ICT Summative Blog Post

I can't believe the term is over already!  It really doesn't seem that long ago that we had our very first ICT class.  I thoroughly enjoyed this class.  Often, I find that the education courses I take are somewhat irrelevant to what I will be teaching - band.  The professor for this class, however, made a genuine effort to make the course work applicable  to our unique field of education.  We learned many things throughout the course and were exposed to a wide variety of useful tools and applications.

We started the year exploring our ideas about technology's place in education.  For many people in the class, it was hard to see how we could practically and meaningfully incorporate technology into our band/choir/music rooms.  Personally, I still feel that technology is less useful in band that it is in more traditional classroom settings, but my eyes have been opened to many ways in which it could be used.

We addressed the idea that we live in a rapidly changing environment and that we have to change our teaching methods to remain relevant.  We are educating students for a future which we cannot possibly imagine.  This means that we have to teach students to be independent, critical thinkers, and CREATIVE.  As cliché as it is, the students of today are the future.  Education in general is slow to change, and band is perhaps more so.  I think it is important that we embrace the idea of a new vision of music education.

I believe it is important to sustain traditional music making, but there is certainly room for modern music making as well.  Students in a modern band room should be recording their music, composing music, be exposed to digital music-making.  There is room for technology incorporation through composer and work research, biographies, and even practice records.  Students could run blogs accounting their learning and progress. Teachers could record videos of instructions, practice ideas, and to demonstrate characteristic tone for each instrument.

Social networking can be an amazing tool in the band room in terms of community building and communication between band members, directors, and parents.  This could be through a well known forum such as Facebook or Twitter or though a program specific site like iSchoolBand.  Social networking is also an incredibly powerful means for teachers to connect.  These teachers could be colleagues across the hall from each other or across the world.  These connections open up unlimited possibilities or collaboration and idea sharing.  Teachers can share their lesson plans and activity ideas with one another, creating a huge database of possibilities for their classrooms.

If we allow ourselves to think outside of the traditional lines of music education, there are many, many ways in which we can successfully integrate technology.  As I have said many times before, it is out responsibility to use technology in a meaningful way and at the same time address concerns of ICT literacy with our students.  Technology IS our future, and we need to be preparing our students for it.

I hope that each of us remembers what we learned in this class and implement it to the best of our abilities in each of our classrooms.  If not, we are leaving far too many unopened doors of possibility for our students.

Thanks Professor Nantais!

Find below a little Prezi summary of the vast array of tools and applications we were exposed to in class.

Xtranormal

For my ICT class week, our assignment was to blog about a storytelling website of our choice.  I clicked through a couple different ones, and chose to look more into Xtranormal.com.

In this website, users can tell their story through an animation.  Users select their theme, set, and actors, then add dialogue and actions.  Dialogue can be recorded with a mic or you can record speech with a mic and input it.  To add motions, one simply drags and drops the motion they want onto the dialogue at the appropriate place.  In addition, users can drag and drop sound effects, facial expressions, add background music/noise, and even control the which "camera" is being used at any given moment.

Of course, the text-to-speech feature isn't that great, but it gets the job done.  If I were to ever use this again, I would likely be more prone to recording my own audio.

I think this would be a neat little site to use in a classroom.  There is not much of a learning curve at all. I learned the ropes in only a few minutes.  I'm not sure how effective a program like this would be in a band room without it becoming a superficial use of technology.  I can however see it being used in an English class to tell stories/re-enact scenes from a novel.  Students could use it to present ideas in a medium other than public speaking.

From my short time with Xtranormal, it seems like a neat little site.  It's easy to use, has a free version, and creates a fairly polished product.  Check out my mini-story below.  (And no, I do not have a 15 page paper due tomorrow that I haven't started.)


Stikz Movie
by: justine_714