Mr C's Music Room

  Navigating New Media   Case Study #1: Google Classroom Overview Google Classroom is a one-stop shop for teachers to set up learning activities, grade assignments, and send announcements to their students. The platform allows students to access learning materials or assignments their teacher assigns at the touch of a button. Students receive instant notifications of teacher announcements, upcoming assignments, and when their work has been graded. ]Google Classroom also allows students to enter collaborative workspaces with their peers via the remaining tools within the Google Suite. User Engagement Teachers can use Google Classroom to distribute learning materials, create assignments, and grade student work. Kumar et al (2020) state how the platform's versatility allows teachers to assign readings, YouTube videos, or even games using the Classwork Page. Students can utilize Google Classroom to access their assigned materials, submit classwork, and stay on top of due dates. By...

For my final project, I will research the Personal Digital Inquiry framework to argue that elementary music classrooms provide unique affordances to the framework that a traditional classroom does not offer. I will focus on the process of music composition and how students can leverage various compositional tools to show their expertise and engage with their communities. I have chosen to focus my research on PDI because I was particularly moved by the findings of Jon Wargo, who wrote an inspirational story in the article Sounding the Garden: Voicing a Problem: Mobilizing Critical Literacy through Personal Digital Inquiry with Young Children. Wargo tells the story of a young boy who uses sonorous artwork to mobilize his community around the climate change crisis. This inspirational example of the PDI Framework drew my attention to the various affordances of sound and music that students can leverage within an elementary music class to mobilize their communities, as this student managed ...

 New Literacies Beyond the Screen       We live in an age where sharing artistic creations is easier than ever. Whether posting a video of a song you wrote on TikTok or releasing a track on your Spotify page, musicians can express their art through mediums beyond the CD or Cassette Tapes used in the 20th century. However, these new possibilities for sharing music also leave students vulnerable to instances of plagiarism and crude behavior in online spaces. Young musicians often mimic the works of their radio heroes either because they have not found their own voice or because they fear rejection for sharing an original sound. As Aguilera (2017) stated, our students live in an age where understanding the text or videos on their screen is no longer sufficient. They must also be aware of who created the content, what laws exist to govern using content, and how they can constructively criticize content. By helping my students recognize plagiarized music, guiding the...

  Moving Beyond the Conduit     This week, I read Jenifer Vanek's article Digital Literacy and the International Literacy Association's brief Improving Digital Practices for Literacy, Learning, and Justice: More Than Just Tools . Coincidentally, I arrived at the same conclusion after reading both texts: New Literacies should not solely be used as conduits. It goes without saying that many young people today are very proficient in keyboarding and navigating a computer. However, Vanek (2019) argues that many more proficiencies must be in place for students to successfully function in the digital age. These proficiencies include finding and evaluating information and knowing which tools to use to complete tasks. In this new digital age, one cannot find much success in the workplace with basic typing skills. The task-oriented nature of today's market necessitates the ability to use technology to locate information and display that information in various ways. Without putting ...

  New Literacies in the Classroom     As Sang (2017) described in her paper, the term "literacy" no longer refers to being able to read and write in academic English. Recent advances in technology and information retrieval have brought a new digital side to the term. Simply put, "literacy" now encompasses the ability to derive and display meaning within various forms of media. In Music Education, "literacy" is often viewed as being able to read and write from standard sheet music notation. However, many students struggle to translate elements of rhythm and melody into sheet music.  Last school year, I worked with a voice student who could never quite manage to decode the symbol for a Quarter Rest and understand that it meant he needed to be silent for one beat. One day, this same student showed me two parentheses that he had put on his computer ( ) and asked, "Is this what a Quarter Rest could look like?" During each subsequent lesson, if I showe...