Group items tagged

Student-centered classrooms are the goal of my teacher-designed blended learning model. Giving students control over the learning process requires that they know how to communicate, collaborate, and solve problems in groups, pairs, and individually. This work can be messy, loud, and disorganized, but in the end, the learning is much more meaningful.

Then I found Collaborize Classroom, a free, dynamic discussion platform. I used it to replace many of my pen-and-paper homework assignments with vibrant online debates, discussions, writing assignments, and collaborative group work.

Remember that mistakes lead to learning. The best resources I've designed and the most effective strategies I've developed were all born from and refined through mistakes.

I anticipated that students might hit some bumps as they navigated their first TED-Ed lesson, so I set up a TodaysMeet back channel so students could ask questions, make comments, and access a support network while going through the online lesson. A back-channel tool makes it possible for people to have a real-time conversation online while a live presentation or real-time discussion is taking place.

I asked students to reference specific details to support their assertions, as did one student who commented on the town's poverty by noting that the local doctor often took potatoes as payment for his work. She also showed how the characters nevertheless reflected the country's "cautious optimism" about its future: That same doctor was still able to support himself, she pointed out, and he enjoyed his work. Students posted their responses, complimenting strong points made, asking questions, and offering alternative perspectives.

I asked students to analyze examples of strong discussion posts and revise weaker posts. I also realized that I needed to embed directions into our discussion topics to remind students to respond to the questions and engage with their peers. I started requiring them to thoughtfully reply to at least two classmates' posts, in addition to posting their own response to the topic.

It's crucial for students to see that the work they do in the online space drives the work they do in the classroom so they recognize the value of the online conversations.

For example, during the To Kill a Mockingbird unit, we researched and discussed the death penalty in preparation for writing an argument essay. The students debated online such issues as cost, morality, and racial inequality and then delved into these topics more deeply face-to-face in class.

In the classroom, the teacher might give small groups various topics to research. Then he or she could ask students to go online to research and discuss their topic on a shared Google Doc and create a presentation using Glogster, Prezi, or Google Presentation Maker.

Some teachers think that incorporating online work means they have to be available 24 hours a day. This is not the case. When students are connected online, they have a network of peers they can reach out to for support, and they begin to see one another as valuable resources in their class community.

I've embedded a Google map in my website that has pins dropped in all the locations on our campus and in our community where there are computers with public access to the Internet.

I even wrote the local computer recycling center to request a computer for my class.

Assessing students counts as a conference!

Another way to translate assessments into day-to-day teaching is to use your conferring notebook while you are doing your required assessments.

It is so helpful to take a little the extra time after each assessment to think about what you learned, and how you can use that data tomorrow to lift the quality of your instruction.

we believe that what is most important is that you can assess the full profile of a reader and you use the assessment data to inform your teaching

Sometimes it is better to stay the course with the tools we have and understand it is the best decision for our district at this point in time.

This work is messy and rarely precise.

It is hoped that the themes that emerge by setting twentieth and twenty-first century professional composers' accounts of certain compositional experiences or phases of their creative processes against one another will provide a philosophical framework for teaching composition.

Furthermore, the knowledge of how professional composers compose offers the potential of finding the missing link in music education; that is, the writing of music by students within the school curriculum

Such involvement may deepen their understanding of musical relationships and how one articulates feelings through sounds beyond rudimentary improvisational and creative activities currently available

raw philosophical implications for music composition in schools from recognized composers' voices about their individual composing realities

It is hoped that the direct access to these composers' thoughts about the subjective experience of composing Western art music in the second half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century may also promote the image of a fragmented culture whose ghettoization in music education is a serious impediment to the development of a comprehensive aesthetic education.

n other words, there is a striking unanimity among composers that the role of the unconscious is vital in order to start and/or to complete a work to their own satisfaction.

I need . . . to become involved, to come into a state where I do something without knowing why I do i

This is a complex problem and difficult to explain: all that one can say is that the unconscious plays an incalculable rol

Nonetheless, these self-observations about the complementary roles of the unconscious and conscious aspects of musical creativity do not cover the wide range of claims in psychological research on creativity

I strongly believe that, if we cannot explain this process, then we must acknowledge it as a mystery.25 Mysteries are not solved by encouraging us not to declare them to be mysteries

When Ligeti was commissioned to write a companion piece for Brahms' Horn Trio, he declared, "When the sound of an instrument or a group of instruments or the human voice finds an echo in me, in the musical idea within me, then I can sit down and compose. [O]therwise I canno

Extra-musical images may also provide the composer with ideas and material and contribute to musical creativity.

ome composers need to have something for it to react against.38 Xenakis, however, asserted that "all truly creative people escape this foolish side of work, the exaltation of sentiments. They are to be discarded like the fat surrounding meat before it is cooked."

as, as these examples show, dreams can also solve certain problems of the creative process.

