First off — yes, you are. 🙂

Secondly, the phrase “genius hour” is one I have heard before, but not one I have heavily looked into. To be completely honest, part of my initial thoughts on it was that it must be a happy hour of sorts for the folks who work at the Genius Bar in the Apple Store.

While I want to believe that also indeed happens, “genius hour” in education is different. Through it, students are given complete control of their education for a while through an open-ended project. They may choose topics to research that they are interested in, finding specific information on their own and presenting it later.

Benefits of “Genius Hour”:

• Students are given free reign to make their projects about anything they would like. Fascinated by the tunnels that run underground in Walt Disney World? Sweet! Want to learn more about coffee and its popularity in the world? Go for it! The sky is truly the limit, and with students having so much choice in the matter, they are able to make their projects about something they are personally curious about or enthusiastic about.
• Students have a choice as to how they share their information. While they should use some form of technology, the final presentation does not have strict parameters. It could be a podcast, a PowerPoint, a video, a digital infographic — whatever the student is more comfortable with. This choice and freedom gives students a strong onus in their education.
• Students present their final projects in front of their peers, gaining invaluable experience presenting in front of a crowd (no matter the size). This experience will prepare them for so many things in the future — job interviews, best man speeches, a variety of careers — and the younger students are when they start this type of presentation, the more confident they’ll be as they age.

With every idea comes some hurdles, and this is no different.

Potential Hurdles and How to Address Them

The student has no interest in their project / is having trouble being motivated to complete the project.

This is the time for the teacher to pull on their best teacher-y shoes and talk to the student as a human. Taking time to check in with the student can go a long way in building trust and creating a strong relationship. Ask about their life, their hobbies, what they had for dinner last night…anything to get to get the ball rolling without making it seem like you are just checking in because you only care about their project completion.

We don’t have enough time!

Teachers may be hesitant to start this process due to the amount of time it can take (20% of time = 1 school day a week). Starting on a smaller scale can help teachers feel out the process through a trial and error period. This smaller scale could look like adding a “genius hour” element into a larger unit (for example, having students pick a topic within the book Maniac Magee and having them create their presentations off of that topic). If that smaller trial goes well, go a little bigger the next time. There is no “right” and “wrong,” which is really the beauty of “genius hour.”

On Wednesday evening, I had the chance to meet up — virtually — with Tresa and Josh. We utilized GoogleMeets for the gathering, and getting to speak with humans face-to-face after primarily using the written word to communicate was such a treat. It was neat to compare the tone of my classmates’ writing to their actual selves (my mental image was pretty spot on), and it was even neater to talk about education items and this PLS course. The connection made through our meeting definitely gave me more of a connection to this course as a whole, as now, I can put humans behind the words.

GoogleMeet is not new to my school, and it is a tool that I do not foresee leaving anytime soon. In our pandemic world, GoogleMeet is how I initially met with colleagues, students, and friends to continue some form of live conversation while quarantining with the rest of the world. This is still very much the case currently, as students who are placed in quarantine are able to meet with their classmates and teachers. This keeps the classroom alive for the student, helping them to not fall behind while still making important social connections.

GoogleMeet isn’t just neat for times of sickness and coronavirus, though. Since it uses one of the hippest inventions around — the internet — to run, students and teachers can connect with users anywhere in the world as long as they have an internet connection. Lessons don’t need to stay within the USA; connections can be made with students in Europe, South America…the options are endless. This global potential means that students and their teachers can connect with not just other students, but professionals in the fields that they are learning about, too. What better way to learn about something new than from someone who works with it every day?

GoogleMeet is here to stay, and how grateful I am we’ve had it as long as we have.

Twitter has come a long way since its initial creation. What once was just a quirky way to express oneself in 280 characters or less is now a means to…well, still do that, but also connect and network with others from around the planet.

Like every tool, there are pros and cons of Twitter.

Pros:

1.) Twitter has only grown in popularity as the years have gone by. It is a regular name when it comes to social media, giving it street cred. Its popularity also means that it is used by a huge amount of people.

2.) Hashtags make it so easy to find other people talking about basically any topic you can think of. #coffee, #waltdisneyworld, #musiceducation — they are all used and can help make connections with those who are also chatting about the same things.

3.) Twitter is top-notch for networking. In the education world, Twitter chats allow for education professionals to come together and discuss a specific topic, using a hashtag to keep all of the thoughts together (such as #musedchat).

4.) The 280 word limit can be a hindrance, but it also keeps statements concise and to the point.

