For most of us school was about absorbing what the instructor was saying and being able to recall it for a quiz or a test. If you’re a quick learning, or have photographic memory it’s a great system. But if you take time to process things it can be a bit challenging. Let’s consider what it would be like if you had some say in the tools you used to practice your learning, or if you had some say in your learning career and the direction you wanted it to go.
What if in K-12 you had been set on a course to learn how to find your strengths and weaknesses, pinpoint what you were passionate about, incorporate your strengths, weaknesses, and passions into projects you were doing in conjunction with what you were learning about? Then, what if you were encouraged to think critically and collaborate with others, either locally or using technology? And finally what if all this included figuring out how to find the people who had the answers you were looking for, no matter where they were on the planet? And what if your instructor was the mentor who helped you accomplish all this?
Seems far-fetched? Actually it’s not, the pieces have been gathering for a number of years, and slowly they are being put into place. It’s no surprise that we learn and retain better when we are interested, passionate, and engaged. It is rather surprising that although we’ve known this for quite some time we’ve had the same teaching system in place for generations. Options for change were few, but with the dawn of Web 2.0 where discussions, collaborations, and sharing information across the world is now a reality new opportunities are realistically available. We just need to be open to and encourage the change. I had two very different children with two very different learning styles and if there had been a way to tap into their passions to engage them getting homework done would have been a much different game!
If you have younger children would this be something you would hope they get to be part of? Did you know you can help make it happen just by knowing about it, talking about it, expecting change, and supporting the change? All change done right takes time and evaluation, but I encourage you to educate yourself, collect your thoughts, then support change.
I find it interesting how the mind works, especially related to learning. We are all so different in so many ways and learning is no exception!. While preparing to write a review of a project for a class recently I was reading about learning and encoding new material into memory I came across the fact that we automatically store things in multiple categories. As Julie Dirksen explains it in her book Design for How People Learn, you can think of memory as categorizing things onto shelves you create over time through learning and experiences. The more “shelves” you have that you can use to store a word, new idea, or other learned concept on, the more likely you are to retain it. The human brain creates patterns and the more patterns you have to access the information, the more likely you are to be able to recall it when you need it!
As a music teacher my mind immediately went back to a teacher who taught me a learning concept that I’ve used regularly with my own students when helping them learn to practice. She would remind her students that looking at your music from multiple angles created different learning paths in the brain and the more paths you had, the better you knew your music, and the less likely you were to forget it or stumble under stress. First we would learn to read the music, hands apart, then put the hands together. After that we practiced by starting the piece wherever she would point on the music, then we memorized the piece, and finally we would work on playing it with our eyes closed. Once she mentioned this to me I always wondered how or why that would work, but it sure did seem to work.
When I look at the concept of shelves I can see how her method of learning music allows students to place the learned piece on different shelves. There are actually a few more they can place them on including genre, key of the piece, era, and so on. And, I can certainly say that the better I knew a piece and thought of it in different ways, the less likely I was to make a mistake or forget what I was playing. Well, it worked for me unless someone else was in the room at least. Stage fright has haunted me for a very long time and it seems that no matter how well I know a piece of music if there’s someone else in the room all the rules go out the window, but that’s a story for another time!
I wish the fly that was buzzing around my house would fly away as quickly as time flies, but alas I fear not.
It seems like just yesterday I was still looking forward to their visit and quick as it came the time is gone. Just a few hours ago I watched them pack up the van and back down the driveway. Of course that was after an unanticipated trip to the doctor to get the meds they needed to nurse one back to health. So, the band is back on the road, all six of them, four now married, hauling their trailer down the road and walking their path through the young stages of adulthood. It’s amazing how far they have come, it seems only yesterday they were young. Now grown and facing the challenges of the world they travel cross country, back on tour, living their dreams, yet trust me life on the road is not all it seems.
