Mission

Read this quote today on twitter that pretty much summarizes the issues we are facing at school:

"if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there" (Lewis Carroll)

Learning and Music

Check out this NatGeographic article about music and learning environments. Make sense on how it would help students who have trouble hearing in a "noisy" environment.

Grooveshark

I have been working with Grooveshark the past few days. Grooveshark allows you to search by song or artist, create playlists, and it has a radio function which creates your "personal" station. Its pretty cool.

This seems to have advantages over Pandora, mainly because you can search by artists. Being able to create playlists is great for a class environment.

Users upload music to Grooveshark. Thus, much of the music is improperly labelled or identified. While Grooveshark seems to have been making inroads there is some controversy over the legality of it all. I do know they recently signed an agreement with EMI.

Issues

So much to do. Right now I am looking at:

• How to create a listening library for students. Naxos was recommended. I'd like a service that I can add content (like iTunes). Should I use iTunes?
• Recording the group. I'm looking at Legacy to do this work.
• We need to decide on a trip. Even a day trip. First I need the kids to work. Hard.
• Curriculum, way behind, but gaining. Doing this from scratch.
• Starting mini-performances for 4th and 5th graders. They will be going into classes to show basics of their instrument and to play a few tunes.
• 1st annual state elementary honors choir is coming. Still no music or info received...

Talked with a former director of this school at All-States this weekend. Left in 2001. he had certainly done the work. We agree where the issues are. Now what?

The kids are learning more than they realize. I hope they are ready for a big push. We must move forward.

Hearing

Created by Oatmeal

Not sure if this is valid...

File Storage

Will the fact that we can now upload any files to Google Docs change how we organize our music for our programs. How will we deal with the copyright and publishing issues (is this a Napster alert?)?

Exams

For years my exams in performance classes has been students performing the All-State audition. Prepared piece, sight-reading, scales. I plan on continuing that in the future.

However, for this exam I tried to push our work online. I have moved from a 1-1 class in the computer lab to a classroom with no computers. I have become friends with the copy machine again. I need to get my students online and producing work.

So I wrote a new exam. Students will create a two minute video based on topics we covered during the semester. I'm hoping to do three things:

1. Have students perform. Work will be saved online, creating a portfolio.
2. Have students create a product and get it done on time.
3. Have students evaluate other work.

Will it work? Not sure yet.