After a long semester of packed schedules, late night classes and 7 weeks of practical experience, I have finally finished my 6th semester /3rd year of my course. Only one more year to go.
I have learnt so much this semester, particularly more practical and hands on aspects vs the theory side, which can be attributed to my vocal and ensemble pedagogy classes, my prac experience at NBCS, composition in music ed and (most importantly) this subject ; technology in music education.
I have written lots of blog posts on every class in thie subject if you want to read them below, but I just wanted to summarise the most important things (that I learnt/took away) from this course
- Blog posts : although they were annoying at times, it is really nice to be able to go back and reflect on what I learnt, and it also has allowed me to do a bit of further, deeper thinking after each class as I had to go and find extra resources etc.
- BYOD: as I mentioned in one of my blogs, I started with the byod program when I entered year 7 and my high school was the only school that I knew that had started to implement it – 8 years from then I think I will be surprised to find a school that didn’t implement some sort of byod program (or at least a school in my local area). This subject in particular introduced me to the idea of ipads as BYOD devices. I knew that some students used them of course, but I had never really thought about them and the countless apps that are on the Apple Store which can be used within all subjects, not just music ed
- The maker movement and the hands on experience: it was refreshing to have a couple of classes where we could sit individualy or with a partner and figure things out, such as the launchpads and some of the ipad apps. This has given me many ideas for future lesson ideas
- And finally : the project I did with K. I learnt so much during the time that we did our garageband project together, not just the countless hours that I spent on hype, googledocs and screenflow, but the time management skills and the countless failures allowed me to grow as a educator, and also allowed me to learn skills which I can use in future assignments, and future classroom lessons. Presenting our project on Friday night to future and current music educators was a wonderful experience, which left me with so much to reflect upon, as there were so many teachers from so many different types of schools that said that they could see our project working in various unique ways that I had never thought of – (i.e using our project as a resource for older teachers to learn about garageband, so they can set an assignment on recording or remixes)
That’s all for now!
I will see you again next year for more music education packed blog posts !
Louise
Louise Rance 