Thing 8 - Visual Learning

For thing 8 we looked at some tools to use for the visual learners in the class. One of the sites we looked at was bubbl.us. This site is a graphic organizer creator. I am very interested in using different sites that are graphic organizers. I think this will be very helpful to sort all of the new terms the students need to learn in the band class. Here is a picture of an example:

Band is already a pretty visual learning experience to begin with but some of the new terms and ideas can be confusing to sort out. I think putting some of the ideas into a graphic organizer will be very helpful to the students who are very visual with their learning. Another tool we took a look at was wordle. With this site you can enter text and the site will create a word wall of the words in the text. It will make words bigger or smaller depending on how much they were used. You can also select commonly used words like the, is or her to not be included. Here is a wordle of my reflection on this thing.

Again I think this will be a great tool to use for teacher that read a lot of text. You will be able to show the important topic and ideas from any passage of text. I am not sure it will useful for my setting because we do not read a lot of text.

Thing 7 - Digital Citizenship

For thing 7 we looked at ways to evaluate a website and its credibility. Not everything put out into the world wide web is true and honest. There are many sites that are scams and trying to take advantage of naive people. As we explored through this thing it was very interesting to learn about some of the things you can look at on a website to see if it is a credible site or not. I also thought it was interesting to look at how up to date the site is. I had never thought about that before. For some practice I looked at two site and did a critical review of them.

The first site that I looked at was Burmese Mountain Dog site. As I looked through this site there were a few things that caught my attention right away. There was no author for the site and the web address posted at the top of the site was not the address that I was at and I could not click on that address as a link. The site was giving information about a rare dog and did not seem to be very accurate or real. There was also no information on when the site was last updated. There was some references to books that were used to get the information, but when you clicked on the link it was redirected to a phone service site. Overall the site seemed bogus and not very credible.

The second link that I looked at was Moonbeam Enterprises site. At first glance of this site you can tell that this site is mainly for a little fun. There was no author identified and it looked like it was created in 1998. The site was pretty easy to explore and the links went to accurate places. Most of the stuff on the site seemed to be fake. It had some funny things, like a spot were you could order some food and you had 30 days to return it if you did not like it. That is why it seemed to be a just for fun website. It did not seem like they wanted to take advantage of anyone, but instead just make you laugh a little.

As I worked through this thing I can see that it is important to help students realize what to look for in a credible web site.

Another piece of this thing was to look at the importance of teaching students about other things to be cautious about on the internet. Some of those things are cyber-bullying, putting their personal information on the internet, and netiquette. For my class setting I do not see me teaching too many of these topics. Being a band teacher I do not have students use a computer for my class right now. I do want to have computers put into my room eventually and then I can see that I will need to show my students how to use the internet responsibly. I can see doing a lesson on netiquette for sure. Showing students how to conduct them selves on the internet. Talking about the consequences for the things the say or post on the internet. I would also want to discuss putting personal information up on the internet and how this will impact them. Until I have computers however, I will not be able to do much to teach them about these items. I hope that their other teacher will be able to help them understand some of these very important topics.

Thing 6 - Differentiated Instruction and Diverse Learners

As I read about the principals of differentiated instruction I found that I do use a few of the strategies they listed. I try to present the materials and content in as many ways as possible to try and reach as many students as possible. There are a few limits to how differentiated I can be with my instruction. As a band director there tends to be only one way of doing things and it makes it hard to accommodate different learners. As I was reading I did see that there are more things that I can do as far as the products I get from the students. I always have all of the students perform the same thing or produce the same thing. I think that I could do more to have a variety of options for the students t choose from. I will definitely be working on this for next year.

The second piece that we looked at was the diverse learners website to explore technology tools that could be used to assist the learning process. As I looked through the tools there were many that interested possibly using. There was a DIY video creator and I thought that I would be able to use this to make videos of many of the procedures we have so the students could review them at home. I also liked the graphic organizers to help organize a lot of the new vocabulary the students are learning. As I look at my curriculum this summer I will be implementing some of these new tools.

