My 7th Grade General Music students at the Franklin Avenue Middle School (as well as the students of my colleague Elizabeth Lavery) will complete their World Music Wikispaces today. The project requirements have the students to select a culture from their family background and then create a website that showcases the music and culture. The students have been working on their wikispaces for the past week, and this is the first time we’re trying this project. I’d love for you to visit their sites (links to the sites are at the bottom of the project requirements page) and give the students some feedback. Better yet, have your students check out the sites and perhaps create their own.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Over the past year I have gone a bit crazy creating online resources for my students at the Franklin Avenue Middle School in Franklin Lakes, NJ.  Between Wikispaces, MusicEd.net, and PBWiki, I have created 16 different websites for use with my music students.  Yesterday morning I was looking at the whiteboard in my room and saw that I had seven different web addresses on the board - all of which were pretty long addresses.  I finally decided that it was time to create one website as a central portal to all of the various websites that my students use.  Introducing FAMSMusic.com.

I first created what I think is a pretty slick looking website using one of the new templates in iWeb ‘08 (I used Darkroom).  Next, I purchased the domain name using GoDaddy.com.  It cost $24.95 for two years.  Next, using the web space that we have at my school, I posted the iWeb files that I created.  Finally, I copied the URL that the files were posted on and used the Domain Forwarding feature with my GoDaddy account to forward www.famsmusic.com to that URL.  This free service also allows you to “mask” the URL so that users only see the web address you want them to.  In a nutshell, when someone types in the address, the DNS server sends you to the files on my school web server.  After about 90 minutes of work during my lunch and prep the site was finished.  Please take a moment to check it out.  Hopefully it will give you some ideas for creating your own music department website.

I  welcome your comments and suggestions.

Last week I taught the first ever TI:ME Course in New Jersey at my middle school in Franklin Lakes.  Villanova University is offering the courses through their very popular Summer Music Studies Program.  The course went very well, and it felt great to be teaching in my own lab.  This week I begin teaching a TI:ME 1B Course at FAMS.  This week my students will be utilizing CAI software titles, creating podcasts, and creating multimedia presentations.  As a supplement to the Course Resources Page, the students will be blogging about thier work on our Course Blog.  I am looking forward to a great week.

For the next two weeks I’ll be teaching at the Shenandoah University in beautiful Winchester, VA.  I will be teaching three different courses along with Dr. Lee Whitmore and Bradley Smith of SoundTree.  The Shenandoah Conservatory recently purchased a fabulous new lab from SoundTree and it will be great for the students to have a hands-on experience in such a beautiful facility.  To check out the class blog, click HERE, or to visit the course resources page, click HERE.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Today I am at Central Connecticut State University as a part of their Summer Music Institute, where I will be teaching a course titled Teaching Music With GarageBand 3.0: Applications Across The Curriculum for the entire week.  I am really looking forward to teaching the course, and I have already set up a Course Blog and a Resource Page on my website.  Students in the class will be creating loop-based compositions, podcasts, film scores, and podcasting websites.  For a complete listing of courses that are being offered at the CCSU Summer Music Institute, click HERE.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

For the next seven weeks I’ll be teaching TI:ME courses and music technology courses around the country.  This week I’m teaching a TI:ME 1A course at the Dr. Henry Wise Jr. High School in Upper Marlboro, MD through Five Towns College and SoundTree.  The facility is without a doubt the nicest school building I have ever seen, and the Music Technology Lab is beautiful (though quite warm!).  I have created a blog for the students in the class to continue the discourse outside of class time, as well as a resource page on my homepage.  Please take a moment to read what the students have written in response to the questions that I have posted.  I’m sure that you will find their answers as insightful as I do.  As has always been my experience here in Maryland, the students are excited to learn about how technology can be integrated into the music curriculum, and I am looking forward to a great class.

Tonight is Broadway Night at the Franklin Avenue Middle School where I teach.  I have been putting this concert on as a fund-raiser for the past nine years with the generous support of the Franklin Lakes Education Foundation.  Broadway Night brings the incredible talent of Neil Berg and his performers to our school.  Berg is an accomplished Broadway composer and each of the performers he brings has starred on Broadway either presently or in the recent past.  The concerts are always extremely popular and most sell out.  The concert brings in thousands of dollars for the music program at my school.  This year (and many years in the past) those funds are targeted toward our music technology lab.  So how do we do it?

