Although I think that advance organizers can be useful tools for learning, I keep thinking back to what was discussed during the Marzano module. Advance organizers have some of the lowest effect sizes of all the strategies he researched. I agree with Dell’Olio and Donk (2007) when they argue the reason research is not strongly supporting the use of advance organizers is that there is so much confusion regarding what an advance organizer really is. Ausubel is not even very clear in his definition of what an advance organizer is. As a music teacher, I think the most useful use for an advance organizer would be a concept map. For each new unit I would have students create concept maps as they learn. I would start with them creating one when they first begin the unit then updating it as they learn more and more. This helps students visually understand what is happening in their brains which in my experience has helped them learn at a much deeper level.
The Philosophies of Curriculum and Instruction chapter was a very intriguing examination of the philosophies. Although I do consider myself an “Informed ecelectic” because I “see the strengths of each philosophy and borrow ideas in a deliberate way”, I cannot see the practical use for curriculum as technology as an orchestra teacher(Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007, p 43). Specifically, mastery learning is something that cannot be applied to orchestra. A fundamental aspect of mastery learning is that students must “demonstrate competency in one skill before they move on to the next skill in the continuum”(Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007, p 36). To use mastery teaching, I must make sure that every student can play a certain song before moving on to the next. Although this is a foundation of the Suzuki Method (http://suzukiassociation.org/teachers/guides/schools/) and useful for individual instruction, it is difficult to implement in a larger class because some students learn faster than others and will get bored playing songs that are well below their level, not to mention losing the ability to progress to a higher level at their own pace. Boredom will result in classroom mismanagement which will result in nobody learning.
Though I have taken several online courses at SPU, EDTC 6536 was by far my favorite one. I have learned that through the use of additional resources such as Voicethread and Screencasts, online courses can be very exciting and engaging. Instructional Technology and Information Management has taught me several key ideas which I would love to integrate into my future teaching career. The first is the idea of a “reusable podcast” which Dr. Kathleen Bacer introduces in her paper, Utilizing auditory and visual tools to engage the 21st Century eLearner . Many topics in music are repetitious, not only from one year to the next, but also repetitious for different levels. For example, I will probably create a re-usable podcast to give students tips on how to practice and I would use it every year as an optional extra credit opportunity for middle and high school students.
The next topic I will bring away from this course is utilizing Web 2.0 technology mentioned in John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler’s article Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail and Learning 2.0. I am particularly interested in the collaborative EtherPad. Although EtherPad was not mentioned by Brown & Adler (2008), I believe that its use is a great way to begin to use Web 2.0 technology that is both free and easy to implement. As a “plan of action” step for Web 2.0 technology, I will create an EtherPad document for students to design a set of classroom rules and another EtherPad document as a rubric for the concert review assignment. One problem with using Etherpad for something like this would be that students may not participate if it is an optional assignment. I would make contributing to the documents part of the students’ grade which should solve that obstacle.
One final idea which I will most likely utilize in my teaching practice is the concept of digital citizenship. According to RCW 28A.405.030, teachers must teach morality to their students. Modeling appropriate use of technology as explained in “Digital Citizenship”, Ribble et. al. (2004) is something that is becoming more and more important as technology is creating a new venue for students to use appropriately or inappropriately. I will utilize technology a lot as a teacher, especially if I end up teaching in Lake Washington School District, which is my goal. Consequently, I will make sure that I use it in appropriate ways without violating written(such as district policy) and unwritten(such as those mentioned in Ribble et. al.[2004]) rules of digital citizenship.
As part of the course EDTC 6536, I created a Jing screencast with instructions for utilizing a Google calendar as a teacher: http://tiny.cc/cv4OM
After reading the article titled “Teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Learning Activity Types: Curriculum-based Technology Integration Reframed” by Harris, Koehler and Mishra (2009), I immediately began to reflect on what areas of teaching I was missing. I know that my content knowledge is good, my technology knowledge is pretty good, and my pedagogical knowledge is good. However, when I start to combine the different aspects, I realize that I am probably lacking in the areas where they combine. I liken the aspects like different limbs moving. The aspect I seem to be lacking is coordination. I would like to coordinate the different aspects of teaching but I think the best way to do that is not necessarily through professional development explained by Harris Koehler and Mishra (2009) but by being encouraged to integrate all of them and document that progress. I will learn what works to integrate and what does not.
The primary problem with TPACK is that Technology knowledge can (and should in my opinion) be combined with Pedagogical knowledge. What it looks like to me is that the authors took one aspect of pedagogy and separated it out from pedagogical knowledge. Why then do we not separate out Psycological knowledge from Pedagogical knowledge? Or perhaps one could separate out Communication knowledge? I think that understanding the different aspects of pedagogy is important, but teachers should not waste any more time thinking about new labels and take more time to improve their teaching.
Here’s a blog post about someone using TPACK and bringing up some of their issues with it:
Here is my Five Minute Technology Tip and corresponding Written Document
I believe that this technology tip will be very useful for music teachers because so many of them have such a hard time coordinating concerts between middle schools and high schools. This way, teachers would be able to schedule concerts as they go and could also work as a “first come, first serve” for choosing concert dates.
Creating this technology tip was a lot more work than I expected; I kept having to re-record the screencast because I would make an error in what I was saying or I would decide to add or change what I would teach about.
In the article, “Digital Citizenship”, Ribble et. al. explain that “Digital behavior makes everyone a role model for students.” This is important because teachers are to be models for their students and exemplify those characteristics they wish to observe in their students. If a teacher writes an email to a parent and says “ttyl, Mr. Townley” at the end, it is not appropriate because it shows the student’s parents that the teacher is not respectful of the parents and that the teacher is not leaving a professional distance between his or her self and the parent and subsequently may have the same difficulty interacting with the students. The students may also see their teacher using inappropriate shorthand in emails and thinks that it is okay to do so.
UPDATE: I have done my research and found that Ribble has kept up with technology and created his own blog about digital citizenship:
http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/
It is important to note that teaching digital citizenship is only a small portion of the overall goal in education to teach citizenship. I also would like to note that this article, because it is about technology, should be updated. It was written in 2004 and does not even mention anything relating to Web 2.0 which is now used in many contexts. Also, the article mentions chat rooms, but I do not know anyone who has joined a chat room in at least 6 or 8 years. It must be updated.
This week’s articles really challenged me to think about how I would use educational gaming in a music classroom. There are many examples of what Resnick refers to as “edutainment” games which teach students various musical concepts and blend them with some sort of game. The problem with these is that they leave out an important aspect in music as well as most areas in life: creativity. I would like to see my students perhaps someday creating music games which require them to understand the concepts on such a deeper level. I think creating a game would be an awesome place for cross-curricular development because the student could create a game and incorporate English in the way they write, reading to discover what to include in their game, as well as music which they could either write or incorporate some other way.
The principal flaw which I found to be in both articles is that participation in the programs they mention is not compulsory. Students come to the computer center or they attend a workshop on “crickets”, but I did not find any evidence when students are required to create a game or a new cricket invention.
In Resnick’s article, “All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten” it is mentioned that “Unfortunately, after leaving kindergarten, children
have not had the opportunity to iterate on what they learned in kindergarten, to continue to develop as creative thinkers.” According to my understanding of the article, the author is suggesting that a majority of classroom time should be spent creating new ideas. This seems like an ideal concept until you think about the implications of it. By only allowing students to create their own learning experiences, you eliminate the possibility for them to learn what has taken so many hundreds or thousands of years to discover. I’m sure students could eventually discover how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide on their own given enough time, but why rediscover what has already been discovered hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Creativity should be valued highly in the classroom, but only after the students have been taught about what is already known.
Here is a website from a music technology teacher with some resources she has created:
In Ertmer’s article, “Teacher Pedagogical Beliefs”, the most important concept I gained was that teachers will not be willing to use a technological tool if they it does not align with their beliefs about teaching and learning in general. For example, if a teacher does not value collaborative learning, they will be very unlikely to use a tool such as a Wiki, which bases its value almost entirely on the fact that it is collaborative. I value the importance of collaboration with parents regarding student achievement and I would really consider all technological tools which allow me to collaborate with parents. This would be doing, according to Ertmer, what “instructional technologists might consider introducing technology as a tool to accomplish that which is already valued (e.g., communicating with parents, locating relevant instructional resources).”
The power of vicarious experiences also helped me to understand how my educational beliefs are shaped. I met with a teacher who was successful in his use of podcasts and blogs with his music classes. Seeing him implement technology which I thought would never be useful in a music classroom helped change my beliefs regarding the use of technology in the music classroom.
This is an interesting interview with professors’ first experiences with technology:
In music I could use wikis as part of the sectional group work for orchestra. I would create a wiki for each section: first violin, second violin, viola, cello, and bass where they would be able to go onto the website to discuss the more complex areas of music where they struggle. They can give tips to each other and discover the best ways to practice different sections of the music.
Wikis are an advantageous use of technology for music because an important part of music is its “chemistry” in practicing and playing together. Wikis allow students to respond to one another and influence each other in a positive way. Music lends itself towards constructivism because all members of an orchestra are useful at some point or another and everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute to the group just like Wikis allow all members to create their response.
I found this link to a wiki music guide: not too useful for K-12 music education, but interesting nonetheless:
As a suggestion, I would like to suggest that instead of hiring more IT personnel, school districts should provide stipends to current teachers who are successfully implementing technology. The stipends would be to compensate teachers for training other teachers how to implement the new technologies. I think that a teacher is more willing to learn from another teacher than they are an IT person sent from the district. I believe this is because the teachers are able to picture themselves succesfully implementing the technology because they see an actual teacher using the technology.
This article also taught me the difference between simply using technology and using it to help student learning. Teachers need to be more creative with their use of technology. They should be teaching students not only the content, but the newest technologies as well. This year I may be starting an elementary music position in a classroom with a chalkboard and chairs-nothing else. I hope to begin to utilize some technology, especially when it comes to encouraging students to use technology on their own.
