Monday, January 25, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
BP9_2010013_Web 2.0 Tool 3
Sona & Jacob. (Illustrators). (N.D). Six Red Apples. Screen shot retrieved January 24, 2010 from
http://www.sillybooks.net/books/6_Red_Apples/SixRedApples.html
After seeing some other blogger posts on Storybird, I went ahead and got my own account. I was extremely impressed with the level of artistry with the illustrations. The ease of creating your own story and collaborating with others was also very attractive. It truly is like seeing your own book published online. I did not, however, find a way to incorporate music into the stories. So, I did a search for song stories. I am familiar with the Raffi songs and books, and I was hopeful that someone has moved the idea to the digital online world.
I found a couple sites that had some nicely animated story songs. Sillybooks.net and Mightybook.com both have a small list of already animated story songs that are free for use without a subscription. A large list of story songs is available at Mightybook.com with a paid subscription priced for individual, classroom, and library use. Both sites also have a great selection of interactive games and puzzle geared for elementary aged students. I did not find a place for creation or collaboration on Mightybook.com, but Sillybooks.net, however, accepts submissions of stories by email for publishing and also has regular story contests.
I will continue to look for a site that combines the creative and collaborative tools on Storybird with the musical possibilities on Sillybooks and Mightybook. Perhaps creating both the music and story is too ambitious to be done with elementary students. I am looking for a tool that may have some musical templates into which story lyrics can be added. The addition of still artwork or animation would further increase the time but also the creativity explored through such a site. Perhaps someday I’ll have both the skills and inspiration to do my own.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
BP6_2010012_ Commnent on Kathy Kellen's Web 2.0 Tool Post
BP5_2010012_Web 2.0 Quizlet
With our current push toward vocabulary at my school, I decided to do a search on Web 2.O tools for teaching word lists. I found Quizlet. http://quizlet.com/
The site has a vast number of already created vocabulary sets and their definitions at various grades and subject areas. You can also create your own set of words and their matching definitions. The software tools for learning the vocabulary come in the following forms.
The first three are in standard flashcard form and the introduce the vocabulary and their definitions. The other four are more interactive games and including the voice driven question and answer “voice race.” It is still quite cutting edge software and has come glitches in the voice recognition. The games look really fun, but would require several stations in a classroom setting. Waiting your turn is the not the forte of 25 elementary students. (Forte is an Italian musical term meaning strong or loud.)
Again, I would like to make a connection to the creative aspects of music. I still remember memorizing the periodic table to a set of rhythms that I established. Perhaps this is a superficial way of learning vocabulary, but the memorization definitely stayed with me when it was supported by a rhythm. Perhaps the students could help in creating these rhythms when we are learning the new vocabulary. I don’t want to get completely away from the fact that I am a music teacher.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
BP4_2010011_RSS Feeds
Keeping up with any google reader feed will be a challenge, but these are the choices I made:
http://urbanmusiceducation.org/
because I think it will apply to the population that I teach specifically
http://www.menc.org/
because it is the national organization for music educators
http://jamesfrankel.musiced.net/
to keep abreast of technology as it applies to music education
http://mustech.net/
to also keep track of technology gadgets that apply to music education
http://www.youtube.com/results?search=related&search_query=music%20education%20MENC%20national%20standards&v=kliX7dnroEY
has regular updates of interesting and fun videos that apply to the music educator's perspective and to students.
BP3_2010011_Web 2.0 Tool Karaoke Party
Having a leave of absence from this program has given me a chance to give a little more thought to my AR. I am very fortunate to be a music teacher where most of my students really enjoy coming to music. I do try to make it as fun and interesting as possible. I do firmly believe that music is such a great medium to express identity in so many ways. Not only is it a means of individual expression, it connects us to our own culture and the cultures of the world. It does this through the science of sound organized into a mathematical structure. It is, therefore, a great tool to teach across the curriculum of almost any subject. In my AR I am hoping to use it to connect to literacy and English language arts.
I found a fun web 2.0 tool called Karaoke Party that is a start to doing just that. This is the first year that I’ve used an interactive whiteboard to project the music and words of songs we are learning in class. That has helped me in several ways. First of all, I don’t have to deal with the cumbersome textbooks. Some of my students struggle finding page numbers, and even when they do there is no way of keeping their attention on the page. With the pdf projections I can at least be assured that we are all looking at the same page. This has greatly enhanced the depth and speed at which we can study songs. I am now able to use the songs as a vocabulary lesson with any unfamiliar words. Students can see the links to dictionary.com and use the vocabulary in the context of the song.
Karaoke style projection of the songs will further increase the interaction with the music and text. So far, the songs I’ve encountered on Karaoke Party have been free of obscenity and have styles that would be attractive to my students. This is a good starting place for me. However, I am hoping to find a tool that would allow the creation of lyrics to familiar melodies that either I or my students would create. We are in the process of creating core vocabulary list for each subject area at our school. I would like for music to be another place of contact for understand that vocabulary. Karaoke could be another tool to increase understanding and motivation.
Karaoke Party. (2010, Januuary 3). Retrieved from http://www.karaokeparty.com/
Friday, January 8, 2010
BP2_2010011_Educational uses for Blogs
"Blogging is about reading and writing.
Literacy is about reading and writing.
Blogging is about literacy." (SupportBlogging.com, 2010)
Although I have limited experience teaching reading and writing, I can immediately see how blogging can be used to apply to these areas. I have taught some reading classes, and I learned a basic process to assess comprehension.
1. Students do a reading assignment
2. Students discuss in their own words what they remember reading
3. Students write in their own words what they read
A blog allows for feedback from both teacher and other students. This can be both a positive and negative experience for some students. If the student is proud of their work they will want this public audience. Positive feedback will encourage more writing and thinking. However, if a student knows that most of the class is better at writing, they may tend to shrink from this kind of public exposure and express themselves even less. Initial blogging may need to be free from criticism of form and focus mainly on content. There may also be a way of keeping initiation into blogging as anonymous except to the teacher. Teachers will need to monitor the appropriate nature of student blogs that are available to the class as a whole.
A teacher can use a blog and written communication to students that can be accessed from any internet linked computer. The teacher may also pose discussion questions for voluntary or mandatory feed back that can later be discussed with a class as a whole. Students are certainly accessing and writing to blogs on a social basis regularly. Educational uses would need to be in the protection of a district or school firewall and perhaps only made "public" to members of a specific class. Again, usernames can keep this interaction anonymous to other students. However, I can see the danger of that if any bullying takes places that a teacher cannot control.
There is the clear potential for giving students the excitement of expressing their own voice in a public forum. This also leads to a greater engagement in the particular topic or subject area. I teacher at an elementary school where the general literacy levels are quite low. This is probably part of the reason that social interaction (talking) is often quite aggressive and loud for some. They struggle to get their "voice" heard. If they are not readers and writers then the competition to have a sense of empowerment is huge. I still think my students would use blogging to post media work with a limited amount of text to tell their stories.
That being said, there is a need for some basic literacy to apply blogging as it is mostly a form of written expression. For middle and high school classes literature theme discussion and posting of short stories or poetry can give great power to individual voices. Most students want to be heard and need to in a safe environment. Students can also take group responsibility for their learning by posting notes from lectures to a blog. Our text book mentioned using a rotation of "scribes" so the whole class can take part. When a level of comfort and safety is established even the class notes can be a source of discussion and deepening the level of understanding and thinking. Group discussion of math word problems can also take place in this way.
SupportBlogging.com. (2010, January 8). Educational Blogging. Retrieved from
http://supportblogging.com/Educational+Blogging
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
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