Key Concepts For Digital Photography

While not a music-oriented article, this was still something worth taking a look at. Images are always relevant to the classroom; having pictures allows students to connect images to more abstract concepts. In the case of the music classroom, a child could be shown images of instruments and then hear sounds that correspond to those instruments. Or a student could see a picture of an orchestra to see what the ensemble that plays classical music looks like and how it's arranged. Pictures are also used in Powerpoint presentations, in websites, to capture school events, etc.

Pictures entering the digital age has opened up a wealth of options for us. It is now easy to take hundreds of pictures, digitally alter and enhance them, and distribute them online to anyone in the world. It encourages community sharing, interconnection, and the facilitation of information. It makes combining pictures with other forms of media much easier as well. Learning how to properly utilize a digital camera and editing software therefore has value.

All of the information on this article is valuable, though some of it is more obvious than others. The importance of pixel usage was something I never really thought about, and being able to print photos online was something I've never heard of. Other things, such as how to size an image and how to share files I was already aware of. For the uninitiated, this article is useful, but for the technologically savvy it might come off as a bit obvious.

Assistive Technology

This is EXACTLY the kind of situation where I feel music technology is best suited: allowing people to do things that would be impossible without the technology. A lot of my gripes with applying technology to music is that it's more of a supplement than a necessity. The usage of SoundBeam, and any similar music technology, is not a supplement at all; rather, it makes something impossible possible. For those who haven't seen the video or read the article, SoundBeam is a technology that recognizes movements as computer commands, and then relays them to a computer which recognizes the movement as a certain pitch which is then relayed to MIDI. The technology reminded me very much of the technology used by partially paralyzed people to speak with a voice program; any movement or twitch can be used to make the technology function, given proper programming.

One of the common goals of any educator is to allow all students to benefit from their class; to appreciate the subject matter given to them. For those with physical disabilities, this presents obvious problems that it is our duty to address. How can we, as music educators, deny a child the right to enjoy and create music due to a disability? It's a problem with many creative answers, and SoundBeam is obviously one of them. It was inspiring to watch Ari create music using SoundBeam's technology, and let him experience something that every musician strives for. It would be difficult to use such technology in a group classroom setting, but that doesn't lessen the value of a tool like this.

PLN: Berklee Music Blog

http://debbiecavalier.berkleemusicblogs.com/

A music blog written by Debbie Cavalier, a professor at Berklee college. Her blog is filled with all sorts of information, including things pertaining to music technology and childhood music (my area of interest). There is a little too much self-advertisation for my tastes, but beyond that it's a good blog. My favorite articles are those with videos built in; a lot of them are very informative and exciting to think of how they could apply to the classroom.

PLN: Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog

I just found this blog, but it's one that I'm really excited to be looking at, especially since it applies to my field. I found it when looking for an article on garageband, and I found this blog with a description of a lesson plan that she used with her 3rd graders to compose an 8-bar song with each student. There are a lot of exciting ideas on this blog, and I'm so glad to finally find something that fully applies what we've been learning to a setting that I plan to immerse myself in. There are also some great articles about music technology in general, so it's worth a look even if you're not interested in early childhood music.

http://amyburns.musiced.net

World Wide Web Forms

I really found this to be a good article for me based on the way it was structured. It covered everything there is to know about digitally compressing and sharing music on the web, with details put in for even the most technologically inept. However, it never bogged the reader down with too much jargon, and didn't overiterate things to the point where it became difficult to the reader. Props to the writer of this article, as writing about how to put music on the internet and making ti interesting is no easy feat, I'm sure.

For someone like me, who is very limited in his scope on how the internet works, this articlle introduced a lot of concepts without being overly frightening. A lot of terms that I had heard before but never understood, such as bandwith and compression, were susinctly and simply explained, which is appreciated. After explaining the termonology, the writer did a great job of giving ideas on how to implement the concepts. I wouldn't have been creative enough to come up with ideas such as offering different-quality sound files for those with different bandwidths. Another thing I really appreciate is the HTML code to allow viewers to download mp3 files to their computer. Even in my current situation, I have had times when I needed to give some of my peers music files from a distance. Creating a small webpage with links to those files would have been a huge help.

PLN: The DIgital Music Educator

http://digitalmusiceducator.wordpress.com/

It's an interesting blog; it changes tone quite frequently. However, it does present lots of different ideas for utilizing technology in the classroom. The one thing I really like about it is how down-to-earth it is. A lot of the situations it discusses are things you'd expect to encounter. Things like Facebook and Twitter and online tech websites have practicality and danger no matter what school you go to. It's nice to see things like that discussed and analyzed.

Interactive Whiteboards

I'd like to discuss interactive whiteboards before reading the article, as this subject is one that I've discussed many times with my great-aunt Rose (and assuredly will next time I see her at Thanksgiving). She is a public school general elementary teacher, and she teaches a broad category of subjects to kids of varying age groups. This includes music, and she has chosen to use the interactive whiteboard in her classroom. She's told me countless times what an excellent tool it is for interesting kids in music due to all of the fun and varied applications of it. For instance, she can devote a class to talking about an instrument like the violin. She can use the board to bring up an image of a violin, which she can drag and scroll around with the board, as well as rotate if she has a 3-dimensional model. She can make a bow appear and have students move the bow across the strings in the correct place. She can put a keyboard on the screen, give it the sounds of a violin, and let students come up and experiment with the sound of the violin. The whiteboard also has a lot of functionality as a theory tool; it's less imposing than a piano as you can make the whiteboard look like whatever you want, and kids naturally want to interact with it. One fun idea she had was letting students drag notes on a staff, and then she could play back what they made on a piano.

Now I'll read the article, and see where it differs from my great-aunt. Well, it did a great job of explaining HOW to get a whiteboard into the classroom. It's hard to get information on how to acquire technology, especially expensive technology, so that warrants keeping this article. However, it didn't do the best job of opening a teacher's eyes to the uses of the whiteboard. It merely stated what standards could be achieved with the board and gave no examples of how these standards could be met. The best the second article does is offer hints on how to use it, but I wish they gave concrete examples of classroom scenarios.

Still, I'm not totally sold on whiteboards. While it's definitely an exciting tool, a lot of things would come in the budget before the acquisition of a whiteboard. It's more of a supplement than a necessity. Also, based on my previous experiences with whiteboards, they run the risk of shutting down or not responding to stimulus(more so than a computer), and that can destroy a lesson plan. If I could have access to one though, I'd definitely use it, especially in an elementary music class like the one I hope to teach.