What have I learned?

Through this class, I've learned that technology is all around us, even though we may not realize we're utilizing it. Within this day and age, I've realized that in order to do anything normally, we have to use technology- so why not through education? Although I often feel that this course didn't really give me the foresight I could use in a music classroom, I realized towards the end that this class was more of a self-taught process. I proved myself wrong through my own practice.

Music alone relies so heavily on technology to be shared, and education often is the sharing of knowledge. Technology is extremely relevant to a classroom, be it a pencil or a laptop, a bassoon or a Smart Board!

Final Project

Technology Matrix

For my final project, I decided to create a matrix on a lesson plan that revolves around the concept of Electronic Composition. Students collaborate with each other, but they must also communicate their understanding of music-making as well as their understanding on how to use specific programs in order to make this lesson possible. This lesson plan relies heavily on how students can communicate share their knowledge with each other about several topics.

If you look at the title(Row 1) of my matrix, it lays out the educational goal for the rest of the lesson. By the end of this lesson, students should not only know what Electronic Compositions are, but they must also understand how to create them and utilize software to help them do that. This matrix is organized in the order of the lesson, and above each new standard that I put into the matrix, there is a word that describes the goal of that section of the lesson or the main concept that needs to be understood in order to move along in this lesson plan.

I divided each standard and portion of the lesson within the matrix by color, so that each “color” can be within it’s corresponding “equation”. My goal with this matrix is to have the selected technologies in addition with the identified teaching strategies produce the achievement of each standard. Each color should represent this equation.

This lesson plan begins off with a lecture by the teacher and an oral/visual presentation by the teacher. In order to help this presentation, we will utilize MAX/MSP on Smart Board. This presentation would foster the idea of previous knowledge of musical scores and have the students analyze the scores of “old-fashioned” music written by Bach. That is where the student practice/teacher intervention take place. With this, we will access prior knowledge and also begin working with the default sounds that come with a laptop. Students will then begin to unlock the NETS-S standard (see row 5, column A), by beginning to brainstorm ideas to create an original piece of work that they will later be using for their final project of the unit.

After students are presented the lecture and practice using their laptops and brainstorming, students will conduct some research on the internet and find information on short excerpts of electronic scores that they have been assigned. The students can then analyze this music like they did for the “old-fashioned” piece of music that was written by Bach. They must show their work and analysis on the notation program Finale. After doing this, the students and teacher will have a discussion of what the work should look like, depending on the type of electronic score that they chose.

We will then use the Smart Board to show everyone’s finished analysis of each score. Through this, we will hold an open student/teacher discussion to evaluate and analyze the work. If there are corrections to be made, we will make them. The idea is that through the evaluation and analysis of other scores, we will begin to understand the concepts used behind electronic composition and notation. Students will then be separated into groups and will use the internet to look up EAMIR musical instruments and how they work.

Since students were given a lecture and did analysis of electronic compositions, they will be given specific EAMIR instruments to work with and they will play around with them and begin to improvise with them in the class. Before doing so, however, students will be given a chance to exercise guided practice with one another through group work. Also, as a teacher, I would foster the guided practice by making sure that these students properly retell the information to each other that they have previously learned. After that, they will play music and improvise music with each other over loop pedals and think about how to notate this type of music while doing so.

For the last color, students should be able to practice reflectively and produce an arrangement for any of the EAMIR instruments or tools. They will use their laptops and should be able to display a full understanding of how to utilize EAMIR instruments and tools, as well as the notation software FINALE. Since this is individual work and homework, students will not be doing this in class but this assignment is integral to move on within the unit to the next lesson plan.

The equation I used throughout this matrix helped me to understand and incorporate technology and the NETS-S better than I had previously done and allowed me to come up with the best outcome possible! 

A quick little tidbit:

Hey guys! Just a quick little link here, this is for all my colleagues in Music Education. I'm posting this link because this is the website of a man who is willing to share his music lesson-plans with you! His philosophies are pretty interesting if you want to check them out. Not only are these just lesson plans, but they're lesson plans that incorporate technology!

Enjoy!!


http://wrightstuffmusic.com/

Right here in little ol' Montclair...

Right here at Montclair State University, we have an amazing music-technology professor who is constantly doing research on how to incorporate technology into a musical-setting. He is  the Oxford University Press author of the book MAX/MSP/Jitter for Music, and he has tons of videos out on youtube that demonstrate his programming skills.

This is all just a fancy introduction to his brainchild: EAMIR. EAMIR is an open-source interactive music system project involving technology for composition, performance, and education. It involves alternate controllers, sensors, and adaptive instruments to facilitate music composition, performance, and instruction through a collection of interactive music systems. Neat, isn't it?

Check him/it out in action:

Guitar EAMIR-o!