Previous tours have seen some crazy stories from broken axels to a case of mistaken identity when the police pulled them all out of their van at gunpoint. But they handle it with grace and style, calmly and with determination. I almost hate to wonder what this tour will bring, but no matter what might lie in their path it’s an adventure. So as we hope the album with the Sony records affiliate takes off, they meet the right people, and their years of work pay off, no matter what, we know that they have learned far more from their few years on the road than they would have had they not taken the road less traveled.
Tribes, a concept that stems from people gathering with groups of people that share their interests, people that they are drawn to, their tribe. I never thought of myself as being part of a tribe… However I started to list who my tribes might be: my family, the Jule Vera gang, people who knit, people who scrapbook, people who like to do things outdoors, people who like to travel, people who love to learn, people who are interested in online education, people who love music, people who teach music. And I bet I could list more if I thought on it a bit!
Tribes are an interesting concept, one I think we likely take for granted without actually putting a name to it in most cases. I think you can latch onto the concept if you ponder on it a minute. There’s the obvious ones like your family, but I get a bit stuck on finding and interacting on my “might be” tribes, there’s hardly enough time in the day as it is. I think we tend to pick who/what might be most important from both a professional and personal standpoint and they become our focus, intended or not.
Professional tribes in my world would center around education; eLearning, online education, and music. With the advent of the Web 2.0 the thought of sharing information via the concept of building a personal learning network to share information and concepts with people you would likely never meet otherwise has great potential and power. The ability to tap into teaching ideas for specific concepts, especially complex ones, is a powerful tool! With my PLN, a work in progress, I hope to see discussions and helpful hints with regard to teaching music theory shared by the “private music theory teacher’s tribe”. I look forward to seeing ideas and thoughts from others, but in all honesty it’s still a challenge to think of people I connect with as tribes, and the project of connecting with them to entice the interaction still looms in the future!
After spending hours writing my first three online theory courses as a way to continue to teach as I moved across the country I was exhausted and I hoped the students would get as much out of the new courses as I did creating them. However although grades remained high for those in the classes what I learned over the course of the next few years, as I navigated online teaching/learning with the students, was that Mom and Dad still had to do a fare amount of prodding to get the kids to go do their theory lessons and homework. They didn’t have to drop them off at class anymore, but they did have to follow up regularly to get them to go do their coursework. I couldn’t help but think there must be a better way. My pie in the sky plan would have been a serious game that incorporated theory concepts, similar to the typing game my kids played when they were young. The boys had a blast, they would go back to it without prompting, ask to go play it. Couldn’t theory be the same? Well not on my shoestring budget it couldn’t.
If you know anything about music theory you know it can be about as exciting as watching paint dry, especially for middle and high school students and that’s where my learners fall. So I’m off on a project of learning and revising to increase engagement in hopes of someday getting to that magic place where the learners are engaging voluntarily and enjoying the new concepts they are learning as they prepare for their exams.
I found it interesting that in Grab Learner Attention with Your Course Content some of the things Laura Lynch tied effective engagement to were storytelling, problems and controversy, use of creative visuals, and asking questions. Someday I hope to incorporate these concepts in my project to turn my music theory courses into a larger story with challenges along the way. After all, my target market is middle-high school learners and that’s a natural place for many of them to be. The first step is adding some gamification and videos, then I’ll take it from there. Someday, just someday, I hope to make to what I saw years ago as a pie in the sky project, a reality. A truly engaging quest with learning music theory concepts not only as a means to the end of a good grade on the final exam, but also as a welcome challenge to solve the riddle, complete the challenge, or overcome the controversy, through the story that drives the learner into a world where they can learn theory concepts in an engaging way!
The concept that social media could be helpful in a learning environment seemed to be a bit of an oxymoron when I first heard about it. After al I grew up in the era where being social at school was frowned upon, unless it was outside of class!