In other words, to compose does not mean to merely carry out an initial idea. The composer reserves the right to change his or her mind after the conception of an idea.

n sum, self-imposed restrictions or "boundary conditions"55 seem to provide composers with a kind of pretext to choose from an otherwise chaotic multitude of compositional possibilities that, however, gradually disappears and gets absorbed into the process of composition which is characterized by the composers' aesthetic perceptions and choices.

Therefore, it is not surprising that influences from the musical world in which the composer lives play an important role in the creative process

Thereby the past is seen as being comprised by a static system of rules and techniques that needs to be innovated and emancipated during the composers' search for their own musical identity.

I strongly suggest that we play down basics like who influenced whom, and instead study the way the influence is transformed; in other words: how the artist made it his own.

Nothing I found was based on the "masterpiece," on the closed cycle, on passive contemplation or narrowly aesthetic pleasure.61

Furthermore, for some composers the musical influence can emerge from the development of computer technology.

If a general educational approach is to emerge from the alloy of composers' experiences of their music creativity, it rests on the realization that the creative process involves a diversity of idiosyncratic conscious and unconscious traits.

After all, the creative process is an elusive cultural activity with no recipes for making it happen.

n this light, the common thread of composers' idiosyncratic concerns and practices that captures the overall aura of their music creativity pertains to (a) the intangibility of the unconscious throughout the compositional process,68 (b) the development of musical individuality,69 and (c) the desire to transgress existing rules and codes, due to their personal and social conflict between tradition and innovation.70

In turn, by making student composers in different classroom settings grasp the essence of influential professional composers' creative concerns, even if they do not intend to become professional composers, we can help them immerse in learning experiences that respect the mysteries of their intuitions, liberate their own practices of critical thinking in music, and dare to create innovative music that expresses against-the-prevailing-grain musical beliefs and ideas.

Therefore, it is critical that the music teacher be seen as the facilitator of students' compositional processes helping students explore and continuously discover their own creative personalities and, thus, empowering their personal involvement with music. Any creative work needs individual attention and encouragement for each vision and personal experience are different.

After all, the quality of mystery is a common theme in nearly every composer's accoun

Failing this, musical creativity remains a predictable academic exercise

Music teachers need to possess the generosity to refuse to deny student composers the freedom to reflect their own insights back to them and, in turn, influence the teachers' musical reality

Indeed, it is important that music teachers try to establish students gradually as original, independent personalities who try to internalize sounds and, thus, unite themselves with their environment in a continuous creative process.

Music teachers, therefore, wishing student composers to express and exercise all their ideas, should grant them ample time to work on their compositions,

n sum, music knowledge or techniques and the activation of the student composers' desire for discovery and innovation should evolve together through balanced stimulation.

While music creativity has been a component of music education research for decades, some of the themes arising from professional composers' experiences of their creativity, such as the significance of the unconscious, the apprehension towards discovering ones' own musical language, or the personal and social tension between tradition and innovation, among others, have not been adequately recognized in the literature of music education

By doing this, I strongly believe that musical creativity in general and composing in particular run the risk of becoming a predictable academic exercise

which merely demands problem-solving skills on the part of the student composers (or alleged "critical thinkers").

. On the other hand, only few music educators appear to draw their composer students' attention to the importance of the personal and social conflict between staying within a tradition or code, even if it is the Western popular music tradition, and breaking new ground at each step in the creative process and, possibly, shaping new traditions or codes.

Culture is a precious human undertaking, and the host of musics, arts, languages, religions, myths, and rituals that comprise it need to be carefully transmitted to the young and transformed in the process."85

Nevertheless, further research is needed in which women's voices can be heard that may offer an emancipatory perspective for the instruction of composition in education which will "challenge the political domination of men."

did notreturn any recent studies investigating the effec-tiveness of a purely cognitive intervention in thetreatment of MPA; consequently, research inthis particular area is needed

Past re-search has focused on combined interventions;however, often these programs run for over 6weeks and it is unknown which aspects of theintervention are most effective (e.g., Nagel,Himle, & Papsdorf, 1989)

State–Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI).The STAI is widely used in anxiety researchand is considered to be a valid and reliable scale(Kenny, 2006).

The PAI (Nagel, Himle, & Papsdorf, 1981) isbased on the STAI and is a music inventoryassessing the three-systems model of anxiety

heart rate at 10 min, 5

Signs of anxiety included trem-bling knees, lifting shoulders, stiff back and/orneck, trembling hands, stiff arms, face deadpan,shaking head, moistening and/or biting lips, dis-tressed facial expressions, and sweating.

