The Willow Trees

I had to make a story for my class. And now I'm a little bit obsessed with my creation. So click this link below to experience the epic love story that is the Willow Trees.

The Willow Trees

The Future & Other Scary Subjects

I am going to be a music teacher, and because of that, my classroom won't be filled with inspirational kittens meant to encourage AP students. It will be filled with eighth notes which have faces on them, teaching kids the meaning of 3/4 time. My classroom will be filled with many instruments, meant to look exciting and encourage students to ask questions and learn about them. I will have pianos, guitars, keyboards, violins, and more instruments than I would probably want to count. I will have file cabinets filled with music which has been lovingly and painstakingly alphabetically sorted. I want my classroom to feel fun, to feel exciting, but most of all, I want my classroom to be a safe haven for students who want to  learn how to explore their lives through music. 

That is the most important thing that I want to accomplish in my years as a teacher: to teach students that world of emotions that can be, and often is, music. Not every kid is going to take to music as I have. I understand that. But my goal as a teacher is going to be to show students the wonderful world that music opens you up to. Not every student is going to be the next Chris Martin, or Carrie Underwood, but my goal is to teach students a talent that can help them their whole life long. 

Now, that may seem awfully ambitious for a 19 year old only one year into her degree, but I think I can do it. I will graduate from Boise State University in three years, and I will go on to teach elementary music to an underprivileged school in Idaho using the Idaho Loan Forgiveness Program. Eventually I will come back to get my masters, probably while teaching, and I will move up to teaching high school. 

The future is always scary and exciting at the same time. But as of this moment, I'm really excited about mine. 

Learning Les Mis: Another Lesson That You Can Read and Forget

I created a video playlist talking about the similarities between enemies in the seminal West End musical, Les Miserables. Above is the introduction, and if you click the Learning Les Mis link, you'll find the playlist.

Learning Les Mis

So, read it and forget it, but never regret it.

(I'm totally a poet.)

About ME: The Video Version That You Need In Your Life.

This is me rambling on about myself. Always fun. And because you must be insanely curious to see if I'm good or not, here's me singing Orange Colored Sky at a Swing Dance at the Riverside Hotel with the Boise State Jazz Band directed by Dr. Alex Noppe.

Make your own conclusions, but I shall prompt you. The proper response is, "Wow. And more wow." Other variations are accepted.

It's How You Say It...

One good thing about reading a book your professor wrote is that you can hear his voice while reading it. Another good thing that came out of reading Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse OR The First Year of Teaching, by Dr. Chris Haskell, is that I realized there is a place for writers like me (i.e.: Sassy ones.)

When I'm not writing research papers and attempting to sound like I know what I'm talking about, I'm actually a pretty decent writer. Well, my mother says so. Then again, she laughed at Spreadsheets & Pumpkins, one of my less inspired blog posts.

The kind of writer to say, "How will you know when you become "wicked-awesome"? Is it possible to reach under a zenith of "wicked-awesome-ness" under the above described conditions? Perhaps not..." is the kind of writer I want to be.

I would love to be able to write curse words like 'Frak', made popular by the (wicked-awesome) remake of Battlestar Galactica, just because. (Oh, look. I just did.)

However, just because I have the unique skill of tying in an 80s hairstyle, big comfy chairs, and Star Trek in one blog post, does not mean that I have the capability of cursing in other languages just because. Although calling someone a fraking toaster is a severe insult in my head, it doesn't make much sense to the outside world, which is a shame.

All in all, reading my professor's book has inspired me to write how I want. Write it cleverly, write it well, but write how I want. Which, if I'm following these guidelines, may mean that I have to rethink this blog post...

Oh well.

Socrative, Socrates, & the Rise of the Machines

There is an online service called Socrative, which I believe is a play on Socrates, and if it is, it doesn't do the name justice.

Socrative is a "smart student response system that empowers teachers by engaging their classrooms with a series of education exercises and games" according to their website. I couldn't have said it better myself, except I would add 'confusing' to the list of adjectives in that sentence.

While Socrative allows you, the teacher, to make quizzes and give them to students, it does so in a rather confusing manner. Maybe I'm just useless when it comes to this sort of thing, but I could not for the life of me figure out how to send this quiz out to people for them to take.

By the time I did, I'd wasted so much time it was a useless endeavor.

Long story short, I hope a vast majority of the population is smarter than I am, because when the Rise of the Machines happens, I will be utterly useless.