5.) Twitter is a relatively simple tool to use since it is so “to the point.” This makes it a great option for use in the classroom, as the initial teaching period should not be terribly long.

Cons

1.) While the 280 character limit can be a pro, it can also be a con in regards to needing to be so succinct. It it challenging to narrow one’s thoughts into such few words, which can frustrate some users.

2.) Twitter, as of right now, is not organized into “groups” of people; the only way to connect with others who share your topic of choice is to utilize a hashtag.

3.) Users have the ability to make their accounts private, but doing so makes it impossible for public users to see responses from private users (unless they follow one another).

4.) There isn’t a way to filter out certain topics, making Twitter a bit of a risk in the education world (we don’t want students to be looking at things they shouldn’t).

5.) You have to commit to an account if you would like to comment; there is casual browsing, but not casual commenting.

Despite these pros and cons, Twitter has an undeniable ability to increase one’s professional growth and development. I believe that teachers learn best from other teachers, and with so many educators on Twitter, the possibilities for networking and sharing of ideas are endless. Education chats, as mentioned above, give more scheduled opportunities for educators to come together utilizing Twitter as well, forming a sort of club-like community for various topics. Twitter is a tool I have used in the past for my educational growth, and I intend to continue as I move forward in my teaching career.

Cai, E. (2011). Music is.. Flickr. photograph. Retrieved November 23, 2021, from https://flic.kr/p/aWvnMn.

Flickr is a site I have definitely heard of before, but not necessarily a site I have heavily utilized. I always considered it to be a place where I could upload and show off my own work — not necessarily a place to find images — so, this exercise is a welcome eye-opener.

I definitely have opportunities to use Flickr within my own teaching. Utilizing the Creative Commons, in general, is an excellent means of introducing students to giving images proper credit. The initial landing page for the Creative Commons explains the differences between each type of permissions, further separating the photos by type of permission. In my class, we do many projects (Video Game Project, Composer Social Media Infographics, etc.) that would benefit from a source such as Flickr that explains what photos are fair game for use, and, furthermore, what users need to do (in regards to crediting them) for the use to be fair. The students could ultimately use their selected images in their presentations and projects, crediting them in a proper means. Knowledge of this tool will then benefit them as they go through the rest of their educational career, creating a win-win situation.

How does the idea of everyone sharing knowledge in a collaborative environment affect the model of teaching and learning? Include benefits for the teacher and for students in your post.

As more and more technology applications are created, so are the opportunities to collaborate with one another. Education is one of the fields most effected by these changes. I’ll be chatting about some of these changes in two ways: how they effect teachers, and how they effect students.

Collaborative Environments with Teachers

Thanks largely in part to the internet, teachers have new and grand forms of collaborating with one another. Blogs make it easy for teachers to get inspiration from other teachers. Twitter education chats (some of which can be found here) allow teachers to connect with one another in real time. Teachers who happen to be in graduate courses with one another (hint hint) can help one another and contribute to projects through the Google and Microsoft suites. Because of these offerings and so many more, teachers are able to gather new ideas and get feedback on old ideas. These experiences ultimately lead to a stronger experience for students as well.

Collaborative Environments with Students

Students have more opportunities to collaborate with one another than ever before. While group work, in general, is an important part of a child’s education, we can now integrate group work in a cyber or digital setting. Students can send video responses and comments to one another on applications such as Flipgrid. When working on group projects, students can work together on the same document at the same time on different computers (full disclosure: I wish that technology was in use while I was in school). These two examples are a small sampling of how students can collaborate with a variety of peers both in their school and out of their school — the sky is truly the limit when it comes to how students can collaborate with one another.

Learning how to work with others is an incredibly important task for children and adults alike. Fortunately, we have the tools to do so more easily than ever before. Knowledge is power, and the more people we have an opportunity to learn with and from, the stronger we all will be as learners.

One of my favorite units I teach in 7th Grade General Music is all about Foley sound effects. Foley is a technique used in the film industry to develop stronger, crisper sound effects than what would necessarily be available to capture in the real world. Foley artists recreate the desired sounds in a studio using a menagerie of objects, and those sounds are then added to the film clips in question. For more detail on Foley, check this video out.

The lesson I am adapting is an introduction to Foley. Typically, I have my students look up a favorite sound effect, play it for the class, and then I go into the nuts and bolts of Foley immediately after. My adaptation is going to include a discovery element utilizing Pinterest. I chose this plan, in particular, because it is a topic that is hard to teach without physically showing the students information. Having the students discover some of that information on their own will possibly lead to more of an onus with the topic. Plus — the students may discover some resources I never found myself!

