SlideShare and INCOMPOTECH

Metal

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I found this audio synchronization activity easy because as a musician, I have spent many hours playing with recording equipment so the whole process was not daunting and quite familiar to me. I can see this technique being used outside the classroom, possibly for assignment work where students could actually go to SlideShare and watch presentations that you, as a learning manager, have posted to work as activities within assignments or other forms of research.

Form INCOMPOTECH, I downloaded a a jazz recording called "Shades of Spring" It's a beautiful and simple piece with only upright bass, piano and drum kit and I really think it captures the mood of "Spring"

Of course, as a musician, it would be easy for me to use in my teaching to describe many things such as the "Swing" genre, conventional ways of arranging different instruments in an ensemble, the role of a rhythm section with a solo instrument or musical timbre.

Also, here is a photo of me playing some jazz in the Mackay Big Band in November 2009

Google Earth & Wikipedia

After spending several hours exploring the possibilities of Google Earth, I found it to be both informative and fun. The feature I find most useful is the street view function, in which an address, place or town can be typed into the "fly to" section and it can go to that place on the earth and offer photos contributed by people, who have posted them to Google (such as tourists) and views from streets to show you the front of a house or for example, a hotel or park.

After looking at Joe Wood's Blog, I was very impressed by the way he utilised these many features, including street view, to make learning activities. However, these activities may cater better to visual learners, but in saying that, there are many other ways for other types of learners to gather information. Google Earth is just another form of ICT that can assist in the classroom environment.

Using Google Earth in a subject such as Geography could prove to be very useful for showing physical features of the earth such as volcanoes, mountains, oceans, latitudes and longitudes but in teaching music, I don't see it as being as resourceful. Possibly it could be used to show important historical sites in the development of western music, such as the many homes of Mozart and where he traveled to perform his many concert dates as a child.

As for Wikipedia, this website has proved itself to be an indispensable tool as it offers a source of knowledge to almost anything you wish to inquire about. Upon typing "music" into the search bar, it offers a page with 24 sections offering general information, and within each section are keywords which lead to more specific types, genres, terms and movements.

Wikipedia could be easily used in or outside of the classroom. It could be used in a learning experience plan at the start of lesson by asking the students to search for their favourite band for 10 minutes, then to deliver a brief oral presentation stating some interesting facts about their chosen band. It could easily be used for a homework task as well. You could ask students to research a topic overnight, and then in class the next day, give a pop quiz to investigate how they have gathered their knowledge.

How to play the violin

This is a video originally from an animated comedy site called "FilmCow"

It depicts "Johnny" being encouraged by his father to play the violin, but poor young Johnny doesn't seem to be enjoying it. My pedagogical rationale for embedding this video to my blog is that persistence an important step towards learning anything new, especially a musical instrument.

Many young students become frustrated, unmotivated and angry when dealing with the challenge of learning to play a musical instrument, but it is up to the parents to encourage the student to persevere (but not force) through their challenges, because the results of gaining musical talent can be very rewarding and offer many opportunities in their futures'.

Referencing:

© YouTube, LLC, 2010. How to play the violin . Retrieved April 23, 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/

Life is a Picnik

I uploaded this photo to Picnik, which I then cropped out some features that weren't necessary and re-sized the image to 40% of it's original size. These instructions were very easy to follow in this online format, as compared with Microsoft Office Picture Manager where the sections to click are very small and not as obvious.

I would say even young children would find the Picnik website easy to navigate, due to it's sensible layout and easy to follow steps. This technology would be useful within a pedagogical framework as it allows students to demonstrate their ability to choose an image, interpret instructions to re-size and crop and ultimately transfer their chosen image to another form of ICT.

The image I have uploaded is from The 1st Townsville 400 V8 Supercars event

fotos de Flickr (photos from Flickr)

After setting up another account with YahooMail, I established myself as a member of Flickr and uploaded a few photos to my account, which are now available to all other Flickr members.

I tried to find some photos that interested me to post to this blog, so I searched a friends name as an idea, and I found some photos of a woman's vacation in Cuba.

They are of her (Valeria Jimenez), sitting with the statue of John Lennon that is in a Plaza in Havana City and the other is of a courtesy sign from a library that reads as,

"The library is a mine of knowledge, explore it with your eyes and respect it with your silence"

I think this technology could be utilised in many ways. For example, students could be asked to research geographical features of a certain country, and by downloading other peoples personal images from Flickr (such as photos from people's vacations) and using them in a PowerPoint presentation, they could present this to a class as a form of assessment.