Star Trek: Where No Steve Jobs has Gone Before

The technology available today amazes me. What amazes me even more is that Star Trek has been predicting the future for decades and nobody noticed. (http://www.techdigest.tv/2014/06/how_star_trek_predicted_the_future.html)

As you can see, the wonderful crew of the Star Trek: Enterprise has been using cell phones, Bluetooth, and flatscreen TVs since 1966. Finally, 40 something years later, we are in an age where technology which grown adults rolling around plaster sets were using daily are finally available to the public and are becoming influential in our education system. 

As I am only a couple years away from becoming a teacher myself, I've been thinking recently about what technology I would use in my classroom. 

One of the coolest new technologies I've seen is rather complicated. Basically what it is, is putting 3D images onto 2D surfaces. So when you look through the camera on an iPad, you tend to see what's on the other side, but this technology puts a 3D image onto the surface you're looking at. So instead of just seeing a piece of paper on the table, you might see a 3D image of a Rubik's Cube on your tablet, which can then be projected onto a SmartBoard. 

This Technology can be used in a music setting when trying to explore concert halls or orchestra set ups. Instead of just having a poster in the back of the room explaining that Violinists sit there while Cellists sit there, I could have a 3D version of a concert hall with instrumentalists sitting in certain places. My students can explore what it really means to perform in an actual way, rather than looking at it on a page. 

In short, we are one step closer to Holodecks. I REPEAT: We are one step closer to holodecks. 

Voki

There are many silly things roaming around the internet, a Voki is one of them. 

To entertain you, here is Queen Lillian at her Winter Castle. 

http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=11598143&height=267&width=200

Of Chimps & Prom Kings

I have always been pretty self-aware, and by self-aware, I mean that I know that I'm not the best person on the planet. (My mother disagrees whenever I give her a back rub.)

I also have a pretty healthy level of self-esteem, and by healthy, I mean that I think I'm the funniest person I know. (My mother disagrees whenever she makes a joke.)

This is all to say I know where I stand on the totem pole, and I'm okay with where I am.

The same cannot be said for a majority of any high school student body in the country.

Now I have walked among the intelligent with no self-esteem and the airheads who have self-esteem to spare but no self-awareness. I can tell you with great certainty that high school is a jungle filled with intelligent animals who are constantly being told what to do and how to act by the popular, the admired, and the attractive. If high school was a jungle, then it pits the smart and the popular against each other in a war that no one knows how to win.

If these cliques were animals, the smart would be chimps: able to adapt to any situation and learn subjects not even a part of their animal world. The popular would be like pandas: animals everyone roots for, but dumb enough to barely survive on one thing, bamboo and admiration.

All of this being said, I like to root for the bizarre, exciting, and extraordinary. I root for underdogs, or dumb chimps and smart pandas. I actually went to a really nice high school. My best friend was Salutatorian and was one of the most liked people in the entire school. I had friends who were in my AP classes who were crowned Prom King and played for the varsity football team.

I believe that we should not only be teaching students about wars from centuries ago or how to interpret Shakespeare, but instilling a sense of community in high schools and classrooms where there is freedom to cross clique boundaries and become a community of learners. The question, "how can we tell who is smart or dumb" shouldn't be asked, because the stereotype of nerds and cheerleaders shouldn't exist in this day and age. In the 21st Century we should be able to look past differences and become a community, lest we splinter and fall apart.

Thus endeth the lecture.

The 80s & Other Silly Things

I shall say what many refuse to say for fear that big hair and bright colors will overhear and come back to haunt the 21st century: the 80s were weird. For a decade that brought us the Breakfast Club, Indiana Jones, The Terminator, and The Princess Bride, it also brought us this hair style:

I never lived in the 80s, but I sure have benefited from watching these 'Classroom of the Future' videos made in 1987: http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x30plj

They say hindsight in 20/20, and I do think that hindsight has the distinct ability to make us laugh at ourselves as a human race. Did you know that there was a Mexican president who served for 45 minutes? Or that Lichtenstein sent 80 people into battle against Italy in 1868 and came back with 81? 

It's these kinds of facts that allow me to laugh at myself and the 80s. If you haven't seen these 'Classroom of the Future' videos, they include lots of enormous chairs, computer screens in the walls of classrooms, and artificial intelligence. While these videos may have predicted FaceTime and SmartBoards, it fell short at AI, which to my knowledge still remains an issue for Star Trek enthusiasts dressed as Data to sort out. 

