Week 6

As I've been working on my webquest I've been enjoying a lot of the content available on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's website, especially these videos. Definitely a great resource for teaching your students about popular music!

Also, this article is going around the internet the last few days. It seems to have a bit of a right-leaning political slant, but it still brings to light a pretty disappointing move by the Federal Trade Commission. They have been pursuing MTNA (music teacher's national association) for a clause in their code of ethics which suggests teachers not recruit students from other piano teachers in the area, claiming it will drive up the price of piano lessons.

Week 5

The Department of Ed. is starting a new recruitment effort, trying to draw the best and brightest into teaching. The NY Times has an article that shares opinions from a variety of angles.

This NPR feature discusses the role of recess in our schools. Research shows that providing children with play time is crucial to their development, but recess is one of the first things to be cut in the demand for more instructional time. These cuts are much more common in high-poverty and low income areas.

Week 4

Here's a somewhat disheartening set of data via NPR and Georgetown University. The most and least lucrative college majors. Can you guess what falls in the 10 least lucrative? Visual/Performing Arts, Elementary Education and Early-Childhood Education. I guess I should've gone into Petroleum Engineering.

Chris Russell has an interesting perspective on guitar-based vs. keyboard-based general music methods on the tech in music ed. blog. I tend to agree with his points regarding practicality and relevance of keyboard labs and I found his ideas on how that money could be otherwise spent to be very intriguing. But I also think that the guitar presents more of a physical learning curve than keyboard.

Week 3

"A new study from researchers at Northwestern University, published in the Journal of Neuroscience connected music lessons in childhood to the way the brain responded to speech later in life."

Read more: Drumroll, Please: How Band Camp Pays Off Later in Life | TIME.com

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Just started a rap composition project with my 6th graders this week and we are using this really fun web-based drum sequencer to build our beats.

Bicycle Built for Two

I have used noteflight quite a bit previously. My wife is a band teacher and she introduced it to me after using it with her music technology class. Overall I'd say that while I appreciate the collaborative and sharing functions of Noteflight and can see it's usefulness in that role, I was more impressed with musescore as a free and functional notation resource.