that occurred to them during Centers Time.

Fellow students, naturally, would be able to view and comment on their friends' blogs either at opportunities during class or at home.

I look forward to experimenting with all of this.