MusTech.Net!

Well, I haven’t been able to keep up with MusTech.Net this semester as much as I would like. I’m hoping my schedule will clear a little so that I can write about some of the many cool things that I’m working on both with faculty and colleagues and my students in the VERY near future.

I wanted to take a few seconds to write about a couple of things that are going on this month.  First, the Music Education Blog Carnival is being hosted by Discover, Learn, Play this month at http://discoverlearnplay.blogspot.com/. Make sure you that you participate this month in the Music Education Blog Carnival as I’m sure it will be a good one!  You can find out more information about the Blog Carnival here: http://mustech.net/muscarn. Also, if you would like to host a music education carnival, please let me know.

As many of you know, I am a huge WordPress fan. I’m thinking about hosting a WordPress Camp this summer in the Pittsburgh area. I know it would be of great benefit to the many educators, students, and business folks in our area.  I just finished a new WordPress site for our Borough Council (Yes guys, this one was Pro bono!). It is unbelievable how easy it is to turn WordPress into a content management system and the ease of the back end (how you write posts and pages) is so simple to use that you can show people how to maintain and change content in less than an hour. There is no easier way to go about putting together a Web site than WordPress.  I’ve quit using all other software to make Web pages now and I only use WordPress now…  This from Frontpage, Dreamweaver, Net Objects, and HTML!!!

You can check out the site here: http://grovecityonline.com

I’m still looking for the brilliant, the bold, the musical, to become the last folks in our quest for 100 Music Education Bloggers. If you are interested please visit or Music Education Blogger page, and contact me here. If you’ve submitted a contact in the last couple weeks, I’ve yet to get to them, I will though -it’s next on my list of mustech.net things to do!  If you’re worried I didn’t get your submission, please re-submit.

If you want to see a totally cool Christmas Flash Animation, I still contend that this one is the best!:
http://mustech.net/2007/11/30/the-coolest-christmas-snowglobe-flash-animation

If you know of any flash Christmas animations better than this (or on par), let me know in the comment section below!

Here’s to a great Thanksgiving to all of you!

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Well, it’s been long and hard but we’re seeing light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.  I can’ t believe how many music educators are now blogging.   When I first started this campaign in January, you could barely find a music education blogger using Google, now they’re everywhere  -which is a very good thing!

There are so many good things that are coming from the ME bloggers, the global conversations that have been started are so good for moving forward the discussion about what we do and how we do it.   Personally, I’ve learned quite a bit, not only from the posts of the Music Education Bloggers, but from the process itself. 

The blogging process allows avenues for expression that may be hard for people to access in any other way.  In particular, writing or blogging, allows times fore reflection, introspection, and in particular, clarity of thought about a particular idea, condundrum, or thought.

I’ve always written about blogging as a means to share knowledge with the your peers, students, or even the world.   This type of action is readily apparent after reading hundreds of blog posts by music educators about what they do best.  In addition, I’ve read from the ME Bloggers many posts where the idea of digital mentoring and helping guide others and not only seen, but the process is clearly visible.  As ME Bloggers we are putting forth “good” information onto the web to begin to fill the very visible “gaps” of knowledge about our subject on the web AND clarify and add to the knowledge base that is all ready there.   We’re begining to “cut through the junk” that was and continues to be found when searhing for related subject matter about our field.

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Here ye, Here ye, and LADIES AND GENTLEMEN… You only have about a day left to submit your entry for the 5th Edition of the Music Education Blog Carnival being hosted by Travis J. Weller at http://tjweller.wordpress.com (Composing Like Mad).

You can find out the latest information about the Blog Carnival Here:
http://mustech.net/muscarn

Make sure you submit TODAY so that you can be sure to be included!

The Music Education Blog Carnival was created and is maintained by Dr. Joseph Pisano of MusTech.net and Joel of SoYouWantToTeach.com in order to promote the great works being done by Music Education Bloggers across the Internet.

The Music Education Blog Carnival is published on the 1st of every month and is a recognized member of the communities of blogs as indexed by BlogCarnival.com.  All writings submitted to the Music Education Blog Carnival are examined to ensure that they are valid, interesting, and related to our discussion topic(s).

The Music Education Blog Carnival has been a huge success on many levels.  It has crated a “buzz” about becoming a blogger among music educators; it provides a semi-peer reviewed venue for posting great and useful music related posts, and also provides this information to the world free of charge.  It’s a “win, win” for all parties involved.

Joel and I started the Music EducationCarnival with these intentions in mind.  Now that the carnival is currently in its 5th edition, we are getting some of the particulars figured out.  There is a “landing page”, as it were, for the Music Education Carnival that can be found in the tabs above at mustech.net or by going to this URL: http://mustech.net/muscarn .  It’s easy to remember.  Check out the cool graphic I made for the carnival too!

A number of dedicated music education experts are wanting to host the site (and have) and we are already “booked” until February of 2009!

November 1st will be hosted by Travis J. Weller at Composing Like Mad.
December 1st will be hosted by Eugene Cantera at Discover, Learn, Play.
January 1st will be hosted by Chris Foley at Colloborative Piano

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