Tool #7 Reaching Outside your Classroom: Online Digital Projects

My collaborative project is a performing a song with my choir and having a feeder elementary school's handbell choir accompany my students on a concert.

1.  The content objective is to have older, middle school-aged Choir students learn to work with younger, 5th-grade handbell players on the same piece of music by working on expression and tempos via Skype.

2.  This is a project I plan to implement in the fall of 2012 with my colleague, Juanita Irwin, who is the lead Music Specialist at Spring Branch Elementary School.

3.  I plan to use Skype.

4.  The plan is to have my Choir perform the piece for the 5th graders and for the 5th graders to perform their instrument parts for my students so that we can hear each other's tempi and learn to match that same speed of beat as well as perform to complement each other's performance.

Tool #6 Using Web Tools to Promote Discussion in and out of the Classroom

Ms. Price's Choir Bulletin Board

Ms. Price's Technology Blog

I think both of these are very usable in my class.  The first, Wallwisher, gives students a chance to check on everything like announcements online as well as post questions for me about things if they forget some details about an event like a concert mentioned in class.

The blog is not just helpful for me but for the students as well because they can comment on my observations and make honest and helpful observations about whether they think a tool is useful in class or not.  I think their participation would be greater with a tool like this because although they would have a user name, they can be somewhat 'anonymous' when asking something or making a comment or suggestion.

Tool #5 Producing With Web 2.0 Tools

Animoto video for Elementary Presentation

Wordle using music and choral terms

I actually enjoyed learning about these two tools.  The Wordle tool will be great for reinforcing some of the musical terms I have used in my Choir class all year and will help remind students of important elements of creating music.  The Animoto tool is great in that it allows students to be as creative as they want to be.  I will definitely use Animoto to make a recruiting video for the elementary presentation we make to our feeder elementary schools.

Tool #4 Moving Up To the Clouds

Ok, I do find the Google Apps and Docs very useful.  This would be a much better way of communicating with my Music department colleagues as well as my elementary team members.  I created a document about the Choir's use of the auditorium for this semester and I think a general one for everyone who needs to use the auditorium, including all Performing Arts and those involved with assemblies, would be a great idea.  Everyone would have the same information at the same time.

Tool #3 Finding Online Video and Image Resources

The two videos above are great for demonstrating the function of your vocal folds while singing and basic singing technique.  I would actually use these in my choir class.

Regarding copyright and fair use, I am very familiar with these terms and their meanings being a music teacher and having them drilled into my head for many years.  Probably the most often heard advice for music teachers is to not copy music or to only copy until original music is in hand, after which a teacher must destroy and copies.  We also hear about not posting videos of our students performing to youtube.com or other such sites as this breaks Fair Use laws since the composers of performed works cannot profit from these performances on public sites.

I kept getting messages about Picasa being unsafe for my computer so I used Flickr.  I hope that is ok.  I have uploaded personal photos to Flickr before and have also used their free photos.  It's a fantastic resource for free photos.

Tool #2 Building Community In The Online Environment

Participating in online communities isn't new to me and I don't find it that difficult to do.  Granted, the ones in I'm most involved are purely for fun and not related to teaching.  However, I do occasionally participate in some.  I, like others, sometimes find it a bit disconcerting to comment publicly on professional sites.  I'm not sure I really know why but there it is.

Regarding sharing with a teammate, yes, I do find that different and more helpful.  I learn more from my colleagues as they are going through the same thing teaching the same content or at least teaching on the same schedule as myself. 

A site I plan on visiting more is www.choralnet.org.

Tool #1 Assignment: Set Up Your Blog

I set up my blog on August 7, 2010 and registered it the same day.  At the time, I had started the online course,  "23 Things".