Final Summative Blog Post

I think that ICT can play an important part in the music classroom and can contribute to students' creativity, and can allow them to learn how to grow with technology in music. I think that composition softwares, such as Finale and Garage Band can be very useful in helping students to create their own songs and to collaborate with other students on projects that will get them familiar with music and with the various things that they can do with technology regarding music.

I think that through educating students on the importance of their identity on the internet that they will learn what is acceptable to put on the internet, and what they should keep away from it. This is an important habit to have: knowing what is appropriate and what is not. This will help them in the future to obtain a job and keep it. Their lives should not be affected by what they post on the internet. 

ICT is having a rather large affect on school systems today. There is a much larger emphasis on the Internet and using devices like laptops, cellphones, tablets, etc. This can make classrooms easier to manage: Everything is available at the students' fingers, and with the availability of laptops and laptop carts, none of the students even have to leave the classroom. Students can transfer their assignments with ease to teachers, and are better able to communicate with them if they have questions or need extra help. However, it also can be a major distraction. Gaming, texting, and social networking can be detriment to students' attention spans and can affect their ability to do homework, seeing as they are too busy tweeting, messaging, playing, etc. to focus on their schooling. 

During the semester, our ICT class was given many applications, websites, and resources that can help to keep both ourselves and our students organized and interested in what they are learning. I enjoyed using Symbaloo and Pearltrees and other websites of the like that can help to keep internet resources organized and easy to find. Animoto and Prezi are a good way to have students make their own presentations or videos using their own ideas or pictures. Tools like Jing can make life easier also. I also really enjoyed learning about the various websites that allow you to create your own. It was a good experience to create my own website and find out really how accessible and easy it is. Blogging was also a good experience. 

And with that, I say goodbye to first semester!

E-Portfolio

I am currently putting on the finishing touches of my e-Portfolio, and I think after the work that I have put into it that it will be worthwhile. I was skeptical at first, and am still unsure if I will leave it available for all to see after this course, but will most likely repost it when I am looking for jobs in the future. I think that it is a good tool to have and will be more useful for me when I am looking for employment.

We are almost finished or final project for this class, and am looking forward to presenting it tomorrow! Hopefully all goes well and that everyone enjoys it. We did have to make some adjustments to our project as the tool we decided to use was not working for us. For some reason, the tool Jing did not let us save our videos that we made and this forced us to come up with a new plan of action for our project. Sometimes technology can be very frustrating, especially when we are depending on it.

Although the last week of classes for music students was last week, we still are continuing with this class for the rest of this week. This means that this will be my second last blog post, and my final post will be a sort of summative post with different requirements for our ICT class.

"" It came in like a wrecking ball ""

Whew! School is almost done, and it will be great to have some time to catch up on life for a couple of weeks. These past few weeks have been terribly busy and the next two will be even more so! All of these projects and final exams and tests came in so suddenly, and will be gone just as quickly I hope.

This past week, we were able to spend a lot of class time working on our final project for ICT. I was glad to have this class time to work with my partner and to discuss and become even closer to finishing it!

In some cases, group work can be a pain. Sometimes you are set up with people that do not share the same interests as you do, or they want to take the project in a different way. Being able to find a time where all group members can meet is also very challenging with each person's schedule being different but all being just as busy. There can also be issues with students not doing an equal share of the work and giving one student the majority of the project to do. (I have been here before and it is not a good position to be in) This can be one of the main frustrations with group projects.

This project however, I am lucky to work with a friend and roommate, so this makes it easy to meet up and go over what we need to work on, or what needs to get finished. We are both pretty excited about our project, and think that the class will enjoy it (given past conversations that we have heard throughout the semester).

Working with people can have its benefits too-- if one person does not understand the project or in this case, the technology, then the other can help them, or both can research it to find out how everything should look and work. Working with others can be fun too, and can help you to meet new people or students in your class that you may not have previously talked to.

I think that as a future music educator, I will take both advantages and disadvantages from group work, and put them towards my decision making on whether or not my class will participate in it, and if they do- how often.