slideshow

Back to school_night

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Here is my back to school night slideshow with audio.  I really hate my voice, I need to start talking clearer and mumble less.  This portion of the slide show presentation was easier for me.  I am already familiar with music and sound editing programs, I own Pro Tools and Garageband and I have worked with Audacity and many other programs. Most of them are easy to use and as you jump from one program to another, you start to see they they operate very similar. 
After seeing the presentation about power point presentations and how they can be more harmful than helpful, I realized that there are a lot of pitfalls that I may have fell in had I not seen it. Still, my presentation still needs a lot of work.  I think I'll do much better when planning out my next presentation.  Or if I were to plan a whole lesson using it.  I really like the video where the science teacher was able to relay the information through a presentation over the internet and save class time for the hands on part.  That really got me thinking about the applications for music class.  It would be great if I could find a way for them to practice music together with these programs.

Back to School Night Presentation

I made a slide show presentation for the parents of my students when they come to see me on "back to school night".  In it, I brought up the 4 C's of 21st century learning (critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration), which I have been learning about at this website 21st Century Learning.  Then I ran the parents through a project that we would be doing in my class, a sound poem.  This is when we take a short poem and create "soundscapes" to be played while the poem is being read aloud.  The project usually takes 2 or 3 classes and in that time the students will have demonstrated the the 4 C's. Plus there is cross discipline learning with language arts. It's a really great project and the kids have a lot of fun with it.

Being able to create a presentation and post it online is a great thing. I really like the quote that professor Bigsby wrote in the weekly assignments " you have just expanded the walls of your classroom", it made me think of what I was doing and the potential of what can be done by way of communication and collaboration with parents, students and other teachers. Thinking back to when I was in school, I can see limited we were and how freeing the internet can be for educators. There are so many applications for it, maybe even some that haven't even been thought of yet.

Tech Standards and Lesson Plans

Tech Standards

After reading the Technology Standards in the NJCCCS, my first thought was "are schools going to start having a mandatory technology class?" Improbable but not impossible.  And thinking back to my class last semester, Democratic Teaching, I remember trying to make lessons that included cross disciplinary standards.  So I guess every one of the standards could be implemented in an existing classroom.
For me, being in the music program, I would utilize of the communication portion of the standards and find away to interact with music classrooms in different countries, with different types of music.
When going on job interviews and looking into schools that I would like to work at, I think it would be great to work for people that were like the ones from Chatam High School.  I think it's important to be forward thinking, especially in education. (maybe even ahead of the game a bit if we want our students to be current when they graduate).  If I want to try and do things in my classroom, like try and interact (live) with another class around the world, I would need to be working with people who understand that we, as educators, should be looking for better ways to do things.

Communication and Collaboration

I decided to think of a lesson based on the NJCCCS 8.1 Educational Technology. C. Communication and Collaboration  and environments support the learning process and foster collaboration in solving local or global issues and problems. The CPI is 8.1.8 C1 (8th grade), participate in an online learning community with learners from other countries to understand their perspectives and global problems or issues, propose possible solutions.

What I understand this to mean is that this standard wants students to be able to talk with other students around the world on specific subjects.  This will help kids understand different perspectives that people have around the word and therefore ready them for a global workplace. 

As I said in an earlier blog, I think it would be great if we can have an online interaction between two music classes around the world.  I would have the students talk about typical rhythms and melody found in there culture and perform them for each other.  Also I would like the students to get insight into how the music came to be.  Music can be a great historic indicator of a culture because the musicians are influenced by the society the live in.  Politics, economics, geography, these things help shape an artist's work.

Dover Township

For my second assignment, I researched Dover Township school district in Morris County.  I live here in Dover and have been for about 3 years so I was curious as too what their website looked like.  But before I begin with the website I would like to talk about the town.
Dover is made up of mostly a Hispanic community, about 70 percent,  comprised of Puerto Rican, Columbian, Chillian and Mexican.  Spanish is the main language spoken in this town which makes me a minority here.  But I love it, great people, great restaurants.
The school has a DFG A rating which is the lowest of the socioeconomic groups, but you wouldn't know it looking at the school district's website dover township.  It is a fully comprehensive website, it has almost everything that Jamie Mackenzie mentions in her article "Why in the World Wide Web".
There is a great home page with an introductory and mission statement, there are links to other resources offered on the web and I did find data relevant to specific subjects.
What I didn't find was any gallery of work done by the students and I didn't find individual teacher pages but there were pages for individual classes that had assignments and resources on them.  Also, there was teacher contact information.   All in all, for a a district factor group A website, I thought it was well done.

Tech and Me

I've been out of school for a long time now and it's hard for me to get use to the scale at which computers are being used in the classroom.   Since doing my observation last semester, I've seen it used from software that teaches different subjects to the students, to smart boards, to networking with the parents in order to keep them up to speed on their child's homework.  None of this was around when I was in school, but I think it's a great thing.
And like I said, it's going to take some getting use to.  I don't use computers too much in my daily life besides checking my e-mail, editing music and editing video.  I'm not really into social networking either,  I have a Facebook account but I rarely use it.  I do see the usefulness of networking on a professional level; finding out what's new in my field, communicating with students parents.  So I'm going to have to learn to love technology (not that I ever hated it)