Today I am in Grand Rapids, MI on behalf of SoundTree to present the Keynote Address and sessions at the Michigan Music Conference 2010 Technology Pre-Conference. I was thrilled to have been asked to present at MMC 2010, and I am looking forward to meeting with the many fine music educators here in Michigan. There are also a ton of great sessions being presented by some fabulous presenters, and I am looking forward to sitting in on them. As always, I have created a special landing page for the event which contains all of my session materials, and I will post podcasts of all of my sessions.
If you are on Twitter, follow the events of the day at #mmc10, and by following SoundTree and I at @SoundTree and @jimfrankel.
This morning I am in beautiful Madison, WI to present a session titled “The Music Educators Guide to Copyright Law” at the Wisconsin Music Educators Association Conference on behalf of SoundTree. I always enjoy presenting this session and I recently completed my new book “The Teachers Guide To Music, Media & Copyright Law” which is being published by Hal Leonard. Look for it in February of 2009. All of my session materials for today’s session are posted on a special SoundTree landing page. I will also be podcasting the session. It should be posted on my podcasting site by tomorrow morning.
I welcome your comments and questions. Happy Halloween!
I found this video on the Trading Fours Wiki, run by a good friend of mine - Jessica Slotwinski. I am sure that many of you may have seen this, but for those of you who have not, it provides a wonderful insight into the lives of our students and shows how incredibly prevalent the Web 2.0 culture is in their lives.
Yesterday I spent the entire day at the ATMI Pre Conference which focused on Web 2.0 technologies in the music curriculum and this video is the perfect encapsulation for providing a rationale for why we need to embrace this paradigm in our teaching.
What do you think of the information presented in this video. Does it ring true with your experiences with your students? What impact do you think Web 2.0 is going to have on education 5 years from now? I welcome your comments and questions.
This morning I am in Atlanta, GA for the CMS/ATMI Conference. SoundTree is a sponsor for the event and is providing a hands-on technology lab for the conference. Today is the ATMI Pre-Conference which focuses on Delivering Music Instruction with Web 2.0 Social Computing Tools. The schedule is filled with some of the leading experts on the topic. Everything from Ning to Wikis will be discussed and I am very much looking forward to presenting my work with blogs in the middle school music classroom as well as my graduate students at Teachers College.
For those of you who won’t be here today, perhaps you’d like to share some of the strategies that you use with your students, incorporating blogs, podcasts, wikis, nings, and more. I’d love to open a dialogue here about how you are implementing these powerful tools for learning in your classroom. What grade levels are you using these tools with? Is there an appropriate age to start using them? Does your music program have a MySpace page? Facebook page?
I justed posted a podcast containing two compositions that we recorded yesterday with the Kaossilator Orkestra at the Franklin Avenue Middle School in Franklin Lakes, NJ.
The structure of the first piece is based on Morse Code. After giving the students a drum loop, they spelled words using the Kaossilator from Korg. This is the third time we have rehearsed together as a group and I am finding that having a system like Morse Code (giving the students a tactile direction) is more successful than some of the other pieces that I have written out for them.
The second piece is based on Braille. We chose the word “Rainbow” because there were 7 students yesterday. Each student was assigned a letter from the word and then given direction on how to create each letter using Braille.
I was very pleased with the results as the pieces are more controlled than some of the ones we tried in earlier rehearsals. The concept of the Kaossilator Orkestra is becoming clearer as we move forward. Personally, I am thrilled by the possibilities for this type of group in the school setting. What do you think? Could you see an ensemble like this in your school?
Yesterday I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Robert Brannan, known as elderbob, for a very interesting project being run on a website called Musicbridges. Here is a brief description of what Musicbridges is trying to do:
The site is a webcasting network of musicians and music educators dedicated to helping those involved in music and technology explore, discuss, and collaborate covering topics on music gear, music in education, ways to successfully create global recordings, and music lessons. Musicbridges is part of Worldbridges. They are also the home of the 2008 EVO - Music in Education Course.
My interview, part of their music education course titled “I Got Rhythm - Music in the Classroom”, has been posted, and although the beginning is pretty rough (we recorded the entire interview over Skype and there were some network problems) I think there are some interesting points. While I was being interviewed there were a number of participants in a web chat who were interacting with me at the same time. They have their own Yahoo Discussion Group, which I have joined, and I am looking forward to seeing what happens with this. It was a great experience, and I urge other music educators to look into what these visionary people are doing.
A few weeks ago, I was contacted by Kelly Heyboer from the Star Ledger, a newspaper distributed throughout New Jersey. She discovered me after visiting my podcasting site and listening to some of my student work. I was interviewed over the phone, and a few days later a photographer came and took photos while two of my students and I created the most recent edition of “This Week in Music” - a weekly show that I do with my students.
The article, entitled “Pods Casting a Spell as the Medium of the Masses” was published in the education section of the December 16th Sunday paper. It was wonderful to be recognized for my work with podcasting, and the students got a big thrill out of having a photographer come to our classroom. I strongly urge you to try podcasting with your students as well - maybe your program will be featured too!
I was recently interviewed by Keith Mason for his podcasting site, Music Tech for ME. The episode that I was interviewed for covered a wide variety of topics - everything from how I got started with music technology to my work with the Connect With Music Project. It was an honor to be interviewed by Keith who really has a great site going. I urge you to check out his site. If you’d like to leave any comments about the interview, please do so on Keith’s site. Happy listening!
My good friend and fellow TI:ME Board Member Dr. Scott Watson has just started a new podcasting site called “What Music Means to Me“. You might know Scott as a composer (my 6th Grade Band is currently working on one of his pieces), or as the creator of the incredible Home Practice Online. He also serves as the Chair of the TI:ME Publications Committee.
What Music Means to Me already has six well produced podcasts that contain Scott’s thoughts on a wide variety of topics relating to music, technology and education. I strongly recommend checking the site out, and I am thrilled that Scott has joined the world of podcasting. Subscribe to his feed today!
I know that it might seem like shameless self-promotion, but I just saw that my homepage was featured in the Web Sitings Column of the September/October 2007 Music Education Technology Magazine (page 38). The article specifically mentions the many podcasts that I have posted on my podcasting site. Special thanks to Karen Garrett and Steven Estrella for thinking of my site. It certainly is something that I spend a great deal of time on, and it’s nice to see that it has been recognized.
Powered by FireStats