While I do think that these videos made a valid point in the importance technology would be to education 20 years later, I believe they overestimated it. Maybe because I was born less than 10 years later, I think that technology is slightly overused in the classroom. I learned in a time were you brought textbooks home to do homework, teachers wrote on chalkboards, and you took books out of the library for projects. I will admit that things have changed since I was in third grade, and I will admit that Google is now my trusty sidekick when it comes to writing papers, but I do think that we should draw a line when it comes to an overabundance of technology in the elementary classroom as this 'Classroom of the Future' showed us. 

But who knows, maybe 20 years from now I'll be sending my kids to school with computers in their bags and phones in their pockets. Maybe 20 years from now I'll chuckle to myself like I did this morning when a girl went riding by on a bike with two hands on her iPad and no eyes on the road. 

Technology for the Music Classroom

The good thing about being a Music Education student is that when someone asks you about what technology tools and apps you will use in your classroom, chances are you've already used them.

In my Ear Training I class we used an app fittingly called Ear Trainer, which helps music students

identify chords, chord progressions, scales, and even a melody. Because listening is so essential to learning music, I can use this app in my elementary classrooms, where I can have students identify what is major and what is minor based on the sounds they hear. I can also use Ear Trainer in more advanced lessons, like interval identification,  for my high school students.

I also found an education application called Treble Clef Kids, which is very useful in helping children learn to read music, specifically treble clef. Treble Clef Kids is an interactive educational way for students to learn the basics of music theory, which for a first year teacher, is very useful. Not only will this app help kids learn to read music, it's interactive feature lets kids explore and quiz themselves.

Lastly, I found an app called Music Tones, which focuses on finding musical notes in all clefs. Using training mode and games, students can hear and see a tone on a staff in any clef, as well as test themselves to recognize as many tones as possible.

All these apps help students of all ages become fluent in reading and understanding music, and I think it will really help my future students.

Spreadsheets & Pumpkins

Apparently the only subject second graders study when learning about spreadsheets is pumpkins.

Now, I like pumpkins. I like pumpkin chocolate muffins. I like pumpkin pie. I like that Cinderella's pumpkin turns into a carriage. Most of all, I like how if you spell pumpkin six or seven times as I just have, it stops looking like a real word. 

Long story short, I see where these second graders are coming from. When I was seven and people were teaching me about bar graphs and spreadsheets, I guess I wouldn't mind learning in the context of a big orange fruit that can also look like a face. 

Now, if I were to use spreadsheets in my classroom, I certainly wouldn't be teaching about pumpkins, simply because I'm going to be a music teacher, and I don't necessarily see pumpkins in my lesson plans. 

Instead of filling in graphs about how much pumpkins weigh and how many seeds there are, I would use interactive programs to play major scales, and have tables in which the kids had to fill in how many sharps and flats (for younger grades: how many black keys are played). And once they found that information, they could make a bar graph with the key signatures on the bottom (starting with C, then G, then continuing up the circle of fifths), and the amount of sharps going up the left side. That way they not only get a sense of how many sharps in a certain key, they also have a graph they drew to look back on. 

I think using spreadsheets is an effective tool in the classroom if you use it right and the students respond well to it. And who knows, I may just put pumpkin stickers on their graphs. 

Jigsaw & Other Puzzles

I recently came across a teaching method called the Jigsaw Classroom. According to it's website, the Jigsaw Classroom "is a cooperative learning technique that reduces racial conflict among school children, promotes better learning, improves student motivation, and increases employment of the learning experience." In short, it is a way for you (the teacher) to have students research topics, learn the information for themselves, consult with other students, and report back to their groups with the information they have found. 

The Jigsaw Classroom reduces conflict between students because once you divide the classroom into groups of five or six, each student in the group has their own topic to research. When 'show and tell' comes around, if students bully or discriminate against another kid in their group, they don't get the information that child researched, which leaves them less prepared for the quiz that takes place shortly thereafter.  This method is a very subtle way for the teacher to improve student relationships, motivation, and learning. 

Now, this method seems like it would be very effective when used in a history class, or an English class, but what about a music class? Sure they could research various genres and miscellaneous facts, but when it comes down to it, the hardcore facts of time signatures and tempo symbols are still up to the instructor to teach. 

In a musical setting, this method may be lost on students, but I do still see its advantages, especially with regards to the history of music. While elementary music students may not see the musical differences between the Baroque and the Classical Period, they might be able to talk about their key composers in a historical sense. As the teacher, I could break the students into various groups and assign different students different composers. "You learn about Bach, you learn about Mozart, you learn about Beethoven, etc.." This might be a good way to not only learn basic facts about important musical figures, but also learn a little bit about their backgrounds. Even if I only had a few computers, I could use textbooks and show where the section on each composer was.