My introduction to social media was following my kids on Facebook and My Space about ten years ago, and considering some of the things people put out there it was hard for me to see Social Media as a learning environment. So when I began a master’s program where discussions on use of social media for learning were introduced I thought, this should be interesting…
The interesting twist here was that it turns out social media can be a very effective way to share tips, tricks, tools, and techniques! It can be a way for asking questions and getting quick answers from others when you are new to a field or concept. It’s a way for learners and educators to express their perspectives and receive feedback from others. It’s also a place for someone who has been in the field for a very long time to learn new tricks. And the best part is, you can be the “stealth stealer” of information, or be very vested and involved. And I think it’s quite likely that even the “stealth stealers” of ideas and information will be come vested and involved the more they get their feet wet.
In Getting Social to Engage Learners Laurie Goslee notes that we really are social learners, and social media is a way to engage the learner and give them some control over their learning. Think back to the days of the caveman where learning was all tribe based via stories told in face-to-face communication, you can’t get much more social than that. Now social media may not be face to face but it is communication between people, and it not only has the ability to stretch outside of your realm but it’s also a quick avenue to becoming super connected to bring thoughts, answers, and new ideas into your space, thereby expanding your horizons with very little effort. Another really nifty thing is that it in addition to changing the learning from passive to active, which is more easily and likely to be retained, it engages the learner and gives them more control over their learning. That ties into personalized learning where learners are connecting with things that resonate with them, and that’s a win since it opens the door for deeper learning.
So I have to admit it, although I never thought I’d ever consider it, Social Media can contribute a great deal to the learning environment. And I am looking forward to testing out the waters with my theory students in the fall by coming up with some social media learning exercises to increase engagement and see just what we can accomplish by using this new tool!
Understanding the art of how music is written is a daunting task for most, the challenge of music theory studies with little guidance is nothing less than mayhem at its best.
During my studies with Wendelken Studio of the Arts I reached a level that required I sit for an intermediate and an advanced level music theory exam. After a painful experience as an adult taking a couple of the ten-week music theory courses to prepare for these co-requisite exams with the Royal Conservatory of Music my heart went out to the middle school and high school students who were in the classes with me. I spoke to the owner of the studio and offered to take on the challenge of teaching the classes.
For those that are not familiar with music theory I would equate it to learning to read/write and understand the grammar of a language. As children we first learn to speak, to participate actively by practice, and trial and error, while communicating with our parents. Later as we begin school we learn to read, write, and understand the grammar that supports the language we speak. Music is a language of its own, learning the notes is one thing, understanding how it is written is music theory. For those that understand the language of music the following bumper sticker makes perfect sense!
Step one was reviewing tests from previous years, reorganizing the curriculum, then preparing materials to teach the classes. I spent the summer invested in my task in preparation to teach the classes in the fall to prepare the students for the exam in December. The challenge of walking this road was captivating, despite working full time and three high school boys of my own at home at the time! Based on the short-turn around time we opted to use the current workbook to assign homework.
Walking through that first year of preparing the courses, then teaching in a classroom was quite an experience, each year thereafter was significantly easier. Test scores rose an average of 10% the first year and the students maintained that average, or better, from that point on so we considered the project a success. The pace charts below provide an outline of the syllabus for each of the classes.
In 2014 I moved to Colorado and brought the courses on line offering both a self-paced and an online course. The Royal Conservatory recently revamped their test structure so the mayhem continues as I rework the curriculum and add interactive elements to the self-paced modules as I prepare for the fall of 2018. Stay tuned for updates on the online course and the current revisions underway.
Is technology rewiring our brains? Or are we simply adapting and adjusting to new technology. Some believe it takes a long period of time and research before we can classify something as rewiring the brain, others would say the use of technology is, without a doubt, rewiring our brains. With increased access to information, the opportunity for immediate feedback from others around us, and our expectation of instant results when using technology, it would almost seem that use of technology has rewired the brain to shorten our attention spans. Or does it just boil down to our having adapted to using technology, becoming accustomed to the almost instant results it provides, and this has heightened impatience rather than rewiring our brains?
