Music Teaching 101

Linsey Pollak

Check out the amazing work of Linsey Pollak on his website!

Instruments

He also includes methods and guides for how to make your own DIY instruments. Great for less resourced music classrooms or just a fun DIY project!

A Virtual Scavenger Hunt

Using Google Classroom, Forms, and Sites to create your own digital scavenger hunt which doubles as a teaching resource?

YES PLEASE!

By creating small achievable steps such as a quiz on Google Forms, followed by starring to create your own website based on a given topic we were able to complete “on-topic” tasks while also learning how to use technology. WIN WIN!

After each activity in the scavenger hunt, we were rewarded with a code. We were instructed to email this code to our lecturer, who would then email us back with the next step in the scavenger hunt.

Google classroom emabled us to upload the things we made and interact with the rest of the class.

Super fun and engaging and a great way to incorporate technology in the music classroom!

Composing with Baby Steps

How does one attempt to create a digital resource which can possibly eliminate the largest obsticle in the compositional process; ‘where to start’? (Hindson, 2007)

Within my interactive website, I have attempted to create a platform of which students can return to whenever they find themselves struggling to begin a composition.

I chose to create this resource using Google Sites as it is free, easy to use, and the resource is accessible for both Mac and Windows users. The fact that Google Slides is so easy to navigate, even for someone who has had no experience using in previously, ensured that I was able to spend more time creating videos, examples, and embedding Youtube videos and other useful documents for notating. James Humberstone states in his article ‘The Creative Teacher: How to Use Technology to Produce Learning Materials’ in the Journal Music in Action “As we become more competant with technology, we creative teachers can actually author our own teaching materials and resources to a very professional standard” (Humberstone, 2009). Authoring my own teaching materials and constructing my own interactive website proved to be an enjoyable challenge and has resulted in a rewarding final product that I can use in classrooms in the future. I have also adopted Hindson’s approach to collaborating a sort of ‘compositional toolbox’ which “Offers modules, examples and exercises which introduce and illustrate a range of useful basic composition techniques” (Hindson, 2007). His main argument for value in this type of resource is that it “deals with creatvity and aims to provide initial inspiration”. (Hindson, 2007)

Breaking the compositional process down into the smallest steps possible was made possible by beginning my own composition along side it. This enabled me to recognise where roadblocks may arise and where students may need assistance in facilitating their own creative ideas. I began with giving students a model piece. The model piece I selected was “Maleficient Flies” from the Disney film Maleficent by James Newton Howard. The first section is very much the calm before the storm. Sort of an introduction to the character that is Maleficent; curious, and magical. The piece presents it’s main theme clearly in bar 40. This is the section I have mostly focused on as inspiration for my own composition, specifically the chord progression and the textural structure. The texture is continually building in intensity and it continues to introduce a 2^nd dominant theme, followed by a fragment of the 1^st theme and an even smaller fragment. The themes come back later in the piece in bar 94 when the piece climaxes with the entire orchestra filling out the texture.

Theme 1:

Theme 2:

While the ultimate goal of this resource is to enable students to “complete the composition tasks with no extra scaffolding/teaching than those provided”, I believe that personal feedback from either the teacher or peers is invaluable and can sometimes enhance a composition in ways that only fresh eyes can. Pauline Beston emphasises in her investigation; Senior Student Composition the importannce of “teachers providing necessary support to students… by providing assessment feedback and discussing composing processes”. (Beston, 2004)

My Digital Resource: https://sites.google.com/view/babysteps-suann/home

References

Beston, P. (2004). Senior student composition: An investigation. Research Studies in Music Education 22. pp28-41.

Hindson, M., Barbeler, D., Blom, D. (2007). Music Composition Toolbox. Science Press Australia

Humberstone, J. (2009). The creative teacher: How to use technology to produce learning materials. Music in Action, 7 (1), 8-11.

September 25th

Technology is amazing!!!!!

Today we had so many cool gadgets to play with! Highlights included:

Makey Makey (painting with lead paint and attaching small alligator clips to the picture which produce noises when the pictures are touched – art made interactive!)
Jaycar Short Circuits (You can make your own guitar pedals and so much more!)
Edison Robot (Program your own robot 😁🤖)
LittleBits Synths (See post from the 18th of September)

September 18th

Playing with LittleBits – Electronic Building Blocks!

SonicPi – Coding our own music!

The amazing guest lecturer, Rowena also runs incredible workshops for high school girls with her company “Girls’ Programming Network”. Visit her website for more information https://sites.google.com/site/girlsprogrammingnetwork/.