Curriculum Design

There are several types of curriculum that teachers may use to reach students, ranging from "ideal" (valuing comprehensive and sequential approaches) to "experiential" (curriculum that students receive and perceive). Any of the types of curriculum should include national, state, and local (if applicable) standards.

Thinking through what I need to accomplish each year in the curriculum will help me structure information for the students. I feel that it will be essential for me to do this to ensure the systematic growth of student's skills. Otherwise, instructional time turns into a string of activities that will seem disorganized and haphazard to the students. This might be discouraging for the students if they don't have a focus in music class, especially if I see students only once or twice a week.

An essential element in planning curriculum is the consideration of four different kinds of outcomes: skills, concepts, attitudes, and repertoire. Skills must be developed in a sequential way. Being aware of where my students actually are in their acquisition of skills (instead of where I hope they are), will help me develop meaningful curriculum for the acquisition of skills. Skills must be practiced in order to be retained. Concepts need to be applicable (using examples from their lives) in order for students to understand them. Attitudes will naturally occur as a result of either positive or negative musical experiences. The types of experiences (haphazard or sequential and ordered) will affect the attitudes that students have about music in general. Repertoire is developed through a variety of experiences through many different pieces of quality music. The internalization of these songs and pieces will help distill and synthesize the individual qualities of the songs which will turn into long-term attitudes and internalizations of musical experiences. This synthesization has the potential to affect a child's attitudes about music for the rest of their lives. It is in this way that I hope to affect children's attitudes about music the most.

Having many different approaches to curriculum design will allow me to constructively design musical experiences for my students. It will also help me take my curriculum designs to administrators to advocate for quality music in schools.

Music Technology Training: Musictechtips (from my PLN)

This site has a lot of pertinent information for music educators. The web author has linked several blogs that include some really pertinent information. The blogs cover a good number of categories in teaching including elementary education, music technology, and theory. The blogs are categorized to help narrow what you want to learn. In the elementary education blog, for example, the author has categorized her blogs based on some of the lessons she has taught in her classroom. Her personal experiences with the music lesson contain reactions from the kids. This helps to separate "armchair theory" lessons that don't work from lessons that actually work with kids.

The entire website is organized this way, which makes it easy to find useful information and links to high quality sites. I feel that this is a good resource that is easily accessible for every music educator, technologically savvy or not.

Assistive Technology

Soundbeam, a device that converts movement into sound, is a piece of technology that can be used in classrooms with special needs students. This is a wonderful way for kids that are quadriplegic or have cerebral palsy or other disorders to make music and to experience the process of music making. Soundbeam can convert the smallest movements into sound, so as long as you can move, you can make music.

IDEA, however, has not delivered on the promise that it made in 1975 to fund 40 percent of the educational costs for disabled children. Since then, the level of federal funding has never risen above 19%. Local and state governments have been forced to deal with the resulting financial impact. Federal funding has not kept up with the growing population of children with special needs.In spite of all that has been done in recent legislation, special education students need the support promised to them that is long overdue. With 40 percent of the funding of special needs children being met by the government, perhaps SoundBeam could become a fixture in every school.

Please consider asking your senator to vote to increase IDEA funding to 40 percent.

Music and the Brain: Dr. Daniel Levitin on the six types of songs that created human nature

These podcasts, which are sponsored by the Library of Congress, explore the relationship between neuroscience and music. According to Dr. Levitin in his new book, there are six forms of music that encapsulate human interactions: friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion/ritual, and love. These forms of music, in their own unique ways, have created and shaped the course of human civilization. The evolution of music is a window into the evolution of human civilizations. Music, for example, is most always linked with some sort of dancing, which has roots in sexual fitness. Social change as a result of music (rock in the 60s, for example), has changed the recent history of humankind.

Dr. Levitin's research on anthropology, music, and neuroscience results in a thought provoking discussion of the under-appreciated role of music in human history.

Copyright and Fair Use, Digital Citizenship

Most everybody has been influenced by modern technology in the past ten years. The world has changed so staggeringly fast that students who enter college to pursue technical degrees will have (almost certainly) learned mostly obsolete information in their fields by the time they graduate. This means that educators are teaching skills to students whose jobs have not been created yet. According to "Digital Citizenship: Addressing Appropriate Technology Behavior", by Ribble, Bailey, and Ross, inappropriate use of technology, modeled by teachers to students, has sent the message that it is not important to practice social responsibility when it comes to technology. I think that part of the reason behind this behavior is in the lack of precedence of this digital era. Here is an interesting video on the pace of change in the world today:

As a responsible educator, we must verse ourselves in the use of these new technologies with the goal in mind of teaching a student to be competitive in the global arena.

Exposure to more media than ever before in more formats (websites, text, video, etc.) has led to the creation of copyright and fair use laws that govern the intellectual property of others. It is always important to credit any source you use, including books, videos, and websites. If you intend on using intellectual material for noneducational purposes, you must obtain a copyright. This website has specific information on the fair use of information from the internet for use in the classroom.

Music and Instinct PLN

Music Instinct , on pbs.org, is an interesting website of clips and articles from various specialists in music and science. The articles and discussions focus on understanding the human instinct for music, from a music therapy perspective, to the science and evolution of music.

Music and the Neanderthal's Communication can be found here.

Here is the discussion of music therapy for infants.

There are many other related topics on the site, from performances of music across cultures to bird songs.

This website really delves into the substance of music in the world around us. To me, understanding the "why" in music (and human nature in general) is as critical as the "how".

technology, learning styles, and teaching (blog on readings)

How People Learn (and What Technology Might Have to Do with It)

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

WebQuests for Music Learning

Technology has changed a lot in the past 30 years. When my parents were my age, they communicated primarily through phone calls (but long-distance calls were expensive) and snail mail. In my generation, communication, even over long distances, is taken for granted because of the abundance of communication technology that exists at our very fingertips. There is some evidence that the fast paced world of technology has made us smarter. Obviously, this has changed our culture and the way people learn, especially the digital natives. Because people learn differently, teachers have to teach differently, using the tools of the age. Digital natives need educators who will use technology to enhance learning. One of the biggest differences in the learning styles of the two generations, from what I gather, is that digital natives are used to learning by trial and error, while a digital immigrant will reference a book or instruction manual to gather information. Digital natives, therefore, are fuller participants in the active learning process than their digital immigrant counterparts. "Edutainment", while not practical in some classrooms, is entirely useful in a music education classroom. "Edutainment" can use the "language" of the digital native, in the form of computer games, to drill many important elements of musical knowledge.