Evernote and Portfolio Assessments

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Evernote @ #Tuttle

Photo Credit: whatleydude via Compfight

I’ve been busy – very busy. Developing curriculum for my district and helping to develop a new revitalized Academy program for the arts and honors academics at my school. Whilst on the journey I have returned to Evernote as my to-do list. Actually – even though I’ve had an Evernote account for many years – this is really my first real experience using Evernote and all of it’s power as an “external brain” I’m now hooked on Evernote and using it for everything. An email comes in with something in it I need to attend to – I send it to Evernote, I find an article or photo or video online that I want to use for class or research – bam – send it to Evernote.

Evernote organizes and saves everything I need to remember and refer back to. I’m even adding articles from magazines that I want to save and I’m creating an entire Evernote library of articles about teaching music, music technology, rehearsal technique, teaching music composition, and on music careers with biographies and feature articles from different magazines.

Finally I’m now using Evernote as a journal. I have one notebook that I routinely write in and reflect, but I also have this notebook set up to be a catch-all of everything I do online. Using IFTTT (If This then That) I send every Tweet, Facebook post, and Instagram photo into this Journal – so it becomes not only a journal of my thoughts and ideas of personal writing, but also a journal of my online activity. Even posts sent to this blog are forwarded to my journal.

THIS made me think – I’ve been struggling for the past few years to have students blog about their musical progress and to create an online portfolio of their work and progress in music. I’m thinking Evernote might be a better solution. While it’s not necessarily published like a blog, Evernote will allow students to write, record, and take snapshots of their musical activities and collect them all into a simple notebook that they can then share with me. Are any other teachers using Evernote for student portfolios? Students – any ideas? Would Evernote be a better solution than blogging?

 

The Digital Story in Music

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Photo Credit: lachicadelfagot via Compfight cc

At first I didn’t get digital story telling. Not that I didn’t understand how it could be useful in a regular classroom setting, but how I could use it within a music classroom – specifically a performance class. Telling stories is a part of the music class – we tell stories all of the time – but we tell stories through the music. To me the etmooc version of the digital story seemed to be the boring regular ed teacher being vicariously creative through digital story telling. Why tell stories digitally? To what end? How could I possibly use this in a performance based class like Jazz Ensemble?

The obvious answers come to mind – but none of them have any direct effect on the rehearsal. Digital reports and journals – could all be great in a music class, but not through pictures or movies – it needs to be about the music. My students tell stories all the time – with every performance and every song. The story may not be apparent to the average listener – but we teach them the stories – the stories of John Philip Sousa returning to America from a European vacation and being inspired to compose the Stars and Stripes Forever, the stories of great composers and musicians from Duke Ellington to Aaron Copland – and not just the stories of their music – but the stories of how their music changed society and history. Telling the stories through any other means other than the music defeats the purpose of a music class. I did, however, come up with some great ideas for digital story telling in the music class – here are my ideas.

Digital Story Telling in Performance Class

I used Popcorn Maker to make a video to talk about music. In my Jazz Ensemble class we’re performing modern Jazz. One of the songs in our Repertoire is Chameleon by Jazz legend Herbie Hancock. When we perform a standard like Chameleon, we create our own arrangement by listening to many different versions of the same song. Using Popcorn Maker I took one version of the song, inported it into Popcorn Maker, and added “pop-up video” style comments for students to listen to. Usually in class we listen to songs and talk about them – using Popcorn Maker we can listen and read – a much more listening focused experience. Here’s my post on our class blog.

Another idea is to use Storify to document an ensembles’ experiences.  Using Storify we are going to collect and curate student posts, news paper clips, and our own class blog posts to tell the story of our band. This spring we will be performing in the National Memorial Day Parade in Washington, D.C. We will soon begin to tell our story using Storify and social media tools – documenting our rehearsals and activities leading up to the parade and our spring concert performance season. Next year we’ll do this all over again with our Marching Band season – sharing photos and recordings from rehearsals and performances, competitions and trips. What’s great about Storify is that all of the students can participate in adding content, but the teacher can still select and curate what’s appropriate for the story. Later – after the story is finished – the completed collection can be used in class for reflection and critique.

