Yesterday, The Technology for Music Education (TI:ME-http://www.ti-me.org), held a pre-conference day at the Texas Music Educators Association’s (TMEA) annual conference. TI:ME provided over 35 sessions about music education and music technology.
There were so many amazing presentations, that it was difficult to choose which ones to attend. I attended Jennifer Patterson and Virginia Neely-Stout’s session titled “Help! I’m Stuck in a Loopseque and I Can’t Get Out!. They showed wonderful ways to integrate stories and books into the music classroom through using the free apps loopseque kids and loopseque lite. The students are given characters from the book, they create music for the character using loopsequekids (younger elementary) or loopseque lite (older elementary), and perform their song when it comes up in the story. It is another way to make a book come to life in the music room!
I then attended Elizabeth Krajewski’s session about SMART Boards. This session was geared towards those who have never used the software as she showed how to download the version 11 of notebook software (which she stated is now a free full version) and how to use basic items in the notebook software.
Richard McCready and I then presented “Integrating with Integrity in the Music Classroom.” I was so happy to have Richard join me on this presentation as I usually present for the elementary music classroom and Richard could help this presentation extend from K-12. I showed four projects:
- Kindergarten using Groovy Music (thank you MusicFirst for bringing it back in the cloud!) to create music, which integrated shapes and patterns from their classroom curriculum.
- 1st Grade assessing rhythms and creating a song from parts of bees.
- 2nd graders involved in a Project-based Learning activity that had students studying music history and assessing singing skills while incorporating their social studies unit on immigration and empathy.
- 3rd graders creating musical instruments and learning about sound in science class while composing and performing on those instruments in music class.
- Please visit my website and click on “Cross Curricular Projects” to read more about these projects.
- Richard spoke of how all students need to have their creativity tapped and that STEAM is innate.
Afterward, I attended a session presented by two band directors, Stephen Giovanoni and Hector Perez, who spoke about the apps they use with their bands and apps they use to organize items like marching band drills. It was a great session as these are two teachers showing music educators what works in their classrooms. Wonderful!
I then attended Cherie Herring’s session on flipping the recorder unit. It was so great to watch one of my icons present. She was amazing. She shared all of her materials (check the TMEA guidebook app to see them) and showed wonderful examples from her classroom. I was in awe watching her flipped recorder program and how her students had a wonderful handle of the material.
I was able to go between two sessions at the end of the day. Ian Boynton showed wonderful examples of Interactive Music Maps and Puzzles and Christopher Russell showed a plethora of apps that have been proven to work in many different secondary music classrooms.
Today, TMEA begins and the exhibits open. TI:ME continues in rooms 201-204 throughout the conference with more great technology sessions. There are also wonderful sessions celebrating the 20th anniversary of TI:ME such as:
- “TI:ME Annual Business Meeting,” 2/12/2015; 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM; CC 204
- • “Music Technology: The Effect on Performance and Education,” Dr. Henry Panion, presenter; 2/13/2015; 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM; CC 204
- “TI:ME Teachers of the Year: How Technology Has Changed,” chaired by Amy Burns; Friday, 2/13/15 4:00-5:00 PM; CC 204
SATURDAY
- “How MIDI Revolutionized Music Education (1983 to present).” Don Muro, presenter; Saturday, 2/14/2015; 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM; CC 204
- “TI:ME Certification Meeting,” 2/14/2015; 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM; CC 201
