TI:ME

In my recent trolling of the internet, I found a group called the Technology Institute for Music Educators, or TI:ME. Their site has a few resources for teachers which connect them to the technology available in the music classroom.

TI:ME also has state chapters with their own pages for blogs, news and events, group discussions, and even lesson plans. The best options are available only to the paying members of the group, and the individual fee is $85 a year for an individual. You also receive subscriptions to a couple music tech publications.

It looks like a good resource if you're willing to pay the fee. Being a poor college student, it's not something that I'm prepared to do just yet, but I probably will when I'm a teacher.

Yay!

I just wanted to add this personal note:

I finally have my own computer! I shudder to think how long I have gone through college without a computer of my own, and I won't deny that it was pretty hard. Professors (and everyone else for that matter) assume that everyone has a computer, so they assign work accordingly.

There is a lot of frustration in not having a computer of ones own, and there is a certain amount of embarrassment too. You don't want to admit that your one of the only people who doesn't have a computer or internet access at home. I'm writing about this partly because I'm happy to finally be connected (kind of, I still don't have internet at home but my laptop has wireless.) I'm also writing to bring the uneven distribution of technology into conversation.

Teachers can not assume that students have equal access to technology. Technology can be a status symbol, so some students my never even tell you that they don't have a home computer, or that it's hard for them to get computer time.

What can we do for these kids?

Auto-Tune

It's likely that most people have not heard of Auto-Tune, but it's equally likely that most people have heard Auto-Tune. It's been taken to extremes by many artists, from Cher to Kanye West, to achieve a "digital" sound effect. Originally however, the point was that you wouldn't hear Auto-Tune, you would just hear a pitch perfect performance.

What is Auto-Tune? It's an audio processor that was created to correct pitch in real time. In other words, if you're recording and you are using Auto-Tune, you could be a little flat or sharp, and the processor will correct it immediately and automatically. In fact many pop and country singers have admitted to using Auto-Tune not just in the studio, but in live performances as well. The question of what makes a live performance, live and "real" aside, there are some concerns with the use of this technology.

The program can be downloaded, for free in some cases. The problem is that many students and prospective students use audition recordings to gain entrance to music schools, or to receive scholarships. How does one know if they are listening to a real performance or an altered one? An audition, particularly for entering school should be unaltered so the teachers can figure out how to help the student become a better musician. Clearly, an in person audition is preferable, but it's not always possible. It seems unfair to deny some the chance to audition merely because they can not be there in person, or because the technology for them to cheat exists.

Here's my question; how do we make recorded auditions fair and "real"?

The end of jobs as we know them?

I just read Beyond Technology and it really reinforced to me the importance of changing how our education system operates. The article says that in the future, preexisting jobs, where tasks are laid out for you and you have a boss looking over your shoulder won't exist, at least in the numbers they do now. Employment will rather be self created, self directed and self marketed.

To me, this says that in order to teach our students to do well in the future job market, we need to teach our students to operate independently, without direction. Not exactly the current environment of our public schools. Students need more than instructions, they need experience, and our schools and teachers need to give them that experience.


In Minnesota, the New County School has implemented an innovative new approach to education. They have no classes, no teachers and no walls. The students are self directed, and set their own curriculum, and there are advisers on hand to help out when needed. The students can get up and interact with the other students whenever they wish to bounce ideas off of each other, collaborate, or just take a break from school work.

I hear from a lot of my peers that self motivation and direction is difficult for them, and it is for me too. I wonder if that is because we are not practiced at it?

Technology and youth bring about change in 2008

I don't want to get into politics on here, I'm passionate about the subject, but for me, this is not the place for it. I'll make another blog for that subject if I ever want to open that can of worms.

What I do want to say here is what a profound and effective impact technology and youth involvement had on the presidential election, particularly in Obama's favor. In fact, I think that part of the reason the younger generation was so involved, was because of the excellent use of technology on the democratic party's side.

Here's a rundown on what and how technology was used:

Text messaging: near instant notifications on who the VP nominee would be, and other important updates.

Emails (multiple times a day): Constant updates, counters and fact checks after the debates, eliciting donations of time and money, announcements of upcoming events including local debate parties, generating excitement among supporters.

Online phone banks: phone numbers and scripts to engage people in conversation about the election and the issues.

Facebook and other social networking sites: donating your status, student groups, displaying support for a candidate on your profile.

