11 Tools - Tools Reflection

1. What are your favorite tools you now have in your personal technology toolbox?
Love Photostory and all the image programs! I can easily see giving my students a composer or instrument and having them create a wonderful project (other than Powerpoint) to describe it to the class. Fun class project that might involve wikis (once I have grasped that concept). I also like the Jing tool. Can't wait to explore that one too to help in my communication with other teachers in the district.

2. How have you transfomed your thinking about the learning that will take place in your classroom? 11 Tools has got me motivated to bring more technology into the classroom and to hand it over to the kids. When technology first reached our classroom, it was something that the teacher did only to teach their lesson. Now, we need to transform our thinking that technology is something that can make our teaching and their learning easier and efficient.

3. Were there any unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
I am still not a fan of blogging. When I did 23 Tools, it was a struggle. Still is something I'm not comfortable doing. I know how much I enjoyed 23 Tools so I was expecting to enjoy 11 Tools just as much...and I did!

11 Tools - #11

Was a little confused on what "digital citizenship" meant, but I think Cool Cat had the best explanation. I appreciated the fact that she included etiquette as a quality of digital citizenship. The lack of etiquette is already something I have seen at the elementary level as the kids discover Facebook and something I plan on continuing to emphasize. I would also like the students to fully grasp the understanding of what the internet is so they don't take everything by it's face value. I would like to teach my students how to research and authenticate the information on the internet by example in my teaching. I would also like them to be selective on their materials and not just take whatever pops up first. I would hope that I can model digital citizenship in my classroom better this year than I have in the past.

11 Tools - Tool #10

I am excited about the iPads that will be available for the MUSIC classroom - FINALLY we are seeing some new technology in our rooms!!! YEAH! I explored a drum making app as well as a metronome app. The drum app allowed you to choose percussion instruments and play them randomly. The metronome app showed you the numeric setting and provided an audible beat. I can easily see the kids trying to find the tempo or beat of a song and either playing along or figuring out its setting.

11 Tools - #9

I like Jing. I downloaded onto my home computer and can see many ways that it would be usable for home. As for my classroom, I can see using Jing when collaborating with another music teacher in the district or sharing written music quickly online.

I am familiar with Skype. Although I do not have the technology in my classroom (i.e, camera), I can see many uses such as linking with another classroom in the district who is practicing the same song so we can critique each other or perhaps, if able, link with another music classroom around the world and compare.

11 Tools - Tool # 8

(Tool #7 is still downloading after an hour and a half so I am moving on to 8)
"Sabre Dance" by Aram Khachaturian performed by Vanessa Mae (youtube.com)



"Hallelujah Chorus" by Handel performed by the "Monk Chorus" (some highschool..again youtube.com)


I use online videos ALL the time to show my students a real performance of a song, hear and see an instrument being played, see a performance, etc. These two videos were used when we did our listening unit at the end of the year. The students heard the piece first, then I provided them with a video either serious or entertaining for them to relate to the piece of music.

It is never ending to what you can find on the internet to support your lesson. I have a projector hooked up to my computer throughout the year (I am not fortunate to have an ActivBoard - attention School board!!!). Videos again support my foundation of teaching the whole learner.

11 Tools - #7

This is the Johnson Family trip to Destin last summer...



I could easily use photo story to create a music video of my choir's performance an in include pictures of our progression on learning the music. I would also use this as a way for students to illustrate their own feelings of a specific piece of music and then set it to the music as their own music video. This was one of my favorite tools! LOVE IT!

11 Tools - Tool #6

Wikis! Geez these drive me crazy! Have not completely grasped the concept probably because I haven't created one. Did visit the Kool Kat Teacher site and the 11 Tool Wikis on the SBISD site, but would probably need to just get hands on and develop one to see how it would work in my music classroom. I can imagine that it would be helpful in a group project where they were assigned a composer or instrument to investigate. Or perhaps if there was a way to download a piece of music onto a wiki site and have the kids evaluate a piece of music on their own time using the classroom computer. Hmm...more to come on that one.

11 Tools - Tool #4

I have alwasy hated having several copies of documents thrown around the server and never knowing which one was the most accurate. I LOVE LOVE the idea of Google docs and think it is essential in the upper grades. Unfortunately, don't see how much use I can get from it with my students since I do not have access to student computers, but I can definitely see how it can make my life better. As far as the Google Reader, I like the idea of condensing all my sites into one location. I tend to hop from page to page so it would save lots of time.

11 Tools - Tool #5

So I already new about del.icio.us so I decided to join Diingo. Pretty cool!!! Makes things SO much easier to go through and narrows down the options better than a simple google search. I added SFSKids which is an interactive website sponsored by the San Francisco Symphony. It has games and activities perfect for my elementary kids. I also checked out Songs for Teaching which is a good resource to provide classroom teachers with songs that can support their lessons. I always like to have a resource of songs available to support the core subjects. I used the tags "music education", "elementary music", "songs for elementary". This would be great when I am in the computer lab and I give the kids the link to my diingo account so they can have access to all the music information, games, and sites that they might even be able to use at home on their personal computer.

For some reason, this site is not allowing me to post a direct link using the "insert link" button so here are the addresses to both sites mentioned above:

www.sfskids.org/templates/home.asp?pageid=1
www.diigo.com/user/tbkmadre?domain=www.songsforteaching.com

11 Tools - #3

I love to use visuals in my classroom for all aspects of my teaching. I try to teach to the whole learner and for me as a child, I remember how seeing posters or pictures that supported the lesson helped me tremendously. These were easy to create and fun too!

11 Tools - Tool #2

1. What are your thoughts about building an online education community and participating in a PLN? Personally, I suck at keeping up with anything let alone a blog, but I am willing to give it a try. I like the idea of being able to bounce ideas off other colleagues as well as get some suggestions from the comfort of my laptop. Also, I have always sought out better ideas or innovative ