Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog

On Monday, August 11, I will be presenting at the New York State Summer Music Conference at the Crowne Plaza Albany in Albany, New York. As a graduate of Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY, I had attended and performed at the winter New York State School Music Association (NYSSMA) conference, but had never attended the summer conference until last summer. One of my college friends asked me to present an elementary music technology session last summer when the summer conference was in Buffalo. I really liked how this conference was organized. Each committee from classroom music, technology, band, jazz, strings, and chorus, had lined up some excellent clinicians. An attendee has a wonderful array of music educational sessions to choose from. At the reception last year I met Pat White, the head of the NYSSMA Technology Committee, who invited me to present a session at this summer’s conference. I am so honored to present this year and to attend some of the other sessions. From looking at the brochure, I can see that this will be an amazing conference. Clinicians such as Dr. John Feierabend (one of my personal favorites), Deborah Stehlik (caught her session last year and she presents some excellent music and movement activities), performer such as Mark O’Connor (terrific violinist), and many more will be presenting and performing at this conference. It is not a conference to miss!

If you are planning on attending, please stop by my session titled “Using Technology as a Tool to Assess in the Elementary Music Classroom” on Monday, August 11 from 2:15-3:30 in the Webster Room. If you are assessing your elementary music students, this session shows you ways that technology can assist with the process. You do not need to be an advanced technology-user in order to appreciate some of the tools that I show you. I hope to see you there!

As posted in my last blog, I will be hosting the next Music Education Blog Carnival.

What is the Music Education Blog Carnival?
The Music Blog Carnival was created and is maintained by Dr. J. Pisano of MusTech.net and Joel of SoYouWantToTeach.com in order to promote the great works being done by Music Education Bloggers across the Internet. As written by Dr. J Pisano.

When it is published?
The Music Education Blog Carnival is published on the 1st of every month and is a recognized member of the communities of blogs indexed by BlogCarnival.com. As written by Dr. J Pisano.

Do I have to submit a new blog entry, or can I submit an entry that I have already written and posted?
You can submit a new blog entry or submit one that you have already written. For example, for the past two publications, I submitted entries that I had already posted on this site. They were entries that people or other blog sites told me were very informative and helpful.

How do I submit an entry to September’s edition of Music Education Blog Carnival?

Here’s the link for your blog post submittal for the carnival:
http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_4443.html

I sincerely hope that you will submit a post to the next edition. It is a great way for others to read your posts and bring traffic to your current blog. Most importantly, it is a wonderful and therapeutic way for music educators to share knowledge, insights, perspectives, and reflections on music education!

Note: All writings submitted to the Music Education Blog Carnival are examined to ensure that they are valid, interesting, and related to our discussion topic(s).

Congratulations to Joel of www.soyouwanttoteach.com and Joe of musictechnology.net, who just presented the second edition of the Music Education Blog Carnival! The Music Education Blog Carnival is a compilation of blog entries from a variety of blogs that speak to music education.

The entries this month are outstanding! Some contain pure humor, some contain great advice, and some contain thought-provoking issues and views on music. I highly recommend you checking the carnival out because you will find at least one blog entry that will appeal to you. I thank Joel and Joe for including my entry about SMART Board in the Elementary Music Classroom.

If you blog and would like to submit an article/blog post, click here. Their next edition will be September 1st and will be hosted here on this blog! I felt as a blogger, musician, educator, clinician, and president-elect of TI:ME, this would be a good site to host the next edition of the Music Education Blog Carnival. I hope that you will consider submitting a past post or writing a new on for the September edition. The beginning of the school year is a perfect time to begin blogging again!

Continuing with my posts on how the nine national standards from The National Association for Music Education (MENC) can be enhanced by technology in the elementary general music classroom, today I approach standard #8. FYI: This is out of order because I have blogged about Standards 1-4.

Content Standard #8: Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts.

This lesson came to me yesterday as I was thinking about integration. For the next two days, I am at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in San Antonio, Texas. I am presenting at the Avid Education Booth (includes Avid, Sibelius, M-Audio, Pinnacle, and Digidesign) on Sibelius’s Groovy Music Series of Groovy Shapes (ages 5-7), Groovy Jungle (ages 7-9), and Groovy City (ages 9-11). These programs teach music theory and composition skills using animations and pictures. They are wonderfully geared for elementary grades (PreK-Grade 6). As I present, I continuously show my students’ works created in Groovy Shapes, Jungle, and City.

Standard #8 came to me as I was presenting Groovy Jungle because this program is set in the rainforest. My 3rd graders study the rainforest in science and they are continuously writing about the facts of the rainforest. In Groovy Jungle Create Mode, there is a typing tool. The 3rd graders will type in facts about the rainforest. Then, they will use the rhythm trees, the melody butterflies, the arpeggio flies, the chord spiderwebs, the bass line bushes, and the bonus sounds that consist of a variety of animals found in the rainforests, to create a song that compliments their written facts. These completed songs can be posted on groovymusic.com where parents and students can go to view and listen to the song as it is seen and heard in the program itself.

