Today was a day to reflect and relieve stress from upcoming exams. We were able to work on our assignments/exam prep. I used this lesson as a day of reflection of this course and, what journey I was on. Before coming into this course no, before this degree, I haven't thought much about the endless options of ways and methods of teaching. I only understood the end product, what I have seen and what I have experienced as a student. Becoming a teacher is such an amazing process because we were all once students and now we are now understanding the process of being a teacher and what it means to be one.
Technology in Music Education, isn't something I would have thought would be relevant a few years ago, but now I see the importance of it. I was lucky enough to have the support of the staff at SCM and peers studying Mued to help me through this cycle of learning and teaching. I ended up finding a partner for my project because I didn't know enough about coding but by including Ish into my project, I am able to learn from Ish and understand coding a lot better than just having to google the answer. I am thankful for Rowena Stewart for helping me via online meetings, trying to figure out the problems I was facing with my project. I am also thankful for Dr. James Humberstone who has been constantly supplying me with all the support and materials for this unit, for putting up with my constant confusion of what everything is...and almost burning my bed down. And lastly, I am thankful for Brad Fuller, for co-lecturing with James and at the end taking over the lectures. It has been so insightful with your knowledge of technology and LMS. I have learnt a lot about microphone from Brad that I never thought I needed to know but now I do. I hope the rest of my journey in MuEd will be as hectic and exiting as this one!
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Welcome to 6pm high where we learn at 6pm in the EVENING! In today's class we looked at different LMS (learning management systems) within a classroom setting. From personal experience I have used Canvas since high school and Google Classroom. Both have their pros and cons. In todays class we were told to create our very own CANVAS page and as a class we created 6pm high! Another LMS that was very popular in my high school was Kahoot. It was always a nice treat the teachers would use even though it was still a way to access the class' understanding of a certain topic. I did create some Kahoot when I was in high school which I will now share which are about the concepts of Music.
https://create.kahoot.it/share/tone-colour/b32cb8fd-b8d3-489d-b19e-c15ca311e4b2 It is very weird seeing how Technology in Education as a whole is evolving and having classrooms online. I remember in early primary this wasn't as common even in junior high school. But as more research is done, it is proven that LMS is a viable way of teaching and monitoring student activies. After a nice mini break for special projects week we are back again for another week of TME!
This lesson was a little different and our topic was "BYOD" (Bring your own device). There are obviously pros and cons of this idea. In this research article "Bring your own device in Education" reviews the pros and cons of BYOD. Coming from a primary school and of lower socio-economical area and then going to a independent catholic high school. I have experiences both the effects of BYOD. Like mentioned in the article, it does is cost effective because students are bringing in their own devices and if they wanted to fix or add anything it was up to the student. However this can be flipped, like in my primary school, families there wouldn't have enough to spare for a new device and it would be very difficult for them to set aside money on top of the students education to bring in their own device. Even so, maintaining a device does also come with costs. Another problem would be monitoring students activity, my high school gave out laptops which was included in our school fees which also implemented a program where teachers can view our screen from their device whenever they wanted. As a student it does seem like a breach of privacy but it is important that students are staying on task and doing what they should be. However, since we are in the year of the pandemic, COVID-19 has created new talk about BYOD and how it is soooo important nower days. Without technology students wouldn't be able to continue their study over Zoom or other video meeting programs. The second portion of our lesson we looked at both bandLab and io-808. Personally I really disliked io-808, it took me too long to figure out what we happening, however Bandlab was very similar to Soundtrap but still I do prefer soundtrap because of the visuals and the ease of it. Today we pitch our major project to our class. Since I did start early I was semi-ready for this day. My project was to create an Arduino instrument that would be extended to something else which I haven't thought about yet. The reasoning behind doing something that evolved coding was to demonstrate that tech Music Education doesn't have to be just remixing using Ableton or using Soundtrap, but it can be even more hands on and different like coding. There was an ABC news article on a Melbourne Musician who coded a synthesizer and performed it live. I really like the idea of using STEM in Music Education, finally closing that gap and divide between STEM and Music.
Article: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-21/live-coding-australia-music-computer-code/11301114 After hearing a whole bunch of amazing ideas, from e-books to music videos, we had a look at some other teaching resources like the artiphon and mini launchpad. The artiphon was a cool looking midi controller that can interchange between instruments. The mini launchpad remind me of the the free ipad launchpad you can download on the app store...(which I have...many). Today we become Avicii and discover the world of sound production and mashups. We were presented with a file of excerpts of different pop songs and were told to use Soundtrap to create a mash-up with the songs. I chose an part of "Royals" by Lorde and "All the time" by Zara Larsson. Honestly it didn't turn as bad as I thought it would be. But there are limitations on Soundtrap...for once. It isn't as precise when wanted to snip a certain section. Thus Ableton is born!
