i DO see teaching now!

This is the end.

Beautiful friend,

This is the end.

Can you picture what will be?

So limitless and free?

This is the end....

In the immortal words of The Doors.............Another year has come and gone, yet this time I am now (apparently) equipped to shape young minds....hmmm a scary thought considering only a few weeks ago I was a still a student myself! (and yes i am aware the song is about letting go of a lover, just go with me here on this!!!)

Honestly I actually cant believe I survived the year and looking back I'm not sure I should have! There have been moments of joy, pain, procrastination and alienation...particularly with ICT. Well I can say I've come a long way from the young bright eyed and bushy tailed girl in my first post, I'm now a tech savvy super woman who can project, connect, protect and subject anything thrown at her.

"Ok but seriously." as my gorgeous year 8 girls continuously said to me....what have I learnt and what do I hope to learn in the future? Well I've learnt that anything i think is cool or hip in the way of music/videos/youtube clips/twitter etc isn't. Full stop. I have learnt that these kids know a HELL of a lot more than I do, so if ever I am in need of IT support, I probably wont bother calling anyone, I'll just ask my class.

I've learnt to always be prepared and have a plan B when it comes to ICT as things don't always go to plan! (see my earlier post re: projectors failing!).

I've learnt that ICT is my friend and can aid me in ways I never thought possible.  

"Intranet, wikis and blogs oh my!" Exclaimed Dorothy, Tinman, Lion and Scarecrow.

I've learnt to always take my laptop charger with me....apparently laptops need to be charged. As do Iphones, Ipods and portable CD players.....

I've learnt that ICT is a wonderful classroom management tool! Any year level loves a video or something to listen to, no matter what the subject.

And I've learnt that if I don't use ICT in my classroom and continue to work at keeping up with the times, myself and my teaching will be left behind. Because without ever changing an evolving we don't learn anything new, therefore we cannot expect our students to want to learn anything new from us. And isn't that what this whole teaching caper is about? The kids have to learn something from us.....and the sneaky DVD we use when were just really having a bad day and want to sit down for 75 minutes :P

Just kidding! Sort of........LOL ;)

Solo Challenge.....s

A big challenge that I faced during my placement this semester was the use of ICT in my year 11/12 VCE music class. My friday morning double period contained:

1 year 12 student completing units 3/4

4 year 11 students completing units 3/4

7 year 11 students completing units 1/2 AND

3 year 10 students completing units 1/2

A receipe for disaster? Almost....on several occasions I spent a lot of the lessons waiting for them all to pipe down. BUT they all love music and were all preparing for either their solo performance exams or their ensemble work exams.

So aside from the obvious what role did ICT play in this class? My main focus out of this group of students became the 5 students completing units 3/4. A lot of my time was spent revising their music theory and supervising practice aural exams - with the help of Auralia and Musition I was able to design practice exams for them easily and effiently that they were able to complete in class and in their own time. The program also allowed them to save where they were and go back to it at their own pace. Those programs were also great for tracking my students progress over a long period of time. From the data I collected my mentor and I were able to plan for future lessons on what knowledge they were lacking.

The other part it played during my time with this class was preparing the students for their performance exam.

Requirements for the performance program:

The program will include at least

•    two of the works which will be examples of twentieth or twenty-first century music.

•    one which will be an unaccompanied work.

•    two which will be works performed with piano accompaniment or other accompaniment by another instrument as specified in the introduction to the relevant instrument list. For some works on some instrument lists, students must perform works with a pre-recorded backing.

All 5 students used backing tracks (1 saxophone, 1 voice, 2 guitar, 1 bass) so our focus during the performance seminars was having students not only rehearse their pieces in front of one another but make sure they had practiced setting up their equipment. The exam requirements stipulated by the VCAA state that students have only 25 minutes for performance including 5 minutes to set up. They are also given limited time to change instruments and adjust volume etc during the exam.

Issues raised were:

• Ipod or c.d? If Ipod then they must remember their own connecting cable.
• Make sure they had organised an amplifier and extension chords if needed.
• Is the ipod charged? Phones are not permitted at anytime during an exam so what do you do if you dont have an ipod/if your phone is your ipod?
• Is your song list in order? How do you press play/stop etc?
• How do you test your volume so it meets requirements?
• Are laptops allowed?

And so on....what the students did learn was that even if they knew their programs inside out the technology side of things seemed to throw them. So often as musicians and artists we concentrate so hard on the music and only have tunnel vision for what were working on that we forgot about the logistics of how were going to get there or go during the performance.

I am still waiting to hear how they went so I'll keep you posted :)

Vidiot

In both my methods Music and Drama multimedia ICT is not only widely used but also an amazing toll that has transformed the subjects. Yes, for a long time multimedia, videos for example, have been a part of well education in general but never at the simple push of button e.g. youtube. Being able to search for pretty much anything is a remarkable progression especially in the way in which we use videos in the classroom.

A great experience I had in my music classroom this semester was using a video I found from the Cannes Film Festival. I was actually looking for a clip for my drama class and stumbled across the C.F.F website. After sifting through numerous clips, I came across "Oktapodi." A french computer-animated short film that originated as a Graduate Student Project from Gobelins L’Ecole de L’Image. 

The short is about a pair of love struck octopuses who through a series of comical events are separated and find each other.  Oktapodi was well received, winning a number of awards, as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Short Film (Animated) for the 81st Academy Awards.

