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!

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.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!,
originally uploaded by mollyfullerton.

Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday season!

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)

Wiki Sites

I have mixed feelings on the wiki sites. I do like using some wikis to find information. There are so many times that I will google a random question and find multiple wikis with answers that seem to be pretty accurate. I still have to say that I trust a website over a wiki most of the time. For example, if I search how to get melted crayon off of the back seat of my car, there are plenty of places out on the internet offering solutions. But there are enough websites with professional cleaning advice that I don't know if I want to trust the last post on a wiki.

As for my classroom, someone on the wiki forum in class said it best. My middle school students get a big kick out of how much inaccurate information they can get away with posting on a wiki, so I think that I would probably stick to a blog. I can't see much use for a wiki for my middle school orchestra class.

That said, I did create a wiki for my orchestra and created one thing that I think I could do with it. We recently had a winter concert and I didn't take any pictures or get a chance to talk to all of the parents at the end. I posted a request for pictures and opened it up for everyone to comment on the performance.

http://mwmsmusic.pbworks.com/Winter-Concert-2009

This entry meets the parent communication goal that I have for the year, but also students are required to assess their performances, and this would be a good forum for that.

Will I Use A Classroom Blog?

I have always been familiar with blogs that my friends have had and various blogs on the internet, but haven't used blogs in education and am not very familiar with what they are all about. Since starting the class, I have been exploring teachers' blogs and have found some very good ideas. I think that I would use blogs with my students but I think that it would be challenge to have a blog in my class but keep it anonymous. I would like to post about rehearsals, schedules and upcoming concerts, but I would need to be very careful about not posting too much information for all to see. It may need to be password protected because some parents are very concerned about too much information being out there on the internet.

One big goal that is set by my administration each year is to increase communication with the parents. I think that I would post schedules, concert information and homework. That would be a good way to increase parent communication and it would be documented so that I could then turn it in at the end of the year for my evaluation.