Final Blog Post? Looking back, Looking Ahead

Final blog post?  I hope not...I really enjoy having a blog!  I have always liked keeping a journal, and keeping a blog is an online way to talk through thoughts and processes.  I think I would like to keep my blog and make it specific to my thoughts and experiences with Orff-Schulwerk teaching in the middle school.  Who knows?  Maybe someone would even read it and find it useful.

Looking to the end of EDU776, I feel infinitely better prepared to teach students using technology.  In fact, just recently, I was part of the pilot team representing the special area teachers for Schoology, a new learning management system for Roosevelt School.  As I sat through the day-long training, we were asked about our familiarity with terms like embedding and linking.  We were shown sites like YouTube, Quizlet, Popplet, and Prezi, and how to use all of these within the context of Schoology.  There was a time not long ago that I might have felt so overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of new information that I would have just shut down, or decided that as a music teacher, there wasn't much application for it.

Instead, I got excited as we created a trial group.  We all figured out how to embed a YouTube into a message and I embedded my Thinglink just for the heck of it.  I felt great!  Now that I have given myself permission to "mess around" with different mediums (such as Weebly, or Blogger) it just doesn't seem so mysterious.  Also, I have learned that there is usually more than one way to arrive at your desired destination.  A few years ago, I was more inclined toward rigid thinking, i.e. I'm just going to follow the directions on this piece of paper, and that's it!  If it didn't work, I would write off the whole idea.  But, after this class, trying out different avenues doesn't seem so scary.  I don't have to know how to use a site to just give it a try.

As far as my teaching curriculum goes, I am much more comfortable with the idea of integrating certain technologies into the classroom than I was previously.  I will continue to work with SMART Notebook, in order to further improve my lessons and make them more interactive.  For example, during this class, I realized, by "messing around' that there is a way to embed my favorite YouTubes right into SMART Notebook.  The first time I did it, I was working in the auditorium and I wanted to jump up and down and shout, but no one even knew what I had just learned!  I am excited about using Schoology, and about the possibilities that using QR Codes and Audioboom have to offer for parent communication.

Brenda Latzke and I set up a website on Weebly today for our WebQuest project, Blues-School.  We set up the basic structure of the site on about a half hour.  Here is our Introduction Page:

I could never have imagined doing that so easily a few months ago.  I would say I have grown from every assignment and project we have done throughout the course, and I'm actually sorry it's going to be over.  It felt like the professional development I have been missing for any number of years.

I have done lots of professional development in music teaching, to the point that it starts to feel a little redundant.  But taking this class with a variety of teachers in other disciplines through the lens of using technology in our classrooms was invaluable to me.  Maybe we can have a Level II Ed Tech course, just the way we do in Orff-Schulwerk teaching.  Until that time, I plan on continuing to improve and update my website, as well as my blog.

Tech Tac Toe #2 Using Thinglink

The second tech tool I chose to learn more about was Thinglink, where a person can use an image and attach links to it where ever they like.  For example, if you had a map and you wanted to show where all your favorite restaurants are on the map, you could make a Thinglink in order to do this.

I have always liked teaching the orchestral story and music of Peter and the Wolf, by Sergei Prokofiev.  So, I decided to create a Thinglink that listed each of the characters in the story next to a picture of their instrument.  I then added a link to each one so that a student could hear that particular character's musical theme when they clicked on the circle next to the text.

Importing the image and adding the links to each character was simple enough, but then I could not get the program to stop asking me to upgrade, especially when I went to fullscreen.  The "PLEASE UPGRADE" request was so large that it covered my Thinglink and made it unusable.  After much struggling, I emailed Thinglink:



They responded within a day and told me that indeed to go fullscreen, you have to upgrade.  So, I remade my background visual much bigger using SMART Notebook.  Then, by taking a screen shot of the larger, new and improved version, I was able to make a new Thinglink that was big enough not to have to be fullscreen to be used.  I then spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how to embed the Thinglink into my blog.  It was a YouTube video called Embedding Thinglink into Blogger that finally solved the problem for me!

I had the same problem embedding into my Weebly, and another YouTube video Embedding Thinglink into Weebly was what made the difference.  It turns out the size of the image relative to the size of your blog is really important.  Once I made the image size smaller, it embedded without difficulty.

 I really liked making this and feel that Thinklink is a great way to make a lesson more interactive and exciting for students.  Although I didn't feel the information provided on the site itself was adequate, their customer support was excellent for both problems I encountered.  It would be wonderful if District 90 purchased this for teachers to use throughout the school year so that we could get the fullscreen version.

Students themselves could also use Thinglink fairly easily to put together information on a musician, or piece of music.  However, since we don't have much class time, I would probably use this for an extra credit project rather than working with the whole group on it.