This past weekend, I participated in the MENC’s Music Education Week, particularly it’s General Music K-12 Technology Academy. The academy was divided into sessions that were ideal for educators who were advanced or novice technology users. All sessions revolved around integration of technology into the music classroom. Some topics included webquests, digital music making, assessment, and Yamaha’s MIE lab. I presented three sessions that were focused on the SMART Board, podcasting, and numerous ways of integration. The handouts and presentations can be accessed and downloaded from my website.
One of the best items that I took away from this academy was being able to meet numerous music educators and to finally meet those that I have followed on Twitter or have read their blogs and chat pages face-to-face. For example, it was great to meet Justine Dolorfino, who I have read many blog posts and tweets. For this conference, she, Andrew Ritenour, Brigid Moran, and Andy Zweibel were live-blogging their experiences with the support of SoundTree. You can read some of the posts from the live blog here. (You can also check out the #musedchat that occurs every Monday evening at 8 pm EST, for which they run and it is an amazing hour of discussion about music ed!). It is so great to read their thoughts and experiences because they are the future of music education. They and others also tweeted throughout the conference using the hashtag #mew2010. I enjoyed reading through the tweets and the blog once my sessions were over. It was great to read what people were getting out of the sessions. In addition, if you cannot attend the conference, live-blogging and reading the tweets are a great way to experience the conference.
Another important item that I took away from the conference was the message: Integration. Yes, there were sessions that were purely about the selling products, and that is the case with all conference. However, if you can weed out those sessions, I found that more often than not, the sessions were about the technology integration in the music classroom. I came out with the following important messages, either from me, or from the live blog, or from twitter: “Technology is another educational tool to use to assist you when you are teaching your students about music.” “Use technology as a tool, not as the center of the lesson.” “Use technology as a tool to help you enhance your lessons. If you put it in the center, your lesson will fail.” “Approach each student as a life-long musician.” “Teach 30 years. Don’t teach the same year 30 times.” “Don’t be reactionary; be proactive!” And as MusicEdTech always says, and says it very well: “Teach music, the technology will follow.”
Finally, one of my favorite tweets of all: “Amy has had every curve ball thrown at her today, but we know that her session will be awesome.”
I will admit, and if you attended my sessions you already know this, this was one of the most difficult conferences that I have ever had to present at. And, if you know me, you know that I have run into some walls (projector stops working, SMART Board does not work or does not show up, students’ videos will not play, etc), so when I say that this conference was the most difficult, it truly was. However, I thank many of the music educators who attended the sessions and were very understanding to items that were out of my control. I especially thank Jim, Andy, Andy, Justine, Joe, Jane, Paul, SoundTree, and several others who supported me and made me laugh during those times.
The last session, which was titled “Round Table/Laptop Conversations with all clinicians and participants” was an excellent session for MENC to host. In this session, we broke into groups and discussed the many strategies of integrating technology that we can take back to our classrooms. MENC also asked for how they can improve the academies and many good suggestions were given. MENC also began a wikispace for the technology academy that can be found here: http://technologyacademymeww2010.wikispaces.com/ where you can share lesson plans, resources, and collaborative projects.
Overall, this conference was unique in the way that it was divided into academies, and you could sign up for one or more and try to attend all of the sessions that pertained to you. It was also unique in its way that if you only signed up for one academy, then you pretty much stayed with the same group of people and there were sessions where you had the opportunity to brainstorm with other educators and clinicians. Those were nice opportunities. However, I missed some of the round table discussions that occurred at last year’s MENC Music Education Week where there were gurus of music technology in one room, they showcased their students’ works, and the audience was able to ask them questions. As MENC fine tunes the week, I hope that they will listen to many of the ideas that came from the attendees and organize this event to be a bit more proactive for the music educator in terms of timing and sessions.
For the next six days, I will be teaching Technology for Music Educators at William Paterson University. This will be an intensive six day course that runs all day. The teachers will be experiencing various topics that include software, hardware, internet, web 2.0, notation software, digital audio, and most importantly writing and teaching a lesson plan that they can immediately use in their schools this coming school year. As with all my courses, we will be utilizing a wikispace to download and upload our materials, projects, articles, videos, and more. You can follow us this week at http://wpumusictech.wikispaces.com.
amymburns