Technology put to use!

   I have been ruminating a lot this week on digital connections and how much we depend on certain things to lighten our load. For instance, I conduct an annual Messiah sing-along which includes an orchestra and a core choral group as well as soloists from the group and all of these people need to know what we are rehearsing, when, and at which location. I rely heavily on email to put out this information to each group, from the "It's almost time to start" email to the "The performances this year were great" and  all the technical information that is processed in between those two. When I first started conducting this group, about 13 years ago, I was not good with email and would have to collect email addresses each new year and write them out on a list we passed around which I then took home and put into the address section of my email. Over the years, I learned how to make a Messiah group, and then to be more specific with Messiah chorus and Messiah orchestra groups, so each musician got the information they needed. I remember thinking how much easier that made my life when I learned about group emails, and now I use them for the community band I direct year round as well.
    I read recently about a choral director who is using innovative technology in his choral class for everything from signing in, to sight reading, to warmups, to testing choral parts. When I read his blog, it sounded almost like the Jetsons, but as I've thought further about it, it is amazing how much time he is saving just by using electronic check-in on each student's ipad, not to mention all the in-class time that is saved by the students recording their parts and him having the ability to hear them on his own time, rather than in front of the whole class in small groups.
    I find technology fascinating and amazing and I do remember the pre-computer and pre cell phone era and the lengths one had to go to to find a pay phone that worked if you needed to make a call away from home!

So here's one form I created to help me in scheduling this year; it had cute little gingerbread men all around it!

Messiah rehearsals and performances

* Required

Name, first and last *
This is a required question
Your instrument *
Are you able to rehearse Oct.26?
• yes
Are you able to rehearse Nov.2?
• yes
Are you able to rehearse Nov.9?
• yes
Are you able to rehearse Nov.16?
• yes
Are you able to rehearse Nov.23?
• yes
Are you able to rehearse Nov.30?
• yes
Are you able to perform Dec.1 in Knoxville at 5 pm?
• yes
Are you able to perform Dec.7 in Norris at 7 pm?
• yes
Are you able to perform in Oak Ridge Dec. 8 at 5 pm?
• yes

Never submit passwords through Google Forms.

   So, as we work with different technology, like creating slide shows from digital pictures and then embedding them on my own page as part of a collaborative project, it really boggle the imagination as to what things we have yet to do and learn as we work together in this digital format. How much easier it is to drop someone an email, rather than spending time on the phone or money on a stamp. (However, I must admit that I still love receiving and sending letters to special people.) I am going to be writing an essay for a contest that is giving a scholarship to a music student who wants to go to an upcoming technology conference to learn more about using technology in the classroom.  I think there are a lot of things we can do more efficiently with digital tools which will allow us to spend our one on one time really being with the students where we need to be. I look forward to being more and more at ease with all things digital and hope to be a more effective teacher because of it.

Digital technology maze

       Tonight's activity was on using digital technology and making a slideshow. We did just fine working together as a group in finding and resizing the images of the instruments we needed and that was even fun as we each did resizing and putting into folders and out of folders to make the slideshow.
   However, when I tried to get to my album, I could not access it through picasa because google+ now takes over all your photos and it opened to the page with all my photos! Jeff had to do some serious voodoo to help me get this album to my website page where it really needs to reside. I found this very irritating with the proprietary elements of Google.
I also captioned all of my photos, and when it transferred into the slideshow the bass clarinet's label jumped off! I did learn how to find and resize photos and even save them into a folder, so that's a lot of progress for me tonight. I also learned how to take a screenshot on this computer, which is a MAC, but I will definitely have to practice this on my own computer at home as it's a PC.
      Kind of crazy, but I guess it works. Not as intuitive as I would have liked, but I will definitely need to practice more with this digital technology if I want to use it in classrooms!

Google Docs

Google Docs seem to have a lot of features- only a few of which I have begun to use so far. I created and sent out another form for my ethnomusicology research project on community bands and the results were not as usable as I had hoped. I will  have to learn how to tweak things to get the responses I need! For instance, I need to figure out how to allow the participants to rank items in order of importance as the method I used of asking 7 different questions didn't work so well. : (
   I will definitely need to do more experimenting before sending out another form, and have learned that I need to send to myself first to make sure things appear the way I need them to.
   I'm also dealing with the issue of a couple of people not being able to access my poll in the email, but one was able to access by clicking the online link. Still waiting to hear back from the other individual to see if she even tried the link!
    Long and short of it is that these are going to be great tools for me to use once I get more practice with them and understand them better.

This is just a picture of how my brain sometimes works!

Inquiry based Activities

Last week we worked on creating an inquiry based activity on our wiki page that we have been learning with. This was an overwhelming assignment when I first started it, but as I got into it I found that I was really enjoying what I was doing and wanted to do a little more. I actually plan to go back to that page and add a few more listening links. Our music education back row had a great time finding humorous pictures relating to our composers and sharing them with one another!  I can see how these kinds of activities could be a great way to reinforce lessons taught  in a more traditional way and would also be a way to differentiate instruction for those who learn in other ways.
     I also learned how to create a Google form  to use with my community band and put it into use last week to collect data on future dates for concert and member availability. I have decided that technology can actually offer some wonderful tools to ease our workload and simplify some of the things we already do. I plan on using a questionnaire for my Messiah chorus and orchestra as I schedule the rehearsals around instrumental availability! I'm also working on a research project for my ethno-musicology course and will use this as part of the interview process.
  I'm getting excited to learn more ways to use technology in the classroom and in all spheres of life to help make the things I already do easier on an organizational level.