MTEC 2014 is off to a wonderful start. Today’s keynote address was given by Andrew Douch, an award-winning Australian science teacher who is now a full-time education consultant and keynote speaker. Andrew’s keynote address titled “What Teachers Can Learn from the Music Industry,” reminded us all in the auditorium that we need to evaluate how we use time in our classrooms. He showed examples of podcasts from his science classroom that assisted students in learning and promoting a better understanding of the concepts being taught than when they were taught in a lecture-style. He stressed that in this age of technology, teachers bring guidance, relationships, wisdom, and passion as the important elements in their classrooms. He finished by stating that this is the first generation that we, ordinary people, can produce and publish information and with that, we can teach more effectively in our classrooms. It was a powerful presentation and message.
The day continued with four more sessions that were separated by morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea. I presented two sessions. One session was about free resources for the elementary music educator that included examples of where to find teachers’ curriculum, free lessons, recording software, how to make safe links for youtube videos (with no comments or ads), and more. The other session was about iPads in the elementary music classroom. This was a nice, intimate session, so we discussed set up, apps, games, and lessons for the iPad.
I also went MusicFirst’s primary school workshop and saw cloud-based software, such as Delta Music and For Instruments, which would work well in a music classroom for music history and for mixing and listening to instruments and instrument ensembles.
Tomorrow morning, I will begin my day by presenting the second keynote address titled “How Technology is Transforming the Way We Teach in the Elementary Classroom.” To follow along with the tweets, use the hashtag #mtec2014