Even my Xbox 360 icon showed my support for Obama to other gamers, I could even download the debates through Xbox Live!

I'm sure there are a few other things that I'm forgetting, but the point is; this was the first campaign to use technology to mobilize and organize the grassroots, and it worked brilliantly. This is how campaigns will be run from now on, and any who resist will fail.

(Go Obama!)

Teaching multiple intelligences

The more I learn about multiple intelligences the more mad I get at standardized testing and No Child Left Behind. Our schools are essentially being forced to focus on two intelligences, math and logic, so they can meet the government's standards. In so doing we are indeed leaving intelligent children behind!

The truth is that there are eight, possibly nine or even more, intelligences. There are a number of tests online to help you figure out what your strongest intelligences are. I like this one, because of how they display the results. However, it excludes one of my strongest intelligences, existential intelligence. Here is a printable version of a test, that includes existential intelligence, that you can use in your classroom (or future classroom).

I do wonder though, if a written test is an unfair way of measuring some people's intelligence, is a written test the best way to discover a person's intelligence strengths?

A student-made curriculum?

The argument in Young Minds, Fast Times is that the best source to learn how to teach our students, is the students themselves. I couldn't agree more. When I was a student in grade school (and still in some classes in college) I knew that my voice didn't affect anything. My peers and I agreed that school was mostly boring and that the teachers didn't listen to us. After a while, you accept that school is just like that, and you think, perhaps that's the only way it can be.

Thank goodness for educators like Marc Prensky. He decided to use his position as a presenter to educators, to bring the voice of students to the foreground. At his presentations he has a panel of students who share their opinions and experiences of school, and what they would like to change.

This is a new approach to education. It's almost like treating it as a business, where the students are the customers. No successful businesses tell their customers what's good for them or what to like, they cater to their clientele. Why shouldn't schools do the same?

Podcasts in the classroom

For those of us who find the iTunes store frustrating, confusing, or just not helpful when looking for education related podcasts, there is a great site: EPN the education podcast network.

This site has podcasts categorized by elementary, middle and high school, and by 14 different subjects, including music education, with 80 podcasts listed under that subject. You can also share any podcasts that you have found or made yourself through their "sugest a podcast" option.

Earthdance

In my exploration of the internet recently, I came across a site called Earthdance. It serves as a networking site to coordinate a yearly, simultaneous, global music and dance festival with the goal of promoting peace.
It began in 1997 with 22 cities in 18 countries. It has grown to over 300 locations in 60 countries.

Every public Earthdance event donates at least 50% of its profits to local charities that fit into one of the following areas:

• The Welfare of Children & Urban Youth
• Indigenous Peoples & Cultures
• International Relief and Development
• Environmental Sustainability & Protection
• Organizations that help Promote Peace

Earthdance 2008, was on September 13th, so I assume that it will happen around the same time next year. The closest location to Maine was Washington DC, and I don't know about everyone else, but as a college student, it's difficult to travel that far in regards to both money and time, particularly in the school year. I wonder if this is something that could happen up here? Perhaps on a much smaller, private scale?

Music Teacher Resources

I found a site called Music Teachers Helper which has a blog maintained by eight authors. The authors are all musicians and mostly private teachers with their own studios. None the less, most of their advice and experience can be applied to the school classroom.
There is a sidebar option that allows you to organize the blog entries by category, which is very helpful. The categories include music & technology, music news, teaching tips and many more.

The next step in human evolution?

Has anyone else heard of Indigo children? According to some people they are the next level of human development. According to others they are just in closer harmony with their spiritual side.

Just a few of the characteristics of Indigo children:

• Have strong self esteem

• Have difficulty with discipline and authority

• Are rather creative

• Display strong intuition

• Have strong empathy for others
  

• Develop abstract thinking very young

• Are gifted and/or talented, highly intelligent

• Are talented daydreamers and visionaries

And here's the kicker:

• Have spiritual intelligence and/or psychic skills

• Are here to change the world - to help us live in greater harmony and peace with one another

I think it's important to know about this because even if you don't believe there are Indigo children (particularly the last two points), you can't deny that the way children behave and learn is changing. Not to mention that there are parents out there who are convinced that their children are Indigo, or what if you do have a student who suddenly shows psychic skills, how do you deal with that as a teacher?