Is the key the definition of rewiring? I agree that it seems like we are thinking differently, and more visually, as technology becomes a bigger part of our lives. But doesn’t just about everything we do rewire our brains in some way? For years I have taught my music students that your brain processes the same piece of music differently when you are reading the music vs. when you have it memorized, and again differently when you know it well enough to play it with your eyes closed, which is where you really want to be before performing or playing for an exam! As far as a major rewiring of how we think based on use of technology, I’m not so sure.
My hunt for some additional information led me to a number of fact vs myth discussions. As an example Dr. Michelle D. Miller notes that cognitive scientists think in terms of hundreds of years rather than ten to twenty years to confirm a trend like this. In her book Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology, she points out that technology now allows them to see the new pathways forming in the brain as we learn certain things, like learning to read. I’m not convinced that we have had enough time or evidence yet to point to technology as rewiring the brain.
I am more inclined to agree with the notion that our use of technology is an adaptation to something that makes our lives easier. I certainly acknowledge that we approach obtaining information differently based on available technology, and it would sure seem that this is causing attention spans to be shorter. Another avenue for instant gratification comes from the convenience of being able to use the web to research information as needed, no more marching to the library, checking out card catalogs and looking for books that they may, or may not have. A simple web search does the trick. However I don’t know that I would consider that rewiring of the brain. Maybe we just need to focus a bit more on practicing patience itself. Looking back at other advances that made our lives easier or provided access to information in a more timely fashion gives us a bit more insight into rewiring vs. adapting to change.
Dr. Miller notes that that popular media has planted the seed that technology is having an effect on our minds and brains. I found it interesting that she referenced a similar technological advancement decades ago when the same thoughts were voiced, it was thought that this technology would re-engineer interaction and cognitive abilities. The technology was the introduction of the radio. I think that there’s more research to be done here before we decide that technology is rewiring our brains, at this point I’m just not sold on the concept, I think it’s too soon to tell.
Sounds a bit like a disaster waiting to happen to me, but I lived it and it was the best thing that ever happened to our family!
Recently I was introduced to a concept I had not heard before, disruptive innovation. Well I hadn’t heard of it but it turns out I’d lived through it! As two words on a page I could imagine the direction they would be heading with the article but I had no idea how close to home this concept would hit. I began thinking about education, and more specifically online education, as I read Education Is Ripe for Disruption by Eric Sheninger. And as I read I reflected on a situation that rocked my world about ten years ago, and the fact that it was that experience that was likely the beginning of events that have led me down a path to pursue my master’s degree in an online program! Who would have thought this would be possible a generation ago?
I was introduced to online education about a decade ago and as intriguing as it was, quite frankly it was also terrifying. I don’t know if it was more terrifying because of the situation around which we stumbled into studying online or because it was my son, who was in the latter part of his high school career at the time, that I was sending down this unfamiliar path as a last ditch resort to ensure he completed High School. But a we needed a plan and by combining Florida’s online virtual school, classes and the local community college, and a two year technical certificate course in the culinary arts at a local trade school, we had effectively put together a blended, personalized, online plan for his education. Did I really say that?
It sounds very strange to me even now as I reflect on the position I found myself in the day he came home, very agitated and proceeded to explain that another high school student had pulled a gun on him as he was leaving campus. There were witnesses and no doubt it had happened, yet since the officer assigned to the school hadn’t seen the incident the school couldn’t do anything about it. How could I be surprised or refute him when he announced he wasn’t going back, EVER! The school’s best answer was see you Monday, mine was I think not. I started searching for options. I knew of the dual enrollment with the local community college and thankfully Kyle did well in school and could pick up some classes there. For his electives he opted to enroll in the culinary arts program at a technical school nearby and for the rest of the required courses….?! I learned through one of his gymnastics coaches that Florida had an online program for high school students called the Florida Virtual School. Thankfully that would round out our program so he could finish the requirements for his diploma.