Objective: Students will be able to define what Foley sound effects are and the basics of their creation.

Materials: Chromebooks, miniature whiteboards/markers

Procedure:

1. Teacher greets the class and explains that today’s lesson involves something called “Foley.”
2. Teacher pairs students, giving each pair a miniature whiteboard and marker.
3. Teacher instructs students to go to Pinterest.com (this will not be their first time on the site) and search for the term “Foley sound effects.” As the students explore Foley on Pinterest, they will “pin” entries that are interesting to them.
4. After 5-10 minutes of exploring and pinning, student pairs will list their top five interesting facts about Foley onto their whiteboards.
5. Next, students will join another pair and compare their answers, coming up with a new top five interesting facts that represents both pairs.
6. Finally, teacher will lead a share out to the class regarding each four person group’s facts.
7. After going through everyone’s facts, teacher will begin presentation on Foley, showing a video that shows Foley artists at work.
8. At the end of the period, the teacher will close by asking for two overall takeaways about Foley and then asking for two questions that students still want to have answered in a future class.

The advantages to using Pinterest in this way are many — students can self-discover new ideas, the site is visually appealing, and students are able to work at their own paces. The main disadvantage to consider is that Pinterest’s usage is something that will have to be taught prior to this lesson, taking class time somewhere along the line.

As we are gearing up for this lesson in the next month with my 7th graders, I do think I will try this out to test its effectiveness. Stay tuned!

Music Teachers Using Google Sites: Six Effective Examples, Katie Miller (MidnightMusic.com.au)

After figuring out some more general ways to use GoogleSites to my classroom’s benefit, my next step was to determine how to use it, effectively, in the music classroom. Music, being so participatory and performance-based in nature, is sometimes difficult to convert to an online setting; I learned this the hard way at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. While I have definitely improved, I still have much to learn. Thus, I was so grateful to see that Katie Miller compiled a list of some of her favorites.

For the purpose of this post, I am going to reference some of the mentioned Google Sites examples and my takeaways from them.

Tuffree Choral Music

This choral music site blows my mind, and the customization accomplished definitely reinforces the school’s image, colors, and energy. The site has a calendar, which I expected, but also a place to check on Weekly Choir Updates. My favorite part of the site, however, is the Performance Opportunities page. On that page, site visitors can scroll over images of various performance titles to find out exactly what those performances are, who they involve, etc. It serves as an excellent recruitment and retention tool, for some of their performance opportunities are pretty neat.

Chavez Music

Chavez Music is a landing page for a middle school general music course. The teacher, Ms. Lyons, has created a Bitmoji classroom that is tailored to her personality, resources, and lessons. The Bitmoji classroom features her Bitmoji, but also has a number of other items that are clickable. For example, clicking on the Hamilton poster leads to a video from the musical. Clicking on the image of an open laptop leads to a Garageband tutorial (which, I am assuming, is a resource she uses in class). The Bitmoji classroom is a different type of landing page, bright and fun, and I can imagine it would be extremely welcoming to entirely cyber students especially.

SOURCE:

Miller, K. (2021, October 30). Music teachers using google sites: 6 effective examples. Midnight Music. Retrieved November 13, 2021, from https://midnightmusic.com.au/2020/10/music-teachers-using-google-sites-6-effective-examples/.

How to Expertly Organize Your Classroom with Google Sites by Evan Stoudt (EdSurge)

When it comes to Google Sites, I am a newbie in regards to its functionality and what exactly I am able to do for my classroom within its boundaries. I was therefore happy to come across Evan Stoudt’s article, for it covered many bases (including some I had not considered!). He goes in depth to discuss functionality of various specific tools, and I’ll go into depth in regards to the ones that will be most effective for my classroom

Google Calendar

Pre-existing Google Calendars can be easily be added to a Google Site homepage — and not just a link, either, but the entire, visual calendar. This is an incredibly large benefit when it comes to classwork and assignments for sure. However, more relevant for my area of teaching music is putting rehearsals on the calendar and have them so easily visible. This would help students and parents alike, and having a common landing place would do wonders for our program’s organization.

Google Drive

Google Sites and Google Drive, being of the same Google Suite, communicate with one another instantaneously. This means that anything on a teacher’s Google Drive can be embedded onto their Google Site. Our district is a Google district, meaning our students and teachers already proficiency with Google Drive. Documents, videos, images — they can all be embedded and instantly accessible. In this way, Google Sites can almost serve as an additional LMS.