Without going into specific numbers, I submit a grant request each year to fund two special events - Broadway Night and Jazz Night.  Each concert brings world-class performers to the school.  Each concert also features our very own students - always creating memorable performances.  At tonight’s event the cast of the Spring Musical will be giving a sneak preview of The Music Man during the performance and the students will join the stars for the final song of the evening.  The grant from the Education Foundation covers about 75% of the cost of the show (performer fees, sound fees, and dinner for the performers).  After covering the remaining 25% of the cost, the remainder of the funds raised go directly into the music account.  This year I’ll be adding another workstation to my lab and will make several additional software and hardware purchases.  Jazz Night happens in June and has our FAMS Jazz Ensemble open for world-class jazz artists (previous performers include Mulgrew Miller, Benevento-Russo, Steven Bernstein, Dave Douglas, Ravi Coltrane, Charlie Hunter, Erik Lawrence, Dave Valentin & Willie Rodriguez).  I am still negotiating to get this years performer.

While there are many resources available to music educators to find funding for technology - including Tom Rudolph’s book Finding Funds for Technology,  and the MET Magazine column on funding written by Stephen Wilensky, I created my own events to raise funds for my lab.  It’s not as hard as it sounds.  If you’d like to email me specific questions about these events and ideas on how to get similar things happening at your school, please email me at: jtfrankel@hotmail.com.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Last Thursday, I posted an entry titled “Wikispaces: Classrooms in Cyberspace” about how I am using this service in my music program. There were some great comments about Wikispaces from many people that I admire. Not in my wildest dreams could I have predicted the impact it would have had on my teaching, and on my students. In one week I have had thousands of hits to the site, and hundreds of posts from my students. For example, on my Band wikispace I posted a few simple discussion questions: reactions to concerts, and a place for students to post requests for music to be performed at the Spring Concert. I also created pages for each ensemble and each lesson group. It is a completely optional part of the program and my students have flocked to it.

Reading the comments and engaging in a dialogue with my students about music in the cyber-environment has been amazing for me. I find that students are very insightful, aware of netiquette, and really interested in each others ideas. I recently included an online survey where the students can vote for one of five selections that I am considering to program. The students have created links to JWPepper.com to preview the compositions. Students are posting from the moment they get home from school until after midnight. I have realized that I have connected with the MySpace Generation, but I have steered them toward a more safe and educational space where they can be themselves. I am thrilled with the response and I am looking forward to seeing where it goes from here. One quick note: you’ll find yourself responding to posts after 10pm. The interaction needs to be pretty constant for the board to work the way it should. You can sit back and watch, but posting every now and then keeps things on the right track. I urge you to try creating a wikispace for your program. I am pretty sure that your students will have the same reaction.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Edutopia is a great magazine that highlights effective uses of technology in the classroom. While not targeted directly toward music educators, it is a great resource for anyone interested in the integration of technology into a curriculum. Recently, there was an article that caught my attention entitled A Glorified Whiteboard. Written by Amy Standen, the focus of the article is a free online service for all educators called Wikispaces.com. The site allows anyone to create a website for their class. With many useful features, such as a Visual Editor, the ability to protect the site and restrict the activity of users, a fantastic discussion board feature, and the ability to upload files of various formats. You can even monitor the site activity, and invite students and fellow teachers to your space. Wikispaces can be used by anyone to create a website for a specific class, a specific unit of study, or anything else.

I decided to Wikispaces a try, and I created a website for my 6th Grade & 8th Grade General Music Classes, and one for my Instrumental Music students. The process was very easy, and I was able to create a few pages in a matter of minutes, posting my course objectives, project guidelines, and notes from the PowerPoint presentations that I used during class. My students joined the space at home, and even responded to a few questions that I posted. I found it very interesting how savvy the students are, and how carefully some of their answers were constructed.

Today in class my students commented on how “cool” the site was, and a few even took the time to create their own Wikispaces. While I urge you to caution students about posting information about themselves online, Wikispaces is a pretty safe alternative to the scary world of MySpace.com.

I plan on utilizing Wikispaces extensively during the remainder of this school year. It will be very interesting to see the growth and impact of this site on my students, and more specifically, on my pedagogy. Try creating a Wikispace for your class. It’s free, it’s easy, and it’s a great way to connect your curriculum with the Wired Generation.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.