MUE6696 Amber Watkins

Blog Post #5 Topic: Summarize and reflect on what you've learned this week. ------------------------------------             Technology as a music instructional aid is something I have always considered important.  As this course unfolds, however, I am beginning to understand it is no longer an aid, it is the new medium that textbooks, yearly trips to the Fabulous Fox and tape recorders used to be. The ability to listen to and assess and evaluate performance is an essential skill for students so they can become more productive and successful musicians. Technology has increased the opportunity to expose students to their own recordings and the recordings of others a thousand fold. Today, technology is the doorway to all the musical teaching tools music educators have organized access to for students, and the doors are many. Technology can certainly help accelerate the learning process of concepts such as performance eval...

Blog Post #4 Topic: Summarize and reflect on what you've learned this week. ------------------------------------             The material in this week’s module highlighted several ways technology can impact music performance.  I am consistently seeing that the way students interact with technology can impact their personal and educational lives in extraordinary ways. Technology not only can allow us to draw the student into a lesson in order to better their musicianship but it can also help create a learning environment that encourages problem solving and boundless creativity. On another note, music educators have struggled in their efforts to encourage students to maintain an individual practice schedule outside of school. With so many students having access to personal devices such as smartphones, tablets, and computers, both the student and the educator can access a tremendous amount of technological tools that can s...

Blog Post #3 Topic: Summarize and reflect on what you've learned this week. -----------------------------------             The use of technology to engage students in musical creativity can help provide enriching musical education opportunity for “other 80%” that are not enrolled in traditional performing ensembles. Applications such as Soundtrap, GarageBand and Soundation allow students to compose without requiring an extensive musical foundation. This week we explored Soundtrap and ways it can be used to technologically enhance the music classroom. This software was a great, accessible way to encourage creative expression in young musicians, digital natives and diverse learners in a technological musical context.                          Soundtrap is similar to GarageBand as it allows users to generate original compositions using built-in sound bytes, loops, instruments and digi...

Blog Post #2 Topic: Summarize and reflect on what you've learned this week. ------------------------------------               When I incorporate the national standards for music, creating, performing and responding, into my curricular framework, I find a great imbalance between the three. Performance often takes a lead role in the curricular trinity followed eventually by "responding" and finally by "creating" which usually comes in at a distant third. There seem to be two issues that contribute to this imbalance that explain, if not excuse, this creative shortcoming in music instruction. Teachers often site both a lack of knowledge and experience and often time constraints that are not conducive to the study of improvisation. Much like Bauer (2014) detailed in the preface of his book, I found myself engrossed in improvisational activities at home with a cassette recorder many years before I would be applying the skill I had obtained on m...

Noteflight was indeed "specific" and "transparent," which are terms Bauer (2014) referenced, and could indeed be incorporated into my instruction with ease. Even with the shortcuts, however, I was simply destined to input every note singularly with methodical tedium. So, even though it is a very user friendly, "transparent" application, I will need further exploration to find shortcuts of my own. On a good note, I am very pleased to know I can use this on my iOS while I am on-the-go. That being said, I was more at ease with MuseScore. Honestly, my preference may simply have been based on the the fact that I used MuseScore while the tutorial video was giving me step-by-step instructions to complete the assignment. I am very pleased to have both Noteflight and MuseScore in my toolbox as future need for notation software arises. Here is my Noteflight project!     References Bauer, William. (2014).  Music learning today – digital pedagogy for creat...