Nagel et al.reported that the average preintervention scorewas 55 and the average postintervention scorewas 38, with a score of 39 or less indicating a

person has few problems with performance anx-iety

Researchers have found that MPA af-fects instrumentalists and vocalists of all agesand abilities, including students, professionals,amateurs, and children (Brotons, 1994; Kenny,2006; Liston, Frost, & Mohr, 2003)

Few studies have investigated whether a cog-nitive intervention can reduce anxiety and en-hance performance in musicians (Lehrer, 1987;Steptoe & Fidler, 1987)

Few studies have investigated whether a cog-nitive intervention can reduce anxiety and en-hance performance in musicians (Lehrer, 1987;Steptoe & Fidler, 1987

The cognitive intervention had no significanteffect on anxiety levels. Sweeney and Horan’s(1982) study indicated that a cognitive restruc-turing program may be helpful in the treatmentof MPA; their program, featuring cognitive re-structuring, significantly reduced anxiety.

d it is unknown which aspects of theintervention are most effective (e.g., Nagel,Himle, & Papsdorf, 1989)

The STAI is widely used in anxiety researchand is considered to be a valid and reliable scale

Performance Anxiety Inventory (PAI)

cognitive, behavioral, and physiological fac

and has beenwidely used in treatment outcome research

Behavioral Anxiety Index (BAI)

igns of anxiety included trem-bling knees, lifting shoulders, stiff back and/orneck, trembling hands, stiff arms, face deadpan,shaking head, moistening and/or biting lips, dis-tressed facial expressions, and sweating

Participants were then taught howthoughts, behaviors, and feelings interact andinfluence performance

practical exercise, how people waste their en-ergy trying to control uncontrollable factors,thereby impairing performance

This exercise wasdesigned to demonstrate how thoughts cansometimes be irrational and can be changed inlight of new evidence

how to use self-talk effectively and how touse cues

Participants practiced how to identify negativethoughts, stop the thoughts, and use cues to helpthem overcome the negative thoughts.

Imagery is a mentalexercise that can help athletes maintain concen-tration, decrease anxiety, and improve confi-dence; thus, it may also be helpful for somemusicians (Gregg & Clark, 2007).

Participants in the wait-list controlgroup waited 3 weeks until their second perfor-mance, which was on the same night as theirfirst worksho

MPA is a pervasive problem affecting musi-cians of all ages and abilities. As compared withthe research on mental skills training in athletes,relatively little is known about the assessment,treatment, and theoretical underpinnings ofMPA

Kenny (2006) suggested that improving perfor-mance quality will have a positive, self-reinforcing effect on the musician and enhanceconfidence in future performances.

We predicted that anxiety levels would de-crease in the treatment group from pre- to post-test. This hypothesis was partially supported.Specifically, there was a significant reductionon the PAI in the treatment group. Although theparticipants improved after the intervention,they were still not within the optimal rangeaccording to Nagel et al. (1981

Although the decrease in anxiety was notas large in our study, our participants droppedfrom the high performance anxiety category tothe moderate performance anxiety category

how does each author use authenticity as a strategy for making or justifying decisions in music education?

authenticity enhances an aesthetic experience; for others, authentic musical encounters enhance student motivation

since the original loses some of its essential qualities in a simplification.5

His view of historical authenticity calls for knowing the intentions of the composer, the performance practice of the time, using period instruments, and being musically creative within the boundaries of the composer's intentions

Peter Kivy's twofold model of authenticity. Focusing on historical authenticity in performance, Kivy explores two main aspects of authenticity: historical (attention to the intent, sound, and practice of the original) and personal (interpretation and expression of the performer).

Swanwick writes: "'Authentic' musical experience occurs when individuals make and take music as meaningful or relevant for them"

Swanwick's emphasis on the importance of personal relevance yields different choices for a music teacher than Palmer's position does.

Another example is found in the work of music educator and researcher Kay Edwards, who also reached the conclusion that attention to authenticity increases student response to learning. In her qualitative study of the response of children to a unit on Native American music, she found that the group using instruments of the Navajo, Hopi, Apache, and Yaqui peoples generated more journal responses overall (her criterion measure) and more responses about instrument playing than the groups with the inauthentic (traditional music room) instruments.

Using indigenous instruments, original languages, and involving culture bearers in instruction benefits student involvement and interest as well as helps them develop musical skills. Connecting the story of a piece of music to students' own experiences and encouraging students to create new music in the style of music being studied help facilitate meaningful experiences for students.

"World music pedagogy concerns itself with how music is taught/transmitted and received/learned within cultures, and how best the processes that are included in significant ways within these cultures can be preserved or at least partially retained in classrooms and rehearsal halls.

The process of enactive listening is a pathway to the performance of music. The goal of this third level of a listening pedagogy is to continue ear training with a strong musicianship program by allowing the listening act to guide musicians to stylistically appropriate performance.[ 6] Not only can students learn the music of oral cultures aurally, but they can also effectively learn the nutated music of literate cultures by listening. In attempting to perform a musical selection, students gain from opportunities to hear a recording that allows them to concentrate on timbrai qualities, the dynamic How of a piece, its melodic and rhythmic components, and the interplay of its parts. Notation alone, whether from composed or transcribed works, can never fully depict all the musical nuances of a piece, and so listening is a helpful guide to performance.

Enactive listening takes time. It can be frustrating for those who have learned to use and value notation as an important means for music's transmission.

Young musicians can learn songs for solo or unison voices — as well as multipart songs and selections for percussion ensembles, strings groups, and gatherings of wind players — by ear.

local autonomy

Love of Learning

growth

relationships

personalized learning