MusTech.Net!

Today was a ground breaking day at Mercer High School in Mercer, PA.  Today electronic technology met traditional teaching methods in Travis Weller’s 8th grade General Music Education Class.  Specifically, his class met song producer, writer, and music industry licensing expert Jason Davis, in his class through Skype. 

Travis and I have been working on this cross-discipline/field project for a number of weeks prior to today.  It was a brain storm of mine, brought in part, due to a similar project I witnessed at Kent University at a lecture/demonstration by Dr. Jay Dorfman, a cutting edge technologist. 

This project was/is cutting edge and brought together an expert in the field, Jason Davis, face-to-face with a classroom of bright, interested, 8th graders to talk about topics like copyright, the PAL parental Advisory label, trends in music, and the future of the music industry.

The session lasted about 45 minutes and went off without any problems.  The students we’re engaged and local school administrators, Classrooms for the Future  (CFF) representatives, as well as local newspaper reporters were there to see how this event would transpire.  

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Since there was so much interest in my post about August Rush, I decided to interview two of my best students in the “Alternative Music” class using Pod-o-Matic, the same service that Joe and Darren use for their excellent podcast.  I hope that you enjoy the podcast as much as I enjoyed making it- a truly remarkable, real “moment” with my students.  The podcast also features the song that they are working on as a project in the class.  If you are so inclined, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the episode, their music, or the idea in general of a class of this sort.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking the link below:

http://nphsperformingarts.podOmatic.com

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One of the technology shifts (change of paradigms) I am championing is the emergence into a web 2.0 world from a web 1.0 world (I know some of you techies loathe this concept: web 2.0… sorry, but it really is descriptive and useful).  That is, taking information from a single point of view and/or stale state, into an interactive, collaborative, and exciting state. 

In the old days… (say … pre-2001), the webmaster was the almighty “gate keeper” of knowledge.  They had to post something for people to know about and if it wasn’t posted…we’ll you never knew about it.  Now with informational bursting tools like RSS, blogs, wikis, and self-tagged informational items, users of web 2.0 technologies (whether they know they are using them or not) are finding themselves immersed in a matrix of connectivity, usability, and explorability (coining a new word here!).  Much of this new matrix is self-directed, self-expandable, community-directed, community-expandable, global in resources and scope,  and continually in a state of change.   That is, the end-user can literally change (for better or worse) the very information that is on the web and customize their queries so much that they only find exactly what they are looking for -provided it’s available.  If what you are looking for is not abailable, you can add it to the informational blob yourself by any one of the limitless avenues availble to you.

Three months ago I browsed right smack into the mother-lode of all web 2.0 directories.  AND… it’s a Web 2.0 directory of Web 2.0 Sites!  This site is truly amazing and full of incredibly useful, odd, wacky, and USELESS web 2.0 programs and sites.  But, it is addictive to search and gives you a great idea as to how much Web 2.0 “stuff” is “out there”. 

The name of the directory is Go2web20.net  and you’ll have to go to it to have any clue as to just how many and massive the web 2.0 software regime has become.   You can find direct here:

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I write quite a bit about music and technology at mustech.net.  A number of music educators think that “music technology” only pertains to technology that employs MIDI or is directly is related to audio in some way.  The truth is that music teachers need to be versed in a variety of computer-related technologies that apply to making music or teaching music in a classroom.   Many of the technologies used in music classrooms aren’t “music technology” in the strict sense of the phrase.  For example: using a LCD projector isn’t really “music technology” but it can be a catalyst for making your teaching more exciting and effective.  Understanding how to use Microsoft EXCEL, or any other spreadsheet software,  isn’t “music technology” but it can make the administration part of your job much easier and consequently allow you more time to teach and plan.

Before I use or employ any type of technology,  I ask myself the following questions:

1. Does the technology allow me to accomplish a task easier than without it?

Many times technology actually can make some things more complex, especially if you already have a way to do something that works well for you already.  Don’t employ a piece of technology just for technology’s sake. 

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