The third piece we explored was to visit the UDL site and look into the strategies, tool and resources section. I also found many useful tools here. There was a section on how to make learning visual and I am going to see what school tube has to offer a band director. I am also going to look more into livebinders. I am not sure that this tool will be useful for my students, but as I was looking through this I found some resources that would be useful to me and my teaching.

The final piece that we looked at was text to audio converter. I can see many benefits to our none English speakers using this tool. I am not sure how I would be able to use this tool for  my classroom. In the band classroom we do not do a lot of reading text, so I do not see myself using this tool very often. There are a few things that I will be able to use this for, such as my handbook. If there was an audio version of it maybe more parents would understand the procedures and policies of the band class. Just for an example of how it worked I took a selection from a music history site and had it translated into audio, and captured an image of that process.

Overall, there were many useful things that I learned about during this piece of the class and I am looking forward to using them next year to help accommodate all of my learners.

Thing 5 - Content Area Tools

This thing was a little disappointing for me. For this one I explored the thinkfinity website. This is a website that has a collection of lesson plans and links to use in the classroom. A I was exploring this site I ran into many issues. Most of the links that I tried to look at were no longer there. I also found that most of the music lessons were geared toward the elementary or general music teacher. I did not find anything that I would be able to use for a middle school instrumental classroom. I am always looking online for links to good websites and for lesson plan ideas. I have found a few lesson plans here and there, but there is not a lot out there. I do have a list of good links that I have discovered and I plan on putting them on my website so my students have access to them. Once I have more access to technology in my classroom I will also be able to use these links for supplemental activities. I also attend some good music conferences throughout the year and am always borrowing great ideas from my colleagues. I will keep looking for lessons online, but I had bad luck with the thinkfinity site.

Thing 4 - Communication Tools

For this thing I explored the world of Skype. I have to be honest I was a little apprehensive about this one. After watching some of the tutorials and looking into people that you could Skype with I do see some advantages for my classroom. I do not think I will use this tool for personal use because Most of my family lives right here in the Grand Rapids/Holland area. For my classroom I would like to explore using it to talk with composers. I think it would be great for my students to have a discussion with the composer of a piece we a working on so they could get a deeper understanding and connection with the piece. Knowing why the composer wrote the piece and what my have influenced them would be so interesting. I can also see using this to connect with performing groups and solo artists. It would be great to bring a master class right to the classroom.

There will be some technology issues that I will need to deal with before I can actually bring this to my classroom. I will need to get a projector for my room. I am hoping this will be taken care of soon!

Here is a picture I captured of me exploring Skype for the first time. My daughter thought it was great to see daddy on the computer!

Thing 3 - Collaboration Tools

For this thing I explored Goolge Docs. My school has been using this tool for the past year so I had a little experience with the sharing capabilities. I had not really looked into its true potential until now. I see many great advantages for using this tool a lot more. I team teach with another band director and we are constantly asking each other for copies of handouts that we use in class. To be able to upload the ones we have already created and to create new ones using this tool will make us more efficient. We can share the documents between us and then we no longer need to ask for a copy of something we can just search for it and print it out. I also like that we can edit the documents that we share together. We also like to proofread the stuff we send out t parents and this will make that process a lot easier as well. I can also see the using this tool for sharing with our parents. We send a lot of communications home to parents and this could make that a lot easier as well. I can see using the forms to send to parents and ask them for some feedback. This will help us to get immediate feedback on how we are doing and things we can change. I was already planning on using Google Docs more next year and uploading my current form and letters into my account, but now I am really excited to use this tool. I am just imagining how much easier communication will be next year using this tool.

As I was exploring some of the templates I came across something that I my be able to alter for next year. It was a lesson plan template designed for team teachers. I will need to make a few changes for the band setting, but I think using this next year will help us to communicate better what we expect the other teacher to be doing in class each day. This will benefit our students greatly!

Thing 2 - Face of the Classroom

For thing 2 I explored weebly, a do it yourself website maker. It was pretty easy to get things up and running. It was a drag and drop application. I thin using this will be very easy to keep up through out the year. It is a little limited on the customization, but still very professional looking. Go ahead and check out my site:


http://kvillemsband.weebly.com

I think this will be a good communication tool between parents, students, and myself.