Here are some links to more information on Indigo children for those who I have intrigued:
Wikipedia
Metagifted
YouTube:
ABC News
The Indigo Revolution

War Dance

I came across an interesting documentary about students in war-torn northern Uganda. Their stories are tragic and horrifying; some have seen their families and friends killed, and some have been the killers, just to survive.
The film follows the students from the Patongo refugee camp as they prepare for, and compete in the Ugandan National Music Competition. No one expects them to win, as the film's site says "schools in refugee camps don't win awards."
This would be a great tool to use in some music and world affairs classes. I would ask my students to discuss the power of music, why does it have this power, and how does it compare to their own experiences?
It is rated PG-13, and the subject matter is upsetting in many ways, so it would only be appropriate for high school and some middle schools.
Any other ideas in regard to how to use this as a teaching tool?

Citizen Schools

I found Courtney's blog on citizen schools very intriguing. I had never heard of such a thing before. What really excites me about them is the hands on experience and the role of the community as the teachers.
To me, there is no better way to learn, than to do, make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, and do again. I think that there is a lot of pressure in traditional schools to get it right the first time. This can be detrimental to the learning process because many students are afraid to explore and question for fear of being wrong.
With community members involved in the learning process, students get to see the working world as a real place, rather than some mysterious place that you are only told about, by people who only work in schools anyway. The community also has the opportunity to benefit from these schools because they will get to see how this new generation works and learns, and what they are capable of. It also has the potential to strengthen the community and their sense of responsibility for the youth, and the future workforce.
Courtney mentions some topics that citizen schools cover that were never covered in all my day's in public school, such as buying a car and other finance issues. If kids don't learn about this from school or their parents, where are they going to learn it? I've met college kids who don't know how to balance a checkbook! These citizen schools provide the opportunity to teach kids what they don't learn (but probably should) in school.

Tech Habits

The article 20 Tech Habits to Improve Your Life provided some helpful suggestions for using technology to make things easier. I think that the keystroke shortcuts are a great suggestion. I already use a few of them and if I knew more I'm sure I would use them too. I think that I should take the advice of keeping my inbox clean. My inbox is a mass of personal messages, school mailings, political messages, and advertisements. I find the clutter overwhelming, but I have some kind of compulsion to keep them all. I think I'm afraid that I'll accidentally lose something important. The suggestion of having the Action, Later and Archive folders would make me feel much better about the whole thing. I think that balancing a checkbook and managing your finances is just as easily done on paper as it is on a computer, and the same goes for calendars, email notices so that you don't forget your own mother's birthday seems like you're relying too much on technology to run your life and do the thinking for you.

Pandora and the Music Genome Project

First and foremost, if you love music, if you love free music, if you love finding new music, go to Pandora. It's part of the Music Genome Project and it allows you to create your own "radio stations" where you have relative control over what is played.
How does it work? (You can go to the MGP link above and get the technical version or you can read my generalized version.)
You type in an artist or a song, and Pandora picks out the elements of that artist or song and finds more music with similar qualities. That music is added to your station, but it doesn't stop there. You can give each song a "thumbs up" (play more music like this!) or a "thumbs down" (never play this song again!). There's even an option to take a song off the station for a month if you get tired of it.
Pandora has exposed me to many new artists, and it's always the first place I go if I'm going to be online for a while. The potential for this site is to boost the exposure of artists who would otherwise "go under the radar" so to speak.
On a side note, the RIAA is demanding major royalty fees from Pandora, to the point where it makes keeping Pandora afloat, quite difficult.

Edit>
How can teachers use Pandora in the classroom?
I think that Pandora gives students the oportunity to learn about analizing music. They can create a station, or go a a precreated station by the teacher, listen to a few songs, and then explain what elments the songs have in common, and how they differ. Pandora also provides some of that information if you select the "Why is this song playing" option, so it can even teach the students what to listen for!

Introducing...

Just thought I would give an outline of what you can expect to find in this blog. I plan to deal with the three subjects in the title; music, peace, and education, sometimes they will be separate, but mostly they will be united in some capacity. What I want to do with these subjects is explore their future, their relationship with technology, and what all of this could mean for us.
I will be sharing information that I find relevant to this topic, as well as my opinions, but I also want feedback, and not just the "oh cool" or "that's stupid" kind of feedback. I would like to hear other people's feelings and thoughts, so I will also pose questions to hopefully stimulate your mind and encourage a dialogue.