MUE6696: Technology Assisted Music Learning, Spring 2019

Last week, I was able to get my work done early for the aforementioned reasons of performing in Washington, D.C. this past weekend. This week, I got a slightly late start for the very same reason. On a side note, the performances went well, but we did not return home until about 2:30am Tuesday morning. This week's topic was musical assessment and professional productivity. Several of the assessment tools introduced in this week's readings I had already learned about thanks to the Assessment course, however, what was new for me this week was learning about the various technological tools to assist in assessment. Google Forms, which we had an assignment on, was one of those tools and is something that I am considering using going forward, especially as I begin to teach more classes that will need some kind of quiz, and Google Forms provides a great tool to use for creating quizzes. I am also considering using this as a tool for collecting assessment evidence for my capstone tha...

This week's blog post comes a bit earlier than the rest. I usually write these on Sunday, but this week, I am writing this on Friday because I am out of town for the weekend.  Our university's orchestra was invited to perform in Washington, D.C. as part of the Capital Orchestra Festival , hosted by Music Celebrations International . Due to that, I am glad that this week's work load was lesser than that of the previous modules. I am also glad of that because I got very sick Monday evening, which kept me home on Tuesday and Wednesday. This week's topic was instructional design. This was also the subject of a course here in the graduate program, and it was nice to see a connection between that course and this one, especially in our readings in which Bauer (2014) discussed backward design. In the Instructional Design course, the big project was to design a unit using backward design, and I used that to plan the first half of this semester for my concert band, which is go...

This week, our topic was Responding to Music with Technology. There are many ways in which we can use technology as a means of responding to music. In today's world, practically all students and teachers alike have a media device that can play music. Most are probably using their smartphones and using apps such as  Spotify or  YouTube , which now has  its own dedicated music app. Like many other music apps, Spotify presents a great way to share music, especially music that we are working on in our classes. If there is a specific version of a piece of music that I would want my students to listen to, I could use one of these apps and share that with them. Spotify, however, is limited in its music selection. For example, with our project this week, I would have liked to have found the exact arrangements of the pieces we are performing, but none appeared in my search. I got the original orchestral versions, which is great, but with Carmen, for example, the arrangement...

This week's topic was performing music with technology. Although that was the topic, it did not seem like it was the focus. The chapter from our readings this week was on performing music with technology, but my reasoning for feeling as if that was not the focus was because the bulk of this week's work was on remixing sound. In this week's readings, Bauer (2014) touched on a number of topics in regard to performing music with technology, providing a number of useful tools in helping with teaching performing music. One of which was SmartMusic , which I have previously spoken about. Another was digital audio and video from sources such as online music services, like  iTunes or Spotify , and online video services, like YouTube . Digital audio and video was in the section on Modeling, wherein students can use these resources at home to hear and see how things should be played or done. These of course can also be used in the classroom. From personal experience, I have been us...