Referencing:

Photos courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/

Powerpoint Presentation

Metal

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So far, I found this to be the most challenging learning activity. All throughout High School I used PowerPoint often, but never in the "Windows Vista" Format. I was entirely unfamiliar with the way PowerPoint is now setup, but with help from the postings of my peers on the ICT forum, I learnt how to do many things, such as embedding YouTube videos to my presentation.

As a musician, I created a PowerPoint about the brief history and genres of Metal as this is something I'm very passionate about. I suppose it would be a good class activity for year 10's, or possibly for 11 and 12 linking towards analysis assignments or as a start of term activity to "hook" the students. I have included some videos in my presentation, but they do not work in this format on the blog (you can download this presentation with the menu bar in the bottom left handed corner of the presentation screen)

I hope you enjoy it!

I have embedded a video of a band I played bass in called "Isosceles" playing a cover of Wolfmothers "Joker and the thief". This is for educational purposes only, as a display of artistic expression of course!

Week 5

I am glad i went to a "Mahara" session at the Residential School in Rockhamptom, looking at it now, it is just one less thing to worry about among the establishment of blogs, wikis, aggrigators and so on.

After exploring the site basically, I now understand its basic layout and functions. Mahara has the ability to be a social networking forum, a multimedia centre for display, entertainment & education and also a tool for gaining employment by displaying resumes, lists of achievement and so on.



Creating an avatar was a fun experience. To incorporate an educational element was not an easy decision. ( as a musician training to be a music teacher I would love to make the avatar play the trumpet or guitar but I suppose that requires some technical animation )

I created an avatar to speak Spanish, but then i wrote phonetically for the avatar to say, "I am sorry I do not speak English". Technically, I have no LOTE qualifications, but showing this difference in phonetics could help students to understand the difference between languages; helping them to grasp better concepts of pronunciation, grammatical structure and colloquial expressions.

Using the friendly character of a cat could prove an effective "hook" to students as well. I myself enjoyed the "Borat" avatar created by Scot, but it would have been cool if he had tried an impersonation....

Semana Cuatro (Week 4)

(A classroom in the school where I worked in Panama, OBVIOUSLY lacking some ICT's...and electricity)

Upon viewing Dale's Cone, it was similar to the learning experiences I had in my formal schooling. In 1994 when I was in grade 3, my school received computers for classroom use. Little did we know back then how integral and resourceful a PC could become.

The computers were utilised to perform basic activities for art (such as using the "paint" program over a traditional pencil and paper activity) Educational games were also installed for Maths and English to help us learn grammar, spelling, addition and subtraction.

From what I can recall from primary school, 1/8th of our school time involved computers, where as at high school a more traditional "chalk and talk" approach was implemented for subjects such as Maths and English, but usually once or twice a week in other subjects, ICT's such as videos and powerpoint presentations were used.

There have been great advances in computer technologies since the PENTIUM 386's were introduced in the mid 90's. Today, it can be common in school for students to utilise computers for possibly half or even more of their classroom time.

Therefore, in order to be a better learning manager and create a more "student centric" learning environment, ICT's might take a more dominant place in the classroom.

Week 3

I found the activities over viewing the DOL's conveyed clearly in plain English what we needed to know were effective.

For example, Declarative Knowledge = "Know Stuff" and Procedural Knowledge = "Know HOW to do stuff" brilliantly explained.

I can't say I agree with all the methods of storing declarative knowledge. I believe the "think, pair, share" and "Mnemonic" techniques are simple and effective, but "link" and "pegword" strategies can become over complicated and unorganised such as the exercise from Marzano & Pickerings Dimensions of Learning : Teachers Manual about the States of New England and using a paragraph with a story to memorise the 13 states. As entertaining as this is, it seems more sensible to just commit these facts to memory with a more "traditional" approach. Of course, this method of a "linking" strategy may work better for some learners than others.

Week 1 and 2

Upon reviewing the weekly outlines of weeks 1 and 2, I found it was a great idea as an activity for us to simple introduce ourselves on the "Coffee Club" Forum. For those of us who aren't as technologically gifted as we would like to be, I found this a great activity.

As "learning managers" in training, I feel it is important to try and catch up with the younger generation who has had exposure to such technologies in their early stages of life, therefore making it less of an alien to concept to them.




In week 2, I undertook a learning activity to determine my "learning style" As no surprise to me, my result was displayed as a VISUAL learner. In a posting I made in response to "Learning style results" by fellow peer Lean Thinee on the "Learning Design Forum" on the 11 of March, i stated that,

"I think maybe with the increase of digital technologies that children use these days, a lot more students may appear as VISUAL learners. "

In response to this, Lecturer Scot Aldred stated that my point of view had been supported by 'Profiling Research' that his students had done in the past.