Integrated Lesson Plan

      For my lesson plan, which I believe is more like a unit plan, my class will be learning about the music of Africa (sub-Sahara).  This unit, which I believe will take 8 classes, will cover the history of African music, traditional rhythms, what events they are used at (weddings, etc), compositional techniques, traditional African instruments and their culture.  Assessments will include a mid-unit test, which will include vocabulary and recognition of instruments, rhythm and form.  And a final project, which will be a composition of an original piece written, performed and recorded by the students.
     The technology that will be used in this unit, will be 1. research 2. veiwing /listening and 3. recording.  Within the unit, the students will watch you tube video's (which I have selected) of songs from different parts of Africa showing performers who use traditional African instruments.  Also, students will split into groups and research an instrument and one country which we heard a musical example from, in an effort to learn about their culture.  The students will also get a brief lesson in garage band so that we can record their final performance.
    Some of the essential questions that I want to answer in this lesson are - What characterizes African music?  How does it compare to western music? What is the history of African music?  What is the culture/social relevance of African music? Are there different types of African music?
    I hope this brief overview of my lesson is clear and detailed enough to give you an idea of what's to come.  If there is anything else that you would like to know at this point, please let me know.

Sexting

This week I learned about the term "sexting" which means to text sexual content. I didn't know it had it's own catchy phrase.  After reading the article and watching the videos on Hope Witsell and Jesse Logan sexting, I learned about the problems that can occur when teens get involved in this.  In both cases, the girls sent a provocative picture message of themselves to one recipient, which ended up in the hands of all of the students in thier schools.  The classmates taunted and teased the girls so badly that suicide seemed to be the only way out.
My first reaction is to try and let these teens, who feel like they are in a hopeless situation with only one way out, know that there is hope.  I want to tell them that things get better, that in hindsight, this is not that dire of a situation.  But I know that adolescents don't have the ability to see things the way we do; to them nothing is more important and never will be more important than what is happening to them right now.  It's such a sad situation.
The question has been asked what is the schools responsibility, if any, so schools have to use technology responsibly?  First of all, one of the mothers mentioned that there was a law broken here, so that should be addressed. But are schools responsible for teaching students every law?  If there is a moral question on how technology is used, who is the school to say what moral and what's immoral?
I think the easy way out for a school is to say it's not their responsibility, but I also believe that they would be doing a diservice.  Schools are not just places for students to learn the core subjects and then go home.  In schools, children learn how to interact with other people, communication, social behavior, basic life skills.  Schools are where adolescents learn about the world around them, on a social and profesional level.  If a school wants to provide the best education, technological responsibilty should be in the lesson plan.