Not only is it adorably funny but the underwater short film set in sunny Greece is entirely sound tracked with no dialogue - essentially it is a silent film. The really fantastic thing about it is the musical score which is perfect stimulus for introducing young students to words and concepts such as "Orchestra" and "Instrumentation" as the students are instantly engaged with the visual part of the clip. 

When I played it for a year 7 music class they really were delighted (and it became a slightly contentious issue as all they ever asked to do every lesson was "Watch Oktapodi!!!") however I managed to use this to my advantage by using it as a bargaining chip ala Skinner (and much to his critics horror) if the students focused during the lesson. 

The great thing about the video is it can be used across all year levels, for VCE as a way of identifying style and technique as well as stimulus for composition work. Or simply as a "time-taker-uperer" if you need to kill 5 minutes at the end of a lesson.

Check it out!

http://vimeo.com/6102250

ICT provides a rich and flexible learner-centred environment in which students can experiment and take risks when developing new understanding.

Since embarking on this journey to becoming a secondary teacher ICT has been the one area of my learning that has posed a problem. How do you incorporate ICT into the drama room or music classroom, especially with limited resources? In my time so far at melbourne uni this has been a contentious issue in both my drama and music classes. So I decided that in my block placement I would start my own little ICT experiment.

Second week of the block and I'm yet to see ICT used in either of my drama or music classes with everything  being creatively controlled by my mentors and I. My year 8 drama shakespeare class is a cacophony of old world literature and "new age hippy" physical theatre while my year 11 and 12 music performance kids would probably actually prefer to be stuck in front of a DVD of the Sound of Music than continue to participate in my "Solfeg" (do,re,me,fa etc using hand signals and sight singing) version of it.

Now although my year 8 shakespeare class is an elective it seems to be a double edged sword for students who are not normally the drama-enthused. Students MUST choose one drama and one music elective in both year 7 and year 8. Elective being the opporutive word as they will end up participating in the arts no matter what. Having said that though my class did seem to be quite interested in Shakespeare. I can happily report they loved all the activities and games that related to the themes of the Shakespeare works that we were looking at, but it was the actual introducing of the text that was proving to be the most frustrating.

When stating that we would be starting a new text there seemed to be a slight groan at the thought of simply reading through the play (or selected scenes). Aha! Technology would be a perfect way to introduce the literature in a way that the students could get excited about. "To talk about children's literature, in the normal
restricted sense of children's novels, poems and picture-books, is to ignore the multi-media expertise of our children." (Mackey, M.1994)

Using VELS as a guide to using ICT in the drama room "manipulate media, materials and technologies such as the acting space, the use of stimulus and other resource materials and technologies (including theatre
technologies and ICT) to support drama processes, production and presentation" (VELS 2009) I devised an activity (borrowing ideas from a micro lesson shown during that weeks drama tute) to introduce "The Merchant of Venice" using projected images and sound. Students were asked to close their eyes and listen to what was around them (I played a sound scape of noises from a casino) and then when they opened their eyes they saw a slideshow of images of the Venetian Casino in Las Vegas. The class continued with also providing an article from BBC's 60 second Shakespeare (a website which provides synopsis' of his plays as breaking news articles).

The response to the visual and audio cues used throughout the class was extroadinary. With the lights and the atmosphere created the students were eager to begin reading the text. It was almost as simple as translating it into their facetwittermybook language and boom they wanted to get their hands dirty.

As Shakespeare is so rich and dense, giving the students the option to use technology to help dissect it, it allows them to "experiment and take risks developing new understanding." (VELS 2009) I look forward to further exploring technology and ICT in my own classroom in the future.

References:

Mackey, M. 1994. The new basics: Learning to read in a multimedia world. Children’s
Literature in Education, 28(1):9-19.

Approaches to Learning and Teaching – The Arts, Victorian Essential Learning Standards 2007
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) - Standards, Victorian Essential Learning Standards 2009

Adjusting

Last semester I was placed in a school with a self serve bookstore, unlimited copying and printing, private computers and more data projectors than I could poke a stick at. One would think I would be in ICT teacher heaven...not the case unfortunately as I found most classes were taken up by power problems, cord shortages, system crashes or IT being unavailable to help my 15 student class download the program needed to their individual laptops. Ah well, it wasnt my $25,000 a year going towards my daughter being able to access facebook at any time.


Semester two and I am placed in public school. Yes all of the above mentioned technology isnt really available to me-in fact the only thing that is, are a few communal computers and $10 worth of printing..... however combine this with classrooms bubbling with energy and eclectic outfits; gorgeous, opinionated adults of the future and a school culture no amount of money could match and I am in no need of a data projector. I can stick with good old fashioned engagement through human interaction.

Bloggesphere

As a self described tech savvy member of gen Y, the world of blogs has always been the one area I have  avoided. It seemed to me every northcote social club, skinny jean wearing, 3/4 soy macchiatto ordering twitterer was clogging up my news feed offering their insights on what or what not to listen to, watch, eat, wear, see and do.

.....What I have neglected to tell you though, is that of late I have found myself secretly longing to be apart of the mystical world of online opinion and once again discover that dizzying high of social acceptance that my facebook addiction can no longer satisfy.

Thankfully though "Oh I had to do this for uni" is now a perfect excuse to continue my public disdain for blogs whilst gleefully typing away on my mac in private.