I am super excited about creating podcasts because as a music teacher, I am constantly making practice CDs for my students. That is, IF they bring me a blank CD and IF they remember to pick it up and IF they bring it home... Now, I can make a podcast for them to practice along with, post it on my blog and VOILA ~ Private violin lessons for free! I created a podcast for my 3rd grade beginning cellos to practice along with at home. Let me know what you think!
BEGINNING CELLO PODCAST
Monday, January 4, 2010
Sunday, December 20, 2009
More Web 2.0...
Before taking this course, I thought that the most helpful tool I could learn how to use in the classroom would be a podcast, because I would no longer have to make practice CDs for my students to take home and practice along with. I still think that podcasts will be a vital tool, but I am even more excited to learn about the social bookmarking sites. I had never heard of this and it is going to make everything that I do on the internet so much easier and more convenient. One of the tutorials said that a big advantage is if you have more than one computer or log on from work or home, you still have access to the same bookmarks. That is the case with me. I teach at 2 schools, so I not only have a home computer, but TWO work computers and I am always saving bookmarks on one computer and needing them on another.
I also like the fact that I can share them with students and colleagues to increase the amount of bookmarks exponentially. Many times in class I share a great website with my students, and I hand out a slip of paper that has the website on it, which they probably lose or forget to check. This way, I can add bookmarks all the time and they can check them out as I post them. Another great advantage is the tagging feature. This will save me SO much time in my searches!
Saturday, December 19, 2009
21st Century Challenges
What challenges will we face in ensuring that our students will be prepared to be productive in the 21st century? First, we as educators need to be sure that we are educated in the newest technologies and using them in our classrooms. We also need to ensure that our students have access to these technologies. Finally, we need to change the way that we teach and adapt our lessons to include these technologies so that students are exposed to them on a daily basis.
Flickr
Uploading photos of performances and students would be a great way to get their attention. Families can comment on pictures and we can compile a collection of photos on flickr. Another idea is to post pictures of hand positions and bow holds for student demonstrations.
Delicious bookmarks
The social bookmarking site Delicious has made it so much easier to keep track of all of my sites and searches. My favorite feature is the suggested or "most popular" tags. They give me ideas for more searches and have introduced me to so many additional websites.
I will use this the most to collaborate with other strings teachers in my county. In my classroom, I would bookmark websites such as violinmasterclass.com. This site demonstrates various techniques on the violin and would be beneficial for at home practice. This would meet goal #1 in my curriculum: PERCEIVING, PERFORMING, AND RESPONDING:
AETHETICS
The student will demonstrate the ability to perceive, perform, and respond to music.
RSS Experience
RSS feeds and readers are new to me. I hadn't heard about them before taking this course. I was very excited because there are many sites that I try to follow each day. I set up a reader on google readers and added some of the blogs and websites that I follow. The only problem I had was that many of them did not allow that option. It seemed to be more for blogs and didn't have the function to notify me when updates were made to larger sites. For example, I recently purchased a new home and enjoy following the real estate market. Redfin is a great site that updates new homes listed in your area code as they come on the market. I tried to add that to my reader so it would notify me if a new home was listed, but it didn't work. I also tried to add my class website (www.fullertonstrings.com) just to see if students would be able to add that to a reader of their own, and it also doesn't work with the reader. There are several that do work, especially on blogger.com, so it will come in handy for that.
What I did find was a great violin blog that gives practice tips, interviews famous violinists and posts updates about what is going on in the music world. I was able to link that RSS feed to my blog so that parents and students who view the blog will see updates on violin.com as well. That will be a great teaching tool in my classroom because it will demonstrate performances and teach them about famous musicians in their field. (I've added the RSS to this blog as well as my MWStrings blog)
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