A Little More John Cage

Here is a little more of John Cage.

John Cage iphone/Droid App

On a train ride to Manhattan I was discussing with a friend the music of John Cage. His music is very out of the ordinary and sometimes hard to understand. Many people debate about whether or not some of John Cage's music can actually be categorized as music. I have always wondered if discussing the music of John Cage would be something interesting for a general music class. The work of John Cage is based mostly on his unique philosophy of music, and I think it is important for my students to see different perspectives and ideas about music making. During our conversation my friend asked if I have ever seen the John Cage phone App for prepared piano. I had never heard of this App and when he opened it for me I spent 15 minutes of our train ride clicking around and exploring the different sounds. What a cool App! A lot of school districts are starting to use ipads in their classrooms. If I were to work at a school who had access to any type of ipad I would definitely use this App in my general music class. The app even allows you to record and play back your own compositions! I think this will be a great way to introduce my students to modern music.

Here is a youtube video of the App itself:

And here is a video describing the actual prepared piano of John Cage:

The following is a link with information on getting the App
  http://johncage.org/cagePiano.html

Smart Music

http://www.smartmusic.com/

I have been trying to decide if this program "smart music" would be a valuable resource for my future student's education. From this video it seems like the students enjoy using the program but how much are they actually learning? Could this be distracting in the classroom? This program is one of the most popular methods right now but it still makes me think what is wrong with traditional music education? I don't believe that this program is bad or unnecessary, but I do believe that you can accomplish the same thing without this fancy technology.

Interactivity #4

Beatlemania Lesson Plan:  https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_4kpwwiNg77RTg5b0JLem1lZjA/edit?usp=sharing

Google Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Av4kpwwiNg77dHYwakFpeEQ2OGZsbTBSVk5JcHJKdXc&usp=sharing


"Beatlemania" was a lesson I wrote last semester during fieldwork for an 8th grade Rock and Roll History class. When I first wrote this lesson plan I was very uncomfortable using the smartboard in the classroom so I tried to limit my smartboard use as much as possible. The amount of time it took for me to fiddle around with it took away too much of class time. I was however comfortable enough to use the smartboard to play youtube videos related to our discussion topics.

I am currently student teaching at the same school. The students I had last semester have rotated to a different course so my Co-op and I have a brand new set of students. I chose this lesson plan because I had the opportunity to teach the lesson again. Why not use this opportunity to modify a lesson plan that I will actually use? I actually taught my modified lesson plan in class and it went very well. The students were excited to see their handwriting blown up on the big screen. I think it was something that they didn't expect. They knew that we would be using the posters to start discussion topics, but when I told them I would scan their images and put it on the smartboard they didn't believe me.

The first time I taught this lesson I tried to fit everything into one 45 minute period. The students enjoyed the carousel activity because they got to draw fun pictures and write stuff with markers, but because of time constraints the real discussion I wanted got lost. I decided that a two day lesson would be best. After looking at their finished posters I realized that they also didn't meet the expectations that I thought they would. Their comments were undeveloped, they didn't react to other students opinions, and the pictures they drew had little to do with the information I presented to them. When I modified my lesson plan I decided it would be best to explain what I wanted from them by using Facebook as an example. Most of them have probably been on Facebook before and know what it is like to write on a friends wall or comment on pictures. I wanted to let them know that they are allowed to write down reactions to other people's comments. With the new group of students they were able to understand what I wanted from them by using the Facebook example.

After some practice, I became a little more comfortable with the smartboard so I decided it would be really great to figure out a way to get scanned images of their posters to put on the big screen. This is what really made the discussion part of my lesson stronger. The students were excited to see their handwriting and pictures up in front of them. I made sure to let them know I was putting their images up on the screen and reminded them that everything they wrote is anonymous and will stay anonymous if they wish.  With out having these scanned images, the students would have never been able to choose what topics they wanted to talk about.

A student of mine taught me how to make a Prezi using www.prezi.com. I used this website to organize the scanned images and videos. Putting videos on the prezi was a relief because the students always want me to click on the videos that pop up in the sidebar. This allowed no distractions! The following link is the actual Prezi that I made for the class.

http://prezi.com/a910xts3pcoa/the-beatles/?kw=view-a910xts3pcoa&rc=ref-31264905

Interactivity #3: Technology Inventory For Music

I found this activity to be very practical. Music educators are constantly making inventories for the endless number of instruments and supplies needed for the music departments. Organization is crucial when holding responsibility for so many materials. Music educators are also asked very often what kinds of supplies they may need the next year. Creating an inventory such as the one we made for interactivity #3 is something that would be great to have in that situation. It can be a wish list of technologies you want for your future classroom. 

This was the most interesting group project that I have ever had to participate in.  have never used Google Doc before and did not really know what it was until we were assigned this group project. I am grateful that I had members in my group who were somewhat familiar with Google Doc. If it weren't for them I would have never been able to figure it out! The best part about Google Doc is that you can see everyone working at the same time. I found myself staring at the screen watching new things pop up every few minutes. The most difficult part about this project was just deciding how we were going to put all of our ideas together. I think the best choice for us was agreeing on a few different categories first, and then plug in our individual technologies. If we hadn't agreed on categories first, it would have taken a lot longer group each technology together.


This being a group activity, I learned about some interesting teaching materials from my other group members that I may have not found myself, especially for recording and music notation software. There is so much out there and it is hard to dig through what technologies are appropriate!

     I believe that the change of technology within the time periods presented in the video above can be evidence of changes in music education. The video presents a radio station that broadcasted music education programs. I did not know this existed until I saw this video. I am curious to what may have been broadcasted. Did they play recoding of actual student ensembles? I am curious to know how an elementary school band would have sounded like in the 1920's compared to an elementary school band today.
     I believe that what changed music education the most as a result from changes in technology was the competition with Russia. Priorities of American schools changed and art programs may have been pushed aside as physics classes and math courses were reinforced more strictly. I do however believe that music education was and other art programs were better embraced than they are today. The current priorities of American education have even less concerns for art programs.

You can express yourself in less than a second through social media, but it will never compare to the truest and oldest form of human expression. Music making.