Assessment and Productivity: What Can Technology Do For You?

Michael Brown

Assessment and Productivity: What Can Technology Do For You?

Dr. Bazan

Assessment and Productivity: What Can Technology Do For You?

This week in class, our goal was to discover how technology could help the music educator assess and organize the classroom.  I thought I knew a lot about technology and I considered myself a techy person, but I realize now that I was just scratching the surface of technology and its uses for the classroom.  Music educators have a lot on their plates when it comes to running a program.  We have to be educator, musician, event organizer, receptionist, treasurer, uniform keeper, and the list goes on.  The gig of the music educator is one that requires a fine balance of organization and improvisation.  The world has changed a lot from 40 years ago, and new technologies exist to make education more manageable.  Technology can help in two major areas of education assessment and productivity. 

As the assistant choral director of a 270 person choral program, I see what it takes to run a program.  Productivity is important to me because I have multiple things going on a one time.  When I first began my job, we still did a lot of handouts and things the paper and pencil method.  The first thing I added was a website that I created easily with Google Sites. The website serves as hub for information, choir calendar of events, important documents shared through Google Drive, and announcements.  I also started using Remind to communicate with parents and students.  It is easy to send messages to everyone, small group, or individuals, and it is a free tool.  Another useful technology tool for productivity is Google Forms .  At the beginning of the year, we always have a parent meeting.  I always have the parents sign in using paper and pencil.  I have to go back and manually enter all their information.  I created a Google Form that collects specific information and puts into a Google spreadsheet for me to look at later.  The other platform that I started in the program was a social media connection.  Through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, marketing a program has become so much easier.  Anyone who is on the social platform and involved in the program can share pictures and advocate for the program.

Technology is useful in other ways than productivity.  Technology can assist with one of the most important elements in education.  Assessment is how educators measure what a student has learned.  Formative and Summative are the two assessment students are measured.  A formative assessment is during the learning, and happens often and in many different formats.  A summative assessment happens at the end of the learning period, and is a cumulative of everything the student should have learned.  Technology can help individualize assessment in the music classroom.  It is difficult to assess every student’s voice and progress in a large ensemble, but it can be done.  I have students sing in small groups sometimes to try and assess, but it can take up so much class time.  I have found technology that can aid in this process.  With the aid of Google tools such as Google Classroom and Google Forms, a music educator can assess students with speed and accuracy.  I teach in a one to one school, and we have started communicating and assigning with Google Classroom.  With technology like SightReadingFactory.com, I can upload melodies to Classroom and create an assignment.  The students can open the assignment then upload a recording of their attempt to read the given melody.  This is a great tool to isolate each student voice to summative assess which student can sing the melody correctly.  Another Great tool Google Forms can help with assessment as well.  Quizzes can be created through Google Forms to share with your students.  I have started to share the Google Forms through Google Classroom as an assignment.  Google Forms can be set up to grade the quiz for you, and send the responses to the students.  This makes for a lighter workload, and can help the teacher focus on the important part of the assessment. 

Technology is a great tool and can heighten the educational experience while helping in the organization of the music program.  Before I started this class, I thought I knew a lot about technology, but now I realize that I must keep discovering.  Technology is a growing changing force that will continue to have an impact on teaching.  I will continue to find new ways to use technology to engage students in music and the program, while finding new ways to assess student knowledge.  

Bauer, W. I. (2014). Music learning today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music. New York City: Oxford University Press.

Technology tools to facilitate Instructional Design

Michael Baker Brown

Technology tools to facilitate Instructional Design

Dr. Bazan

This week in class, I am beginning to work to build a WebQuest for Instructional Design.  We are going to use Google sites to facilitate the WebQuest creation.  A WebQuest is an online interactive lesson plan (Bauer, 104).  I have used the Classic version of Google sites before starting this class to create a website for our choir program.  The website has proved very useful, but a WebQuest is something completely different from an informational website. 

WebQuests are designed by individuals to be an interactive differentiated experience through the internet, and are built to facilitate learning within the given context.  WebQuests are a technology-based type of learning called Project-Based Learning.  “Project-Based learning (PBL) is an approach to instructional design that operationalizes contemporary learning theories (Bauer, 150).  PBLs contain eight elements that are crucial components of a project.

