Horia Varlan, “Fast musical notes on a music sheet” October 23, 2008 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution
Over the past year, our music teacher has done a great job integrating technology into her music classes. Mrs. Gilmore, who is entering her third year of teaching, teaches music to 1st-8th grade and does a combination of theory, history, and appreciation. One specific project that the junior high music class did last year was a very impressive combination of creation, collaboration, and publishing. The project began by each student creating his or her own composition on Finale software. Finale software allows the students to create, mix, and compose their own music. After completing the composition, the songs that the students created were uploaded to a class Voicethread. Each student in the class as well as teachers at our school was invited to view the Voicethread. Finally, we were all asked to vote for our favorite compositions in the following categories: most creative, best sounding, and most singable. We entered our votes into the Voicethread as text comments. You can watch the Voicethread below by clicking the play button.
There were two reasons that I was impressed with this project. First, students reached the highest level of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy, which is Creating. Their composition was a final product that they created on their own using technology. In addition to using the higher order thinking skill of creating, they were then given an audience for their composition. Allowing students to create and publish is a very authentic learning experience for those students. The second reason this project was impressive was the 21st Century Learning skills of creating, collaborating, and connecting that were used. This was a very student-centered project. I am sure that each student felt ownership and pride over the final product.
Amazing! All I remember from my elementary music class was banging on a drum! How innovative and I could imagine how thrilled parents or grandparents were to be able to listen to their kid's creations.
ReplyDeleteI concur with Danny! I remember learning notes and playing a little bit with a recorder. I think this project is really pushing students to a higher level of understanding students. I'm sure the high school music teachers love the students that come out of your school.
ReplyDeleteDo you find more of the older students participating in choir or band since this music teacher has been at your school?
I'm also curious how she did the collaboration? I would think putting some of the younger students with the older would work well because the older students could help the younger ones use the technology.
Have you heard any feedback from the parents? or from the students concerning this project? What do they think of it? Were they frustrated or did they thoroughly enjoy the experience?
@bellybuttonlint
ReplyDeleteThis project was done with the JH class. I do not think there has been much collaboration across the grade levels, although I would be surprised if she did not begin to use technology to do some collaboration among her music classes.
Typically we have had anywhere from 5-20 students in the JH music class. Usually we have 80-90 students in the JH. The other students choose to do band or choir. This year we have 40 students signed up for music! Mrs. Gilmore has completely changed the way people look at our music class and has made it a very legitimate option for students who must choose between choir, band, or music class.