Blogs I Follow

African Drumming: This blog brings you the latest African drumming and African music news and review. There are tips, techniques and event information if you join their monthly newsletter.

Amy Burns: Amy Burns blog has great technology ideas for the music classroom. She is very involved in ti:me.

Bringing Technology to Public Schools: This blog is a group of parents and teachers in San Francisco public schools trying to introduce innovative technology in their under-funded system.

ChoralNet: ACDA's blog has posts from conductors and music educators all over America.

Emerging Education Technology: This blog has many articles about education and upcoming technology. There are some free-downloads linked.

Free Technology For Teachers: This blog has many ideas and free downloads for teaching with technology.

Guitar Teacher: This blog is all about learning how to play guitar using basics, chords, and how to's.

Heartwood Guitar: This blog is a guitar instructors resource blog for beginning and intermediate guitar students complete with many chord charts.

Immigrant Conductor: This is Dr. Copeland's blog for our Technology class and is full of articles and resources for choral music educators.

iPad and Technology: This blog has many different ideas for how to use the iPad and technology in music education.

Kodaly and Orff Music: This teacher has many great ideas for classroom activities using Kodaly and Orff methodology.

MENC: Here is were you can keep up with the latest "happenings" for the Music Educators National Conference.

Learning the Right Notes: This blog has technology and education ideas.

Music is Not For Insects: This blog by Ken Pendergrass is about music education and technology.

Orff Site: This blog has plans and ideas using the Orff-Schulwerk methodology.

PS22 Chorus: This blog is the official blog for Public School 22 in New York's chorus. Led by Mr. B, these students have amazing opportunities to sing all around the United States.

Teaching Music in the 21st Century: Thoughts on music education, teaching in general, and using technology in the eyes of a real life public school teacher.

Technology in Music Education: This blog shares ideas of how to use iPhones, iPods, iPads, and other technology in music education.

The Music Teachers Blog: This is the "Fun Music Company"s blog with teaching resources for the music classroom.

Urban Music Education: This music teacher, Sarah Johnston, has an amazing site filled with whiteboard activities, garageband projects, and many other music technology ideas.

New Blogs!!! Added: 7/11/11
The Nerdy Teacher
Teacher Tom
Journey in Technology
The Interactive Classroom
iLearn Technology
Sharps Education Blog
Kirsten Winkler

Ted Talks #4,5

Ted Talks #1,2,3

“Creativity is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” He defines creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value. Robinson states that all children are born artists and as we age, we grow out of creativity instead of into creativity. Education seems to be based on academic ability. This focus came into being to meet industrialism needs. People were told not to participate in music or art because you aren’t going to make your living at these things. Public education now seems to be based on academic subjects in order to have college acceptance. Now, it seems that degrees aren’t worth anything because people with and without degrees are not working. This is because of a process of academic inflection. Robinson mentions restructuring our intelligence to be diverse (visually, sounds, kinesthetically, etc.), dymanic, (the brain is extremely interactive,) and distinct (discovering talent).

Robinson speaks of a woman, Jillian Lin, who as a child couldn’t sit still had to move to think. She was sent to a doctor to assess her behavior and he concluded that she should go to ballet school, where she greatly excelled. She found own dance company, met Andrew Lloyd Weber, and is now an amazing choreographer. Someone could have put her on medicine and told her to calm down, but instead saw her creativity. If we see creative capacity in education, our children can make something of their future.

I enjoyed this Ted Talk because it has motivated me to be more proactive in promoting the arts and creativity as a whole. For me personally, I love creativity and thrive through opportunities to be creative. When those opportunities are being taken from our students, how do we expect them to excel in the 21st century. Creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration (the 21st century skills) are critical to the succeeding in the life of me and in the lives of my students.

Benjamin Zander states that there are many different opinions on classical music, but through his experiment, his goal is to make everyone in the room passionate about classical music. He started by playing a Chopin piece with little expression using emphasis on most beats, then gradually used more and more phrasing. You have to quit thinking about note one to note two, but think about the vision of the piece. As a conductor of the orchestra, you don’t make a sound, but you have the ability to make other people powerful. His job as a conductor is to awaken possibility in other people. By looking into the eyes of people you are teaching, if the eyes are shiny, you are awakening that possibility. If the eyes are not, ask yourself, who am I being that my student’s eyes are not shining? Your success comes when their eyes are shining. Zander says that it really makes a difference what we say, the words that come out of our mouths. “I will never say anything that couldn’t stand as the last thing I ever say.”

To me, this Ted Talk was extremely inspiring. How often do we go through the day not thinking about how what we say affects other people? This relates to my personal life as well as my teaching career. As a teacher, it is my responsibility to evoke shiny eyes in my students and to encourage them. As a human, it is my responsibility to evoke shiny eyes in anyone I come in contact with. I LOVED THIS TED TALK!!

In this Ted Talk, Diana Laufenberg talks about the potential of students. A long time ago, information was being transferred through books and teacher’s heads, now we have the Internet as an educational tool. We should change our tactic in teaching and create authentic experiences that pose real life problems. Her government students created an election forum for their community. Through this project many real life experiences were had. The experiential aspect of the process stuck with them and really meant something to them. Another group of students had the opportunity to meet the man who the movie Hotel Rwanda was based on. The real life project she selected was to take a person they know personally, like him, who singularly used his or her life do something positive and create a movie with their own voice allowing them to speak for themselves. Asking students how do you plan to use your life to positively impact other people? You have to be comfortable with allowing kids to fail as a part of the learning process. When students fail, they process what went wrong and learn from their failure. If we continue to look at education as coming to school to get information from the teacher’s head, we will miss critical thing like: experiential learning, student voice, and embracing failure.

This Ted Talk was moving. I actually teared up. Her passion for “hands-on” “real life” learning is truly what it should be about. The old, “stuffy” style of teacher gives information and students learn seems to be the way it’s always been and that’s not good enough. Student’s motivation for learning stems from our excitement and creative ways to approach information in a way they will relate to it.

Me and the Husband 3-12-11

Absco Fireplace & Patio

One of My Favorite Composers

I love George Gershwin!!

Check out the Gershwin website!!