Reflections on the course

Here are my impressions of the learning opportunity we had with this online course exploring Web 2.0 Technology.  I was generally familiar with the existence of much of the technology introduced in the course, but the hands on experience I had with it all has really shown me a lot of application that I can use in my teaching. We all have a responsibility to be aware of and strive to meet the changing learning needs of our students, and having those needs spelled out in the beginning of the course was definitely helpful to me.  In the beginning, I wasn't really even aware of my own learning goals as far as this course is concerned, and I felt the structure of the course was effective in helping me realize what I knew and what I didn't.  The hands-on experience in each learning module was invaluable to getting the material across, but unfortunately, I tended to go straight to the learning activities and see how far I could get own my own, with the intuitiveness of the technology we were studying.  I look forward to spending more time with the videos and reading this summer when I have a little more time. I definitely plan to implement some of these tools in my own teaching, and I would be open to continue learning through some sort of continued course or community.

Module 5

For several years, I have had as a pary of my private lesson course syllabus a list of attributes of sucessful students. Without actually requiring and grading certain assignments or general behavior, I am able to loosely monitor the "habits of success" that my students display (or not).  One of these attributes is "Reads about his/her instrument daily."  A great many of the Web 2.0 tools we've investigated in this course would be of help in "reading about their instrument" , including RSS Feeds, and tagging.  Im going to suggest (require) all students to maintain a blog reader, and share interesting posts and web articles they find with the class.  I'll be doing the same.  However, I need more help understanding how to tag items...

Dan

Week 1 thoughts

Some random thoughts from week 1:  I was very struck by the RSA Animate video, and some parallels that can be drawn to the way we teach in the Conservatory. While the educational world around us is constantly in a state of "educational reform", trying to keep up with technology and its effect on today's students, we happily continue with out 18-19th century education model, teaching music performance to students in basically the same way Bach, Mozart or Beethoven would have taught their students. I agree withe the assertion that a degree is no guarantee of a job...especially in the field of music performance.

As stated in the video, we live in the most intensely stimulating period in history, with a massive number of entertainment choices, and bombarded by advertisement at every turn. This makes the development of the concentration and focus skills necessary for successful musical performance vastly more challenging than even 20 years ago.

It is stated that the arts are victims in this change...our potential audience members can't be bothered to leave the comfort of their couch and remote control to go to a live aesthetic experience, much less concentrate on that experience as an active listener for two hours or more!  I admit that I want instant gratification as much as the next person (imagine my frustration when trying to watch these YouTube videos on my office computer, with Lynn's painfully slow internet!)

In teaching our students to go win a job as a performer, we still follow the "production line" mentality and coach them on how to perform a dozen or so short excerpts of music, and to play those excerpts in a five minute audition (along with 50-200 other applicants) in an effort to somehow be recognized above the rest and awarded a position.  The actual demands of these positions have very little to do with the demands of the job interview!

It is my hope that in educating myself further in Web 2.0, I can try to break out of our present educational model a bit.