Category: EdTech (Page 1 of 2)

PSII Reflection

I found our visit to PSII interesting, as I’ve never experienced a school environment like that. When I think of high school, I think of the traditional model as that’s what I’ve seen, observed, and experienced, and I’m glad I got the chance to broaden my perspective by visiting this school.

My favourite part of our visit was having an actual student tell us about her experience at PSII. I was shocked to find out she was in grade 9, as she spoke very maturely and all of her thoughts about the school that she shared with us were very well-articulated. Hearing her story, and how she was able to find a school system that worked for her, made me really happy. It’s nice to know there are options out there for all sorts of learners.

I don’t think I personally would have benefited from the high school environment that is PSII, mostly because the only part of school I actually enjoyed was band, but also because I lacked the skills to be self-motivated and truly didn’t mind being told what to study. I can think of several people in my life who WOULD benefit from this system though, and it brings me joy to know that it is out there and that learners are given the opportunity to be in a school that works for them.

Social Media Safety as a Teacher, or alternatively: The Class that Made Me Paranoid

In this week’s class we discussed how to be on the internet as a teacher. This is something I have been thinking about for several years now as I have begun to enter the world of working with youth. In my undergrad, as we were starting to build networking relationships with other local music educators, we were warned by our professors to be wary of the things that we post on social media – at that point it was more of a reminder to un-tag ourselves from photos where we may be drinking alcohol or at a nightclub. As I began actually working with youth, those values remained, but they also evolved into questioning whether I wanted students to be able to find me on social media. This is where I had to question what my values and purpose were on using social media – I’ve matured a bit since those days and realized that, while getting likes from strangers used to be important to me, I have to have different priorities now because I don’t want students or parents knowing too much about my personal life, and all my accounts are now private.

This lecture, especially the stories of things going wrong, made me paranoid. I worry about things I may have posted on social media when I was young and naive that I no longer have easy access to (like tweets from 2013, for example). I have begun to question whether I want to have social media at all. I certainly went through all my settings after the class was over to ensure that only the people who I want to see what I post have access to my content. I have noticed that some of my peers who have taken the PDP Program before have changed their names on Facebook to not include their last names, and I am wondering whether this is something I should do too.

I have successfully learned the first three notes on the oboe!

It was a challenging week. As far as woodwinds go, I’m almost positive that oboe is the hardest, just based on my experiences so far. The fingering patterns for scales are very challenging – I say pattern, but it almost seems like there is no pattern at all. With other woodwinds, like flute, generally when you add a finger, the note gets lower, and when you remove a finger, a note gets higher. With oboe, to switch from C to D you have to add four fingers AND go from covered to half-hole on the first finger. All of that to go up one tone!

I am also noticing that I get fatigued and have to stop playing VERY quickly. I need to work in smaller doses to start building my muscles before I try to play for 15 minutes straight.

While the oboe is very challenging, I am excited for the challenge. It is the first instrument I have picked up that hasn’t immediately been easy for me, and I think it is good for me.

Below you will find a video of me playing Au Clair de la Lune, which uses the first three notes of the Bb major scale. Enjoy (and please ignore my weird facial expressions)!

Using audio to support learning – what does this mean to me as a music teacher?

From my experiences so far, I’ve learned that most people assume anything audio-related is relevant to music teachers. I can see the connections they make – music is sound, audio is sound, audio usually involves music… it must be relevant to teaching music!

At this point in my life I challenge this notion. From most of classes I have taught, been taught in, or observed, the most a teacher has used audio media is watching YouTube videos or listening to higher-quality recordings on publisher websites or IMSLP. This is of course extremely important and helpful, but it isn’t anything new, unprecedented, or anything that can’t be done from one’s home computer or cell phone. I did use some recording technology in high school (Logic), but I think we were some of the lucky ones as I haven’t seen similar software used in a classroom since then. Even being one of the lucky ones who got to use it, I wasn’t necessarily taught HOW to use it – I was just given access to the software, so the recordings were not excellent.

When I teach, I would love to give my students resources and instruction on how to record themselves in better ways than using Voice Memos on a iPhone. This is something I would like to explore in my tech inquiry project. Hopefully I can find out more.