Using the Yamaha Harmony Director Keyboard

In my final week of the semester I reflect on how this blog assignment has held me accountable to not only use this new technology in my classroom, it has increased my students learning exponentially.  I have obtained the ability to demonstrate intervals that are out-of-tune, help students recognize the beats of interference, and adjust the notes individually to make the interval perfectly in tune, and to model perfectly adjusted chords. Finally, I would like to share that learning to better teach intonation has been very enjoyable for me. My own listening skills and the performance skills of my ensembles have improved noticeably in the past couple of months. Music education students are beginning to learn this information in college, becoming comfortable using the tools available in a more efficient way. It is exciting to see that, with better information and improved instruction, we can help our students master these skills, further improving the performance of our ensembles a...

I found out about an app iDoceo this week. It's used to organize seating charts, random name chooser, assessments, and more. iDoceo an iOS app that needs no internet access to use. You can set it up by having class rosters emailed to you, opening the email with the iPad you will use for iDoceo, tell iDoceo to create a class from the list, and then begin creating tabs within the app. Those tabs involve charts, assessments in the form of video and audio, attendance charts, behavior notes, and more. It keeps everything digitally organized. You can backup everything with google drive, dropbox, and other cloud-based storage services. Though the app is on the pricier end, once you learn how to use it, you will be using it often to organize numerous charts and assessments. iDoceo has some of the best tutorials found on their website.  Because I don't always have access to the internet when traveling with the marching band and we do not have an ipad with cellular service, this app ...

One of the biggest struggles for music teachers is finding tools to help with assessment. In the blog I am responding to this week regarding assessments I found one tool that seems to be pretty promising. Socrative is an online tool that will work great because it is free, students do not need email addresses to access it, and it can be accessed from multiple devices. Socrative Create a free account and name your classroom Create a test that can include images, multiple choice questions, and short answer questions. You can use this for pre- and post-testing (for SGOs and SLOs) as well as exit tickets. Launch your test from your teacher account Students go to  socrative . com  (or access the iOS app depending on the device) and click on student login Students enter your classroom name Data from a pre-test in Socrative They then enter their names Then they begin the test On your device, you can see the answers as they come in live Once finished, click finish...

This week I was inspired by a music ed tech blog to try using Google Slides to create my own app.  The author discussed how Google Slides is a web-based tool that generates its own link, and allows you to link one slide to another slide, then you could create a simple app that serves numerous purposes.  He decided to create an app that would serve as a note naming game. This would be a Jeopardy-type of game where students would practice naming notes. Here are the steps he used to create the app using Google Slides: "I started with a blank Google Slide Template and looked for a font that would imitate the Jeopardy font and turned the background blue. I added the instructions and made the game a cross-curricular math connection by having the students add up their own scores  (see figure 1). Figure 3 I added a graphic of a quarter note inside a door frame. I clicked on the graphic and then clicked on the “link” icon. This brought up a menu of where to go w...

This week I found an online music ed tech blog that discussed the use of podcasts in the elementary classroom. From the title of the article I assumed it meant they were using podcasts in the classroom and students were simply listening to them. However, much to my surprise they were actually having the students CREATE the podcasts as a project-based learning activity. With younger elementary, they used podcasts to give the students a chance to “show what they know.” These are very short, simple podcasts that has them talking about, reflecting on, concepts they have learned in class. The article explained how to record these podcasts with simple tools that re readily available to any educator.  The following is an excerpt from the article that explains the process the author uses: "For these younger elementary podcasts, I still follow what Meredith suggests for older students when podcasting: think, script, record, edit, and publish. I thought about our musical objective ...

This week I found an article on the EdTech website titled  Tech in the Music Classroom Creates Efficiencies, Improves Accessibility by Meghan Bogardus Cortez.  The article is based on t he Special Music School at Kaufman Music Center in New York City was established with this research in mind. The school, which teaches music as its core subject, frequently ranks among the highest in standardized test scores, reports Education Dive.  This caught my attention immediately, a school that teach music as its core subject? It was amazing to discover how technology is being used in various ways in the performing arts schools.  Some performing arts schools are using 3D printers to create custom musical instruments that better fit students’ bodies and teach them about design, physics and resonance of instruments.   For seasoned music teachers, technology is also quite useful. Just as any other teacher might use data to track student progress, music teachers can work wit...