While this method excites me, I also have to see the disadvantages. Ellen Berg addressed my chief worry when she explained that her students weren’t afraid of the structure, or thinking on their own, they were afraid of being wrong. I worry that, should I employ this method, my students would not only worry that their information was wrong, but they wouldn't care about the information they found. I find that an engaging teacher is key in teaching topics that may not be interesting to a third grader. So when a student is left up to their own devices in learning these topics, I worry that the level of interest from a third grader might be a grave disadvantage. 

All in all, I think I'll have to employ this method when I start teaching in order to assess its viability. I look forward to that day.

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Asteroids & Ineptitude

While this might shock some people, I will say it nonetheless: I cannot play arcade games.

I never played them growing up, I was too busy playing Monopoly, Barbies, and the piano to play online games. When I did play online games, they were sad, sophisticated games, like Tile Mah-Jong, where you had to find matching symbols in a sea of Asian tiles.

I played Asteroids recently, and it took me 15 minutes to figure out that not only could I turn 360 degrees and shoot asteroids, my little rocket could move around the screen. As well as I think I can adapt to various situations, I am no good at playing Arcade games. When I  played Sonic: the Hedgehog (I believe the colon is for emphasis), I killed Sonic. On the first level. Thrice. This poor little hedgehog was spinning around in circles on a plank and when we finally jumped to high ground,  Sonic died on metal spikes.

I am assured that playing these types of arcade games offer a variety of real-life skills, including problem solving, under pressure decision making, and figuring out how to get back to a spaceship after your jetpack flies you to the opposite side of the moon.

However, I am not learning much from these arcade games other than the fact that I am absolutely inept at playing them.

Reflections of Assistive Technologies

There have always been disabilities to hinder human ability. However, as time goes on, human ingenuity has progressed to a point where technology is able to help those who are rendered incapable because of these disabilities. This surge of technological advancement has been crucial in accommodating Elle O'Gorman, Mason, and Lukas Bratcher in their everyday lives.

Elle O'Gorman is a fourteen year old girl with Cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is group of permanent movement disorders that appear early in childhood. The way it reflects in Elle is in her speech. Without technology, people had difficulty interpreting what her needs were because she couldn't communicate them. Her family tried to help by starting with a book chart, where Elle would glance at what she needed. After trying a pathfinder, in which the options were many and overwhelming, the family progressed to having Elle use a laptop with communication software. Soon after this, the family settled on technology called a Dynavox. A Dynavox is an augmentative communication device that helps Elle communicate. According to Jill O'Gorman, Elle's mother, the Dynavox "opened up a lot of doors for Elle in terms of just being able to tell us everything that she wants and needs" (Assistive Technology in Action: Meet Elle). The Dynavox supported Elle in her speech and helped her with her schooling as well as communicating with her peers. The Dynavox has supported Elle and helped her communicate, which makes her one step closer to being the normal girl that she aims to be.

Mason is a visually impaired six year boy who is blind in his left eye and only has a partial retina in his right eye. At school he uses a Mountbatten Brailler, an electronic machine used to type braille. The Mountbatten speaks the letters as Mason types them so he knows that he is spelling correctly. Mason uses the Mountbatten for typing, but this is not the only piece of technology that furthers his education. Mason also uses an iPad for educational games, which is especially useful because the letters are large and the contrast is better, which means that Mason is able to see more. In school, Mason is also able to use the SmartBoard with his classmates, making him seem like every other child in the classroom. It is technology, whether it be the Mountbatten, an iPad, or the SmartBoard in his classroom that supports Mason and allows him to continue to learn at the same pace as the rest of his classmates.

Lukas Bratcher is a high school student with a condition which renders his limbs useless. While there is stiffness in multiple joints in his body, some muscles just aren't there. However, this disability doesn't render Lukas incapable of living his life. With monetary help from the community, a music store was able to create a machine which helped Lukas play the euphonium. Before, Lukas would wait until his part came to a note that he could play. Now, there is a small box with a joystick that triggers solenoids and operates the valves of the horn which allows Lukas to play an entire piece with Jazz, Concert, and Marching Band. Because of this technology, Lukas is able to play as well as, and in some cases, better than many of the students in the band.

It is technology, whether it be the Dynavox, the Mountbatten, or a small box with a joystick attached, which supports all three of these students, Elle, Mason, and Lukas, in their education and their quest to be able to function like normal children.

To learn more about these students, please see these videos:
Elle
Mason
Lukas