Final Exam

I made it! I have had a great time working through this course. I am still very much a techno-newbie and realize that I've merely seen the tip of the iceberg. However, I've been encouraged to just try things out and believe that that's the best way to learn.

My husband and I recently canceled our Mac website subscription...just too expensive and we weren't taking full advantage of it. Blogging makes more sense, is free, and we can both do it (he was the website manager). We haven't set up a family blog, yet, but I full intend on doing so as soon as summer rolls around.

I think the RSS and Google Reader assignments were the most frustrating to me. I have a really hard time keeping up with and sifting through all of the information. Felt like an e-mail inbox that was totally out of control. I do see the benefits and will continue to feed and read my reader.

Thoroughly enjoyed looking over the Cool Tools...I had NO idea there were so many options out there. Good thing I don't have much time to sit around on the computer...if I did, I WOULD!

I love having the Delicious account. I was at a string teachers' conference in late March and slipped into a session on technology in the music classroom. Well, first of all, I was really proud of myself for being familiar with most of the tools that the presenter was presenting. (I realized that there are many people much further behind!) At the end of the session, he gave us his Delicious link to all of his tags. WOW! What a find! I almost feel like I'm cheating since he did all the work. But he offered... Fabulous tool.

I'm proud of my class wiki and look forward to seeing what the kids will contribute.

My goal from here is to keep up! I don't want to inundate my students with technology...as I mentioned in a previous post, my students like being unplugged and offline. They're "on" in nearly all of their academic classes. However, I see that there are many opportunities to "ease" some 2.0 into orchestra classes. I'll move forward with the wiki, blogging, especially for recording and posting performances for critique.

I've enjoyed this class! The pace and workload is very doable. I especially like all of examples you provide (existing blogs, wikis, etc.). It's very helpful to see how colleagues are implementing.

Thank you for this opportunity!
Elizabeth

Task 12- Sharing what I've learned

I've shared my wiki with music colleagues and we have started brainstorming how we can take advantage of this tool together. Each of us could have a separate page on the same wiki...we can collaborate and the students can collaborate across divisions. Neat! We think it will be especially helpful with cross-curricular projects...something we've considered but never set in motion because it's hard to get everyone together. Not so anymore.

I taught my husband (a fellow music teacher) and other about RSS feeds and Delicious. He thought the latter was especially interesting. No more sifting through endless bookmarks on our home computer.

I'll be sharing more at our last music faculty meeting coming up soon...

Task 11- Implement a tool

I have recently set up a wiki for my 8th Grade and Upper School Orchestras. I've posted YouTube videos of concerts on which the students are commenting. It's been a slow start, but I think they're starting to get a hang of it. Interestingly, when I first set up the site and was excited to tell them that we were going to implement some technology, the response I got was "Mrs. Lamback, this was the only class we didn't have to open our laptop. We liked that!" Hmmm...got me thinking that sometimes it's good to unplug!

I also created flashcards on Quizlet (link on the wiki) for the kids to prepare for an upcoming music term quiz. I'll know by next Monday if the students really took advantage of the tool!

Task 10- Cool Tools

I found a couple of tools on the list to be particularly interesting...could be pretty useful:

Gliffy - concept mapping; might be neat to use as we work on our music curriculum mapping at HI.

Mnemograph (now called TimeGlider) - create neat music history time line...

The others didn't really jump out at me.

HOWEVER, I did come across Last.fm. Very cool! Free internet radio and online catalogue. Last.fm can recommend music based on your likes/dislikes and also gives concert listings in the area. Check out Yo-Yo Ma on last.fm. You can read his bio, look at photos and videos, etc. I think this would be a great tool for my music students.

Task 9- Delicious account

Task 9 completed. Here's a link. The more I get used to it, the more I like it. Thanks, Joanne, for helping me out!!

Task 8- Setting up wiki

I set up my page on the Pi20 Wiki Sandbox. It's pretty boring right now...but I'll keep working on it.

Thing 8- Wiki Stretch

I plugged in "violin" on Wikipedia and found a very detailed article including history, how the instrument is played, construction and mechanics famous violinists, etc. There's a huge list of "Contents" and a lot of links to other related articles.

The main points of discussion are whether a fiddle is a violin, if the bass is part of the violin family, tuning, etc. No interesting controversy! One contributor was interested in raising the article to "Good Article" status. I'll find out what that means...