 

NJMEA Convention

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This past weekend I attended the NJ Music Educators convention in East Brunswick, NJ. There were sessions on many different musical topics, more than I remember from past conventions, but I tried to focus my professional development on curriculum, assessment, and technology.

Sessions I attended:

  • Teaching Creativity with Garage Band
  • Technology Resources for Music Education
  • Interdisciplinary Arts Education – 21st Century Skills
  • Assessments in the Instrumental Ensemble
  • Music Composition and Social Media
  • Music Education – The PLC and EE4NJ
  • Teaching Music through Composition

 

Teaching Music through Composition

My main reason for attending the convention was to meet Barbara Freedman, author of a new book that has just been published titled Teaching Music Through Composition, A Curriculum in Music Technology. Mrs. Freedman’s session focused mainly on her new book and its lessons – which cover basic musical ideas and concepts through composition using basic music technology like Garage Band or Mixcraft. In our school we have several classes that can benefit from this idea. I will be implementing some ideas from her book in my Electronic Music classes as well as Fundamentals of Music and Music Theory APH. Another class that sort of aligned with this idea of using technology to teach music was the Garage Band for Music Production and Creativity.

Both sessions had some great ideas for using Garage Band in various different music classes including instrumental and vocal ensembles, music theory, and music technology. Many of the resources from this session, and from the other technology sessions can be found here at njmeatech2013.pbworks.com – a wiki space set up for the technology sessions. I’ve already instituted some changes in my music theory couse and used Garage Band to introduce sixteenth note rhythms to my beginning level music fundamentals course. The graphic representation of the the rhythms really seemed to help many students conceptualize the “physical space” in time that music occupies.

Next year I’m hoping to combine our Fundamentals of Music course and Electronic Music into one class – where students will learn about the fundamentals of music – including basic music theory, and music appreciation – through our electronic music lab.

 

Interdisciplinary Arts Education – 21st Century Skills

This course was run by two teachers from Rumson, New Jersey – Bill Grillo and Kate Okeson. They have a website called PaperandTape.org, that is based on a project at Rumson-Fairlawn Regional High School where students create interdisciplinary artworks using video, audio, and fine art. This session really gave me some great ideas for Bayonne High School’s Arts Business & Technology course for the BHS Arts Academy. In the past our Arts Bizz & Tech class has completed some great student projects including student created CD’s and artist pages – such as this student who is now at William Patterson University – to published books like This is Ink – by BHS students Amanda Unger and Brielle Urciuoli. For next year’s class I have some great ideas for interdisciplinary projects.

 

 Technology Resources for Music Education

This was an amazing session held by NJ music technology guru – James Frankel. Dr. Frankel has started an amazing new company called Music Firstthat offers online cloud based music technology solutions at very affordable prices. There are several products I know I will be getting for my AP Theory class including Inside Music. With inside music – for $199 per year – you have access to Noteflight for music composition and the Inside Music curriculum which has online video lessons in music composition based on the world famous Vermont MIDI Project created by Sandi MacLeod. The Vermont MIDI Project is now called Music – COMP and it offers online coaching and tutoring in music composition for student composers as well as opportunities to have music performed by professional musicians. I will be signing up several of my students this month as they are working on a new composition project in Electronic Music – composing music for a dance piece based on Catcher in the Rye that will be choreographed and performed by our new dance classes at BHS. The Music Composition and Social Media session also dealt with Music-COMP and online mentoring – using other forms of social media including blogs, Facebook, and Twitter.