Ability to Purchase a Domain Name

This is something I had no idea about — Google Sites users are able to purchase domain names from Google. This means that, instead of having to send a very specific link (including additional letters and numbers) out to students, I can purchase something like palmschoirs.com for our homepage. Students and parents could then quickly search for it whenever they need it. This would increase accessibility of the site and hopefully encourage more users (students and parents alike) to check on the site more frequently.

SOURCE:

Stoudt, E. (2018, December 27). How to expertly organize your classroom with google sites. EdSurge. Retrieved November 12, 2021, from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-07-08-how-to-expertly-organize-your-classroom-with-google-sites.

Google Sites for Teachers on MissTechQueen.com

I am, admitedly, a teacher who likes to customize everything I use to the upteenth degree. Ability to customize in a way that best represents myself and my classroom is a consideration I make when choosing to start using a specific resource. With Google Sites being my resource du jour for our upcoming product, a seemingly limited ability to customize my page was a turnoff in regards to using the platform.

Miss Tech Queen’s article addresses this concern, stating, “There are only a few themes to choose from which slightly change the font throughout your site. There is very little wiggle room for changing fonts on each page.” While this was a bummer to read and confirmed my initial fear, she continues her discussion with a solution; there is potential to create images separately and then upload them to the site, as she did with this neat farmhouse-style Google Site. Miss Tech Queen also offers additional templates on her Teachers Pay Teachers storefront.

I am not quite ready to pay for a template — this is something I want to learn how to do on my own — but it certainly nice to know that there are options when it comes to customization of my Google Site. Customization may seem trivial in comparision to the actual “meat and potatoes” of using the site (for classroom engagement), but I do believe that the more personable the site looks, the more likely it is that my students will utilize it.

SOURCE:

Google sites for teachers. Miss Tech Queen. (2020, September 4). Retrieved November 12, 2021, from https://misstechqueen.com/2020/09/04/google-sites-for-teachers/.

Had I seen the term “RSS” before? Sure. Had I ever investigated what RSS was? Nope. In my head, it was always for people far more technologically-savvy than myself. I had trepedation going into this latest learning activity, but, fortunately, it wasn’t as spooky as it initially seemed.

My experience with The Old Reader reminded me a lot of TweetDeck: a place to get the latest updates on a variety of topics of my choosing. Unlike TweetDeck, The Old Reader allows me to search further (and not on Twitter alone), and that global potential makes it a pretty neat tool for my personal learning. I would not integrate an RSS feed into my classroom just yet, but, I can see myself utilizing one after this course to keep track of a multitude of ideas, blogs, and topics.

What are some of the items I have subscribed to? I’m happy to tell you. 🙂

Mrs. Stouffer’s Music Room

One of the first blogs I decided to follow was Mrs. Stouffer’s Music Room. Mrs. Stouffer’s page is a place of ultimate opportunity — lesson plans, music resources, interviews with relevant and exciting people, and so much more. Her blog excites me, and I want to stay up to date on what she’s posting as she’s posting it (she may post something really relevant to my students that I’ll be able to use in the moment). It was a no brainer to follow this blog for this education-hungry music teacher.

Bulletproof Musician

Bulletproof Musician is a blog about performance anxiety and other psychological aspects of being a musician. It offers strategies for nervous musicians (me and my students alike!), motivational resources, and interviews with reputable musicians and music leaders. This isn’t a normal music blog, as, many times, folks are afraid to talk about performance anxiety, making this blog a diamond in the rough.

Search Terms

I selected three different Google search terms for my RSS feed. First, I chose “Palisades School District,” as it will help me to recognize any articles that come out about our district (especially useful for keeping track on how our athletes are performing!). Next, I chose “Disney College Program;” I was a member of this in 2015, and there are some neat networking opportunities that come with life after the internship, making it another term I want to keep up with. Finally, I chose “Willy Wonka Jr.,” as it is our musical this year, and I am constantly looking for inspiration from other schools to help me develop our show.

Mrs. Moore’s Blog

Recently, I found a lot of inspiration from Mrs. Moore’s Blog. Mrs. Moore is a fifth grade teacher who does a heck of a great job having her students submit entries for their parents, each other, and the whole world to see. She has used an 100 Word Challenge in the past (that I described in a previous post) that has a ton of potential for use in my music classroom.

F-Flat Books

Finally, I subscribed to F-Flat Books. F-Flat Books is an up-and-coming music company that focuses on giving teachers excellent resources for their classrooms and their personal lives. Recent blog postings have included avoiding burnout and the mental toll the pandemic has taken on our classrooms. Because of their utmost relevance to my current teaching life, they are a fantastic source to follow.

I’m excited to see where this RSS journey takes me!