If you have never seen the Groovy Series, I encourage you to read about it at Sibelius’s website and to check out some students’ works on Groovymusic.com.

If you are at the NECC Conference, please come to one of my sessions on Tuesday, July 1, at 11:00 am and 3:00 pm or on Wednesday, July 2, at 11:00 am and 1:30 pm, at booth 8222. Sibelius is giving out a free Groovy triple pack (Shapes, Jungle, and City) to one participant at each of the sessions.

Have you ever used and of the Groovy Music Series in your music classroom? Or, have you even enhanced a standard #8 lesson with technology?

From Monday to Wednesday of this week, I taught a TI:ME 1B class at Suitland High School, specifically in their Center for the Visual & Performing Arts. (Jim Frankel taught the final two days due to a family commitment–thank you Jim!) I had a wonderful time teaching these 10 educators because they dove into each assignment and project with such devotion and commitment. They all created wikispaces, blogs, podcasts, and powerpoints for their music classrooms. It was a joy to see and hear. Their passion for teaching music and learning new ways to enhance their current lessons made it a privilege to work them this week.

We created a blog for them to answer specific questions about the content of the class and how it would affect their music classes. To read their responses, please check out the blog at http://suitland.musiced.net and click on the comments.

Now I am preparing to head to the NECC conference in Texas. I will be presenting about the Groovy Music Series from Sibelius. If you are attending, please stop by and say hi.

NECC 2008 - San Antonio

Next week, I will be in San Antonio with Sibelius at the National Educational Computing Conference. If you attending, please stop by and say hi. Written by Amy Burns

The following is posted by Josh Morgan to give you more information at NECC:

I’ll be at (National Educational Computing Conference) NECC 2008 in San Antonio with Sibelius, Freepath, Riverside and Curriculum Advantage.

Want to meet anyone from the above companies? Drop me a note at josh@morgandorado.com. Member of the media? We’re always happy to talk with you and we’ll have users there who can help you out with anything you are working on.

A few things to try an attend:

EdubloggerCon - Saturday - the unconference before the conference - I don’t get in until Sunday night so I’ll miss but you should be there!

Music Playground - Wednesday 9:30-2:30. If you are interested in creating music using your computer, this is the place for you. Check it out. Would love for anyone attending or thinking about attending to post a note on their blog so we can spread the word! Sibelius will have two stations there showing Groovy Music on a SMART Board and some basic ProTools in the other station.

Jason Hubbard who is leading the Music Playground has put together a list of helpful links on Delicious. Written by Josh Morgan

For the next three days I am teaching a TI:ME 1B course at Suitland High School in Maryland. If you have never taken a TI:ME course and would like to learn more about integrating technology into your current music curriculum, then I highly encourage to to take one of their numerous workshops. When I acquired a music lab at my school, I did not know a thing about music technology because when I graduated college, it was just beginning to take off, but it was not a requirement for a music education degree. That has changed in the last decade. When I needed to understand and learn how to integrate technology into the music classroom, I began taking the TI:ME workshops with such experts and leaders of music technology such as Dr. Scott Watson and Dr. Tom Rudolph.

The TI:ME 1B course is one of my favorite courses because as a participant you get to audition numerous educational music programs, educational music websites, create a podcast, a blog, a website, and further your knowledge of powerpoint. As a teacher of this course, you get to show the participants how to create and use all of these applications so that they are applicable to their classroom settings.

A blog was created for the course so that the participants could answer a question about the topics we covered that day in class. Please check out the blog at: http://suitland.musiced.net/

I will also continue blogging on this site 2-3 times a week throughout the summer. I sincerely hope that you will keep reading and leave comments about how your summer is going!

Today I presented and attended the Maine Music Educators Association All-State Conference. I presented “Technology-Enhanced Elementary Music Lessons” in Little Hall at the University of Maine. I enjoyed the day thoroughly. The participants were wonderful and asked great questions. I also attended a couple of technology workshops on microphones and music library software. Both were excellent presentations. In addition, I attended the “Math of Rhythm” workshop by Tony Vacca, and I must say that it rejuvenated me. At the end of the school year, I tend to “run on empty” and attending a drumming workshop where I get to play and make music brings a certain happiness to me.

Finally, one of my favorite conductors from when I was in All-State was here: Anthony Maiello from George Mason University. He held two conducting workshops and directed the Director Band Performance.

If you attended my session or the conference, please leave a comment and let me know what you enjoyed about the conference!

Last year at the MENC Eastern Divisional Conference in Hartford Connecticut, I had the pleasure of meeting Michael Davis, the General Music VP of the Maine Music Educators Association, when he attended one of my sessions. He invited me to present this year at their conference from May 15 & May 16 at the University of Maine in Orono, Maine. I will be presenting a session titled “Technology-Enhanced Elementary Music Lessons.” This session is focused on utilizing technology at the elementary level. Workshop attendees will receive lesson plans and see these lessons used with the students from my K-3 general music classroom (via DVD). If you are attending the Maine Music Conference, I hope that you will stop by and check out my session on Friday at 10:50 am.