 

Music Education – The PLC and EE4NJ

Finally – my last session Saturday afternoon was on PLC’s – or Professional Learning Communities. I’ve known about PLC’s for some time, even though Bayonne has been slow to adopt them, our district is adopting them on the elementary level. We do not, however, have an official PLC for music and art. I think this could be beneficial as our many music and art teachers throughout our district could benefit from communicating and collaborating with their peers. I myself have been developing my own PLN (Professional Learning Network) online through ETMOOC, Twitter, and Google Plus. PLC’s are also a required part of our new teacher evaluations under the Danielson model under domain 4d: Participating in a professional community. Assuming that EE4NJ and the new Danielson teacher evaluation doesn’t disappear this will become an important part of our daily lives as teachers.

 

 

Posting to Google Plus through Email…

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Ok – this is attempt number three. I found a WordPress to Google+ recipe in IFTTT that required a “secret email” that one could get from signing up for Google Voice which would then allow you to post to Google+ through SMS. There’s a super-secret email that’s attached to your SMS and that’s the way you can (theoretically) post to Google+ directly from Edublogs (of in IFTTT’s terms – WordPress!)

I successfully followed these directions I found on ComputerworldUK and accessed my super secret Google voice email and I’ve already posted to my Google+ using that email. Now I just need to get it to work as the action part of a recipe on IFTTT.

 

This is attempt number 3…….. 4……

Update – just cannot seem to get this to work through IFTTT – don’t know what I’m doing wrong!

Update – I’ve been doing more research and have found a few discussion boards that claim Google has purposefully blocked IFTTT from using the Google Voice backdoor.

Thinking about Rhizomatic Learning… In Music

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I like to think before writing a post, and etmooc has given me much to think about over the past few weeks. Rather than quickly reflect and write about a concept I’ve been drifting laterally – thinking about these concepts and ideas and how they apply to me and my students. How do these things work within music education?

Today I’ll talk about rhizomatic learning. I understand the concept of rhizomatic learning – the idea that learning doesn’t necessarily happen in a set order – that it can grow form the community and grow laterally. Reminds me of the thinking in Persig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. If you haven’t read this book I highly reccomend it – it changed my life and I’ve read it several times. An unknown blogger eloquently explains Persig’s idea of lateral drift and lateral knowledge here on a blog called Lateral Drifting.

I also think of music (of course) when I think of this idea of rhizomatic learning – of that idea of lateral knowledge and learning  that stems from the community – not the single teacher. In music I act as a conductor and a coach, but most of my students’ learning comes from within and from the ensemble. Musicians train and practice – they don’t study. And they work together in tightly knit ensembles shaping sound until they achieve that ultimate idea of musical expression. They must do this together – they must work together and eventually achieve a unified goal and understanding of the ensemble’s “inner vision” for a work of music.

They learn from one another too. I have very advanced students and students who are just learning on their instruments. Those beginners learn more from just sitting next to a more experienced musician than from group lessons. I also learn from my students. I have some amazing students who study privately with college professors and professional musicians. they bring their training and knowledge and skill back to our school band room and share it with me and their peers. If that’s not rhizomatic learning I don’t know what is!

Isn’t that rhizomatic learning? This idea of group or social learning has been alive for years in the music classroom – but we call it an ensemble. Musicians never learn from just a single person either,  they listen to many musicians and copy their styles and practices. They pass on their knowledge and skills to others as mentors and teachers, and they are constantly looking to others for critique and ideas for self-improvement and better musicianship. How many classroom teachers take their entire class out on a trip to another school so that other teachers, judges, and other students can judge their own students’ collective work? We do that in music all the time – students perform at festivals, they listen to other students perform and are constantly learning about music and growing as musicians – as an ensemble. And I think there’s a key word here – collective work – for while musicians train themselves and grow individually as musicians, they must always work collectively – even a solist needs to work with an accompanist or a small ensemble – we are always working together towards the same musical goals and achievements, but always coming back to the ensemble.

Moving Forward

I’d like to think more about the concepts of rhizomatic learning and think about how they could work in my ensemble to help grow student ownership. How could I use it in some of my other classes? In AP Music Theory I cannot really see it working – but in Arts Business and Technology? Electronic Music? Classes where I want students to really focus on their own learning goals and art forms, but also grow together as a class?