I’m still not sure why all the legwork seemed to fall on us, I suppose the school figured he would just come back, business as usual. We weren’t of the same mind so it was a stressful few days figuring out what to do. And of course now he would need a car to get from one place to another, that wasn’t in the budget either. But what a relief to have a plan, and at the same time what a nightmare. Who had ever heard of virtual school? Would he learn what he needed to? Would he even do the work when I left for work and his brother was at school all day? Would a college accept these online credits? Was this going to be a constant battle to get him to stay engaged for two years? Talk about forced disruptive innovation.
Thankfully I was pleasantly surprised, in fact I’d venture to say it turned out to be one of the best things we ever stumbled into. Oh we had our days and our battles but it didn’t take long to see that he was learning far more than his classmates and was much more engaged than they were. It was then that it dawned on me that it may be a long while off, but I could see this online learning thing as the wave of the future. Well here we are about ten years later and an online degree is no longer unheard of but readily accepted with more academic institutions stepping into online coursework. There are commercials on TV for online virtual schools, employers are calling for tangible and soft skills in those who are graduating. Somehow we landed ahead of the curve. I’m just glad we landed – on our feet!
I was seriously starting to have reference nightmares! I was enjoying everything I was reading and being exposed to, but how was I ever going to find it again when I needed it? Let’s face it I’m an 80’s kid, books, highlighters, sticky notes, and flags, that what I knew.
However the masters degree in Information Learning Technology through the University of Colorado Denver is an online program which is not only a perfect match for me as a working professional, and a perfect match with regard to subject matter, but it also presents a good deal of the material using online references and collaboration. It didn’t take long to realize that since a majority of the material presented is accessed online I would need a way to track what I’d read, highlight and sticky note the content, and find an easy way to locate the material again as I was working through the program or just wanted to read it again! I thought it shouldn’t be too difficult to find my chosen tool with the way technology has advanced. However with the speed the information was coming into my mental library I needed it fast! I thought I was in for a short project, it was a bit more involved than I thought.
I started looking for my new reference manager. I knew a few of the things I was looking for including that ability to manage the numerous articles, videos, and .pdf’s in the ways I mentioned previously. I was not prepared for subscription fees for tools I’d never used, I had no idea if they were what I wanted, nor was I prepared for Add In’s and downloads that weren’t working. I admit I was getting a bit frustrated with payments, download issues, confusing interfaces, etc. So I derailed myself and went to my happy place, to play with some creative things, but finally I had to face my mission again and dive back in.
So far I’d tried RefWorks and Endnote, now I figured I’d head out to the internet and see what else I could find. I settled on giving Diigo a shot. It’s pronounced dee’go, and how could something that stands for Digest of Internet Information Groups & Other stuff not be just the ticket. I kind of wish they had added the “s” on the end of the name, the stuff part was really what caught my attention. I wasn’t sure what it was referring to but it got me to bite.
Working with this technology is a new concept for me but so far, so good! I could get it working to give it a test try for free, that was the biggest plus yet! And I could save websites, video’s and .pdf’s. I could highlight and make sticky notes if I liked, and I could even tag important concepts to make finding the articles easy to find later. The hardest part about tags is deciding on the words you want to use, then it suggests them for you later which is a real time saver once you’ve built your library! One bummer is that you get a limited amount of space to store .pdf’s, I ran out after a couple of documents. But it gave me enough to play with and get comfortable with the tool. I’m not sure if it’ll be the tool I ultimately settle on but I’m happy so far.
I still have to check out some other tools before I settle on anything and I’d love to hear suggestions if anyone else has found one they really like! Until I find my match, I’m off for more hunting, and playing. I really do need to make a decision soon, the number of documents I’ll have to go back and get into my archives will soon be out of control!
So I’m off to check out Zotero and Mendeley for now while I wait for you to send other suggestions. Happy Exploring!
