CAI, SmartBoards, etc.

These articles are very useful for any music teacher in any discipline. The ideas presented in the CAI article touch on a variety of standards that every state probably has. The software that I learned about will be infinitely useful to me when I enter a music teaching situation. Each of the pieces of software mentioned in the article can be used to address a variety of state standards, from technology to history to theory, and beyond. When I was a theory student, I was a passive learner. I copied down information, listened to the teacher, did my assignments, and passed my tests. But I never really got excited about learning the information. I can definitely imagine playing theory games with my students to get them to understand the information in their own way. Since each student is an individual with their own unique learning style, learning has to happen in a variety of ways. This software has different learning styles built in. If you have a visual learner in an auditory environment (like a music classroom might be), it might be frustrating for the student to try to visualize things like phrasing, and legatos. If you can use a piece of software to show your visual learner what those things might look like, the idea can become a part of that student. Making More Music might be a good piece of software for that learner.

I think that SMARTboards are a great asset in any classroom. With the SMARTboards, you can project your computer screen so that everybody can see what you are doing. This is a great idea for a visual learner. Instead of describing an idea, you can show them what you mean with the aid of some of the software mentioned in the CAI article. In a music classroom, it can be used with theory and history. I think that having this technology at your fingertips is great, but it falls on the teacher to present ideas in exciting ways. That's where the other forms of technology help, like the CAI software.

The article about using one computer for an entire classroom has good ideas, especially for budget conscious school districts. (Which ones aren't, right?) The article puts emphasis on the software that you can buy for the one computer in your classroom. This is more economical and realistic than putting a dozen or more computers in each room. For kids that don't have computers at home I think that having only one computer per classroom isn't fair, because they don't get the same learning experience that kids with computers at home do. Since computers are such a great learning tool, the kids that don't have computers should have a priority over kids that do have computers at home. Cycling kids through computer stations is a good idea, but it makes learning technology frustratingly slow for the kids that don't have computers at home. Since computers can be such a great tool for learning music, I think that having only one computer in a music classroom is unfortunate.