Your Program, technology
I’ve now gotten back from MENC’s Technology Academy and had some time to think about everything I saw and discussed. It was great to meet so many music teachers and put faces with emails. I had a great lunch on Saturday with Dr. Joseph Pisano of MusTech.net and his wife, and Andy Zwiebel joined us too. Andy has some great ideas and just started a blog for music education majors - something to watch! He plans to do a review of our book soon - I’m looking forward to seeing it.
We’ve created a new page on our site called “Presentation Archives. (more…)
Your Life, Your Place, Your Program, Your Students
Another school year draws to a close. BNC Education is proud to host the Music Education Blog Carnival for June. As you may not be aware, the host receives submissions to be sorted for the monthly edition. We have submitted our own blog entries for a number of the carnivals and have been quite pleased with the results. Well, we discovered this time of year is obviously difficult for a number of our colleagues. We received more spam entries this month than anything else and a precious few useful items to be included. Rather than have a blog carnival with three entries, we went through the list of 100 ME bloggers and compiled a list of posts we think you will find most helpful. We have sorted them into four major categories: Your Students, Your Program, Your Place, and Your Life. Enjoy.
Your Students
These are all concepts and ideas that can have an immediate impact in your classroom and ensemble. Most of them do not require anything more than an open mind. These are philosophical changes you can implement without seeking administrative approval. These are also ideas which can be handled directly by your students.
Your Program
These are more substantive suggestions which can improve your overall program. It begins to focus on the ensemble as a whole instead of the individual student. Some of these ideas may require additional funding and approval from administration.
Your Place
This is how your ensemble relates to your wider community, whether within your school or within your community as a whole. These will require the cooperation and collaboration of other educators and may be the most difficult to implement on your own.
Your Life
This is purely for the you as the director. As you change the experience for your students, do not neglect your own well-being.
Your Life, Your Place, Your Program, Your Students
June 2009 Music Education Blog Carnival!
We are very excited to be hosting the June Music Education Blog Carnival here at BNC Education. We are now accepting submissions for the upcoming Music Education Blog Carnival. Please use the following link to be automatically sent to our Music Education Carnival submission page:
Submit your article for the Music Education Blog Carnival by clicking this link!
Your Program, Your Students
That time of year is coming yet again. The glorious moment known as the final month, the home stretch, our penultimate days, the coda, the end. Most directors are finishing their final push to the end. We all tend to get a bit stressed at this time of year, so we offer a few suggestions to make these last days easier.
If they don’t know it by now…
How much new information are you trying to stuff into their heads, their ears, their fingers? At this point, you have taught them all they are going to know. Sure, you might get a new scale learned and maybe you might study another mode, but this is not the time of year to try to teach anything of major significance. Anything you add now you are going to have to reteach them in the fall. I am NOT suggesting that you go into “auto-pilot,” but rather, now is the time to enjoy the musical skills they have.
Assemblies, Testing, and Field Trips: Oh my!
As much as we would like to think that our end-of-year concert is all that remains, the truth is that the students have a plethora of mandatory distractions coming. I had to end a class recently after only 15 minutes of time becuase a field trip departure time took nearly every student in my class. I could have gotten frustrated, after all, don’t they know that my concert is next week, but what good would that have served. Did missing that one class really make any difference? We are in the refining time period anyway, so my students could probably use a nice little break. I used the time to clear off the pile that had been growing on my desk.
I forgot this was in here
If you are like me, you packed up your room last year and put away a number of things into storage for the summer. If you have managed to go the entire year without touching it, wondering where it was, or pulling it out from the abyss, then you probably don’t need it after all. I have precious little storage space. If the materials are in good condition, find a new teacher and help them out by giving the stuff to them. If it is reference materials that you occasionally need (like your dogeared copy of every national anthem in the world, which is out of print!) then find a better home for it. Out of sight=out of mind.
And we are all going out of our mind right now.
Your Students, technology
I was recently asked to share my Audacity ideas. I use Audacity in my classroom on a regular basis. I think it is a great tool for a musician, and great for teaching too. The learning curve is small, so within minutes a group of elementary students can be working away on their musical creations.
First, for those unfamiliar with Audacity, it is an open-source recording program that is quite powerful. I’ve been using it myself for years and have yet to use all the plugins and tools that come with it. You can find it by going to audacity.sourceforge.net. It is important to mention that you must also download a LAME encoder. (more…)
Your Program
…Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion…
These are the first words of the First Amendment to the Constitution. As a music educator who has taught in four different states in a variety of situations, I can tell you that these words are interpreted in a variety of ways. And yet, as any student of music will tell you, our richest musical resource is church music. From the beginning, most music that has been written down and saved is music for the church. It is nearly impossible for a choral director to program a concert of music that doesn’t involve music that has some sort of religious context. So what is a music teacher to do? (more…)
