Week 6

This week, there was a ton of useful information in our reading.  It focused a lot of how students learn and how we are able to support that as educators, as well as discussed the differences between copyright, public domain, and creative commons.

According to the reading, “Driscoll (2002) describes learning as contextual, active, social, and reflective.  Collectively these ideas are often referred to as constructivism, a word stemming from the belief that learning is a process of constructing knowledge.” (Bauer, p. 147).  Contextual learning is simply the concept that students learn new material via the context in which it is presented.  This activates their prior knowledge, where they are able to connect the new information to the old information they already know.  For many students learning is also active.  Thankfully, with music, our classes are generally very activity oriented already.  It’s a proven fact that people learn by doing and our role, as an educator, is to facilitate this.  Another aspect of a student’s learning is the social interactions.  Through interactions with others, students can move to a higher level of understanding.  The final aspect of Driscoll’s learning is reflection.  Through reflection, students are able to be more independent in terms of their learning.  Reflection assists in helping them set goals and monitor their progress towards those goals.

Another topic discussed this week was Project Based Learning (PBL). I believe that PBL is an integral part of music classrooms, especially in general music.  I try to incorporate at least one project per year in my 3-5 classes.  Generally, with these projects I also try to use music that is popular at the time, or something I am certain they would be interested in.  In the past, I have done a STOMP Project with my 5^th graders, where we work in groups and use recyclable materials or trash to create a composition.  I have also done radio stories, recorder composition projects, and a cup song project to a pop song of their choice.  Some of these projects took two weeks of class; some took a little over a month.  I have found that these kinds of projects are always a big hit with my students.  They enjoy being able to be social and creating something they can connect with.

In my opinion, the most important thing we learned about this week in the reading was the concept of Backwards Design.  This is how I have always been taught to plan my lessons and it is so useful.  On my discussion post this week, someone replied with the comment “You wouldn’t plan a vacation without knowing the destination”.   The same is so true for teaching.  Why would we plan a lesson if we do not know what we want the students to learn?  According to the reading, backwards design has three stages:

“ 1. Identifying desired student learning results (learning outcomes);

2. selecting the evidence that will be needed to determine whether the students have          learned (means of assessment); and

3. planning learning experiences (activities and instructional procedures)” (Bauer, p152)

I think the biggest factor in being able to successfully design and implement a lesson for students using this method is by simply knowing our students.  If we know them and how they learn, we are better able to establish learning outcomes for them.  It will also make it easier to decide what sort of activities will best help them achieve this goal.

One final concept I found to be important this week was copyright, public domain, and creative commons.  I had already known about copyright and public domain.  Creative commons, however, was a totally new concept that I couldn’t believe I had never heard of before now.  In my undergraduate courses they very briefly taught us about copyright. And by very briefly, I mean, they gave us a list of “Do not do these”, then we never saw or heard about it again until it was on the PLT teaching exam.  Copyright was always just this scary entity where we all knew if we messed up, we could get in a lot of trouble.  I did know about Public Domain to the extent that I knew that is where things ended up after a certain number of years past the copyright date.  More recently, in the news, there was the story about the song “Happy Birthday” being entered into Public Domain.  I always just considered this the safe zone.  After learning about Creative Commons this week, my perspective on copyright has changed.  It is a big relief to know that there are people out there who understand that even though something they created might work perfectly for them, that may not be the case for others.  No student learns the same, and as an educator, if we are able to find work that can be altered or changed to fit our needs, it opens up so many doors to facilitate the success of our students.  Granted, not every work under Creative Commons can be altered depending on which of the six licenses is being used, but there are still many more options available.

My goal over the last couple weeks of this class is to incorporate Creative Commons and Public Domain into my WebQuest project.  Last week, I reviewed a music software website called “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” which is a game about the instruments of the orchestra based on Benjamin Britten’s composition by the same name.  Following suit with learning about instruments, I have decided to make my WebQuest about instruments and their families.  I am hoping this project will lead to me becoming more familiar with Creative Commons and the Public Domain so that I may incorporate more resources from these sources into my lessons at school.