1.      Focuses on standard based key concepts that are important the content being taught. 

2.      Develops creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and other 21^st-century skills. 

3.      Utilizes the internet to create an in-depth learning experience.

4.      Focuses on essential questions. 

5.      Helps students stay motivate by making sure they have prior knowledge of content.

6.      Students are allowed to be unique in their approach of the project.

7.      Allows for student feedback and reflection. 

8.      Allows students to present projects on much broader platform than the physical classroom. 

I can see a WebQuest being a useful technology tool in my music education classroom.  WebQuests could be provided as lessons left for students that substitutes can provide.  No longer will the music educator have to sacrifice musical learning on days they are not present in the classroom.  WebQuest are better than leaving a worksheet or movie questionnaire.  Students are engaged in an individual interactive guided experience.  WebQuest are also useful in many music class form such as general music, music theory, or performance ensembles.  The first small-scale WebQuest I will attempt to design will ask students to research and analyze a favorite song to discover more about the text/meaning, composer/writer/performer, and genre/style.  They will also will also research other versions of the piece to compare and contrast to their original choice.  Students will submit their assignments using Google slides.  I plan to continue to create and utilize WebQuests for lessons in the future. 

References

Bauer, W. I. (2014). Music learning today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music. New York City: Oxford University Press.

Responding to Music with Technology

Michael Baker Brown

Dr. Bazan

Responding to Music with Technology

Music surrounds everyone through television, radio, streaming apps and sites, grocery stores, elevators, and shopping malls.  Music can evoke different kinds of responses in a number of ways based on their mood and background.   People passively hear music everywhere, but music educators must help students learn to listen to music.  Listening to music is a focused practice.  

Students do not often know many other genres of music than what is presented to them culturally.  Music educators should provide times that students can hear and listen to music in the classroom. 

Many times in education, the teacher is always the person selecting the material the students perform.  This formalized form of listening usually focuses on educational musical elements.  Students need to also have an intuitive listening experience in the music education classroom.  New technologies such as Pandora https://www.pandora.com, Spotify https://open.spotify.com, or other music streaming can be used in the classroom.  Classes can create and share playlists through these technologies.

Another tool I discovered in my research this week is social bookmarking.  I have never heard of this before, and I think it will change my life.  I focused on the social bookmarking website diigo https://www.diigo.com.  I bookmark sites often, but constantly lose track because they get cluttered.  Diigo is a site that I can use to organize my bookmarks, and makes everything easy to find.  This site could be used to facilitate the music education experience for students.  An educator can create a group on this free website, and share it with the students.  The students can research and bookmark information that is useful to the content being taught.  Through technology music educators can help students become better listeners.    

Bauer, W. I. (2014). Music learning today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music. New York City: Oxford University Press.

Audacity and other great teaching tools

Michael Baker Brown

Technology that educates

Dr. Bazan

The public education design has changed a lot from the industrial age.  Classrooms were set up in rows like assembly lines, and students learned in a fashion to meet the needs of the time.  The classroom has evolved to include modern technology.  When I was in high school choir 30 years ago, I remember technology like an overhead projector being present in the classroom.  We wrote and marked in our scores much as we do now, but instead of using solfege, we used the numbering system.  This was time of videocassette and video tape, and recording sound quality was not very good.  Now we have technology available that can assist the music educator in the classroom with recording, sound editing and engineering, performance, and composition readily available and cheap.  Recording systems were very expensive and large when I was in high school, but now anyone can record with smallest devise. 

I teach high school choir and I use a number of technologies to aid in my classroom.  Audacity is a great tool I use in the classroom in many different fashions.  I first starting using Audacity as a recording tool in the classroom.  I record the rehearsal with Audacity using my laptop, and I can play it back for the students.  This helps when trying to accomplish key concepts such as phrasing, balance, vowel shape, or diction.  The students may think they are performing at the level needed for clarity in any one of the concepts, but when students hear the recording of themselves, they can tell if they accomplished the task.   I also use Audacity to cut and edit tracks for student rehearsal.  Every year my students audition for All-Region and All-State.  They audition against electronic accompaniment.  I use Audacity to create audition guess spots.  The wave function makes it easy to zoom up and cut to exact beat I want in the song.  I export the guess spots and upload them to google classroom.  My students can access the tracks with any devise as long as they are signed up to the class.  I encourage students to use it when they practice.  I also use classroom and Audacity to create assignments for my students.  I use electronic accompaniments to give individual assessments of student’s progress in performance. 

Other technology tools I use to benefit the students in feedback and practice are sightreadingfactory.com and smartmusic.  Over the past few years, I have started using Sightreadingfactory more than smartmusic because I feel it has more options for choral ensembles.  When used properly these tools can build a students understand and skills in any concept of music.  Students can use technology to assist with practice, while teachers use the same technology to monitor each student individually.  Using technology to practice can also help to motivate students.  Music educators need to utilize technologies that can help students become more efficient in music concepts.  Many new technologies exist out there now that are easily accessible and not costly, and music educators need to use them in ways to create self-motivated musicians.