Posts

June 29th

After our conversation about the WebQuest Project I decided to go in a different direction and create something more straightforward and accessible to a young audience. Honestly the guitar project too would be more applicable to the vast majority of my students - I teach a mix of young beginners/low level players (often middle school), adults, and a few more advanced high schoolers. So what I am creating will be very useful for me especially for the next time I am teaching a general guitar class. I feel like I am struggling with the Introduction and Conclusion sections of the project, particularly the introduction - how to come up with something that is gripping and will draw the students in, without feeling contrived/corny. On reflection I think the Introduction idea is something I struggle with generally in my teaching. I would be curious about your thoughts on what I have there - I think you were right that my first idea was too high level for my audience, it would have been unlik...
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June 28th

I really got a lot out of today's topics. Creating YouTube playlists for my students is intuitive but for whatever reason I've never done it - even as I have a large pile of youtube videos that I regularly recommend to my students and that I have watched repeatedly myself. The google form/google quiz is very intuitive to create and something I can apply right away with my students. I really like Diigo as well as a way to keep track of valuable websites and be able to share those websites with others (and keep abreast of what is out there, what others are finding). To date I've just been trying to remember web searches to find websites or writing down urls. This is much easier. I would be curious to dig a little into google classroom itself. Probably most of the class is familiar with it, but, this is actually my first time using it (from either side of the user experience). I'd be curious to know more about it and whether it could potentially be applied to a private...
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June 27 2017

I really appreciate the way that this workshop is set up, in that you are giving us the time to learn about and do relatively simple projects on very practical and approachable programs. This is the kind of familiarization work that I always intend to do, but, never make the time for. I appreciate being walked through all of them, being asked to do a small project, and, discussing practical uses of these programs. I appreciate too that they are all free or very low cost and work on most devices, it wouldn't be as valuable to dig into, say, Pro Tools. I tend to get very frustrated with technology, due to the time (and often money) one needs to invest in order to become proficient, only to have programs quickly change, get replaced, etc etc. I would be interested to learn about strategies you have for mitigating this frustration and staying 'on top' of changes in technology and hardware without buying each new iPhone as it comes out etc. Not only for myself but for the adul...
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June 26 2017

Warming up with Incredibox gave me a lot of ideas for how this kind of program could be used as a tool for teaching composition and improvisation without needing to worry about notation or instrumental skill, as well as being a great ice breaker for students. I appreciate the way that you went about structuring the social media aspect of today's class in terms of Personal Learning Networks. Though this is an intuitive idea it is helpful to reframe my thinking of social media and online media in this way. I think because of my background with social media, I've struggled to use it as something that is not necessarily connected to my personal life - ie, being able to be on twitter or use an RSS reader without feeling like it is an intrusion of my professional life into my personal life. I have been on facebook since 2004 and used livejournal before then. Over the years social media has transitioned from being a space used only by my peer group for relatively frivolous purpose...
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