Ableton to me is scary. Like horror movie conjuring style scary. There is way too many buttons and colours which gets a little overwhelming. But it was actually kinda dope listening and watching James Humberstone doing his demonstration on Abelton LIVE! Like Sibelius, it does take time to understand but once you do it is worth it. When implementing Ableton into a school setting, preferably senior years of high school, step-by-step guides is definitely reccomanded. But once done, students are able to express their creative minds easily and take music and re-create it into their own style. I've always been intrigued in the idea of remixing speeches with music and it is possible to do it on SOUNDTRAP! Here is a link of a tutorial of this can be done. Today we started off with the little bits kit, which was a fun introductory into synths. I don't have much experience with synths and how any of those stuff work but having the little bits kit did make it more easier. I can see it being used in junior high school and even late primary when introducing the concept of synthesizers. We followed a step-by-step model of how the little bits kit should be put together and we had to work out what each module did to the sound. The second half of the lesson we talked about "real" synths. I learnt words like oscillators and was taught what they were. To get a better understand of a synth, we turned to our trusty friend Soundtrap, where we pulled up the synth setting so we called tweak and adjust the sound we want. We also learned about the different soundwaves like sin, and square and so on. After todays lesson it made me realised how much I need to learn about technology in Music Education and widening my skills as a music educator.
OOOoooo a topic that feels very interestingggg!!!!!
Today we were blessed with a presentation by Rowena Stewart and Renee Noble on coding. We had a look at microbits and were able to code our own games using the mircrobit and kookaberry. I have had experience with block coding, since that was mandatory to learn at my school. The important message I took away was the importance of women in STEM and in particular coding. There isn't a lot of female representation in the STEM department. So here my major project idea has been born and begins more journey into coding. Out of all the STEM subjects coding wasn't my strong suit. I was better at Chemistry and Biology rather than physics and IT. But it gave me a challenge that would last for the next 7 week till the big day. Follow my journey of my project in my "TME FINAL PROJECT" tab under "Technology in Music Education". Ok enough self promotion... In this lesson we followed a tutorial on the use of the microbit and how we could use it as mini receivers. Since I have had experience in Block coding it wasn't too bad to follow along. After we follwed templates on how to make the kookaberry play notes. I coded the kookaberry to play C, D, E and F which you could then play a song with. Below is a link to what I did which was posted on our very own Dr. James Humberstone's twitter. I would also like to thank both Rowena and Renee on their presentation and talk on coding and how we could use it in Music Education. It gave me new perspectives on what I deem to be relevant in Mued and hope to use the skills I have learnt in my classroom teaching. Template for Kookaberry: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11uCs-tD_cVqq4ezz-uGTqmPOULAp-iwUPC0T0x-I8jg/edit?usp=sharing Here is a link to what you could do with a kookaberry https://twitter.com/JamesHumbers/status/1381469957406433282?s=20 Today was a day I was completely lost in the dark abyss. Video editing has never been my favourite thing and has always been something I dread doing. I have had a lot of experience using video editing softwares especially adobe premiere. I don't know why I can never get it, it's probably cause I don't have the patience to find everything and look at the small little details. In today's lesson we used premiere rush to edit our mini music video from the previous week. Keeping up with James' tutorial made me nauseous. However, it did give me new insight in how music videos are made. I never had the thought of how they were produced and edited. But I learnt there were multiple video recordings which are then isolated and used for different segments of the video. Now I understand the importance of syncing and the "action" clap at the beginning of each take. At the end of this lesson James mentioned how we learnt most of the skills needed for basic production. This was extremely useful especially when becoming a Music teacher in high school, needed to put on musicals or shows and potentially filming and editing the show as well. There is an review by the Turkish Journal of Education "Interactive Multimedia in Education and Training" which highlights the important of using interactive multimedia in a education setting. This allows students to have a deeper understanding and are able to build more connections quicker when interacting with different resources.
University, A . (2005). REVIEW: Interactive Multimedia in Education and Training . Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education.https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/tojde/issue/16927/176702 Today we talked about the different notion software out there that is to be available (which is heaps). Personally I like Sibelius because I am used to Sibelius and have been using it since year 8. From my experience on Sibelius it is a lot harder to get the hang of it at first but once you get it it is worth the pain. There is so many things you thought you didn't need but is there for your disposal. We also talked about flat.io which is something I also have played with. In high school, our music class was split into two classes with two different teachers. Our class used Sibelius and since our class were classically trained instrumentalist it was quite easy to understand because of our extensive knowledge of musical terms and notation. The other class were mainly contemporary singers and found flat.io more intuitive and easy to understand. I started using flat.io a lot more after high school because I no longer had access to Sibelius Ultimate :( So I turned to flat.io. It was genuinely pretty nice and a lot easier to understand. If I were to recommend a notation software which was easy to understand I would recommend flat.io. Also since it is a web browser based software, you can save your work and be able to work on it anywhere and any device including your phone. Unlike Sibelius, when in a classroom setting, a license is needed when allowing students to work on Sibelius outside of school. I was a little surprised at how many people used Musescore as a notation software. Personally I don't like Musescore, probably because I'm used to Sibelius but I can see if people used Musescore first, Sibelius wouldn't be their first choice. Below is the difference in layout between flat.io and Musecore, ft. my high school minimalist piece Flat.io: https://flat.io/score/5ebf4b5f7113791054342915-minimalism-draft?sharingKey=8e27c31900837f2cff599bcfb19f889c573a7acf5a23bf324c437973b8fd6513118614606cd1de07e7d2e1864258816929c020e987512248630f35c6cc3cf022 Sibelius File:
Today we all became directors in #TME. We used our knowledge of microphones to film a mini music video. On top of this we got to experience and play with lightening and cameras. I have played around with lighting for school productions but it was all by ear rather than logic. Again in todays lesson, I was put on lighting for our mini music video. Lighting is important when filming because it creates mood and atmosphere. Also it is important for visuals, if the lighting isn't correct it can make someone look too washed out or orange depending on the lights.
Here are some cool pics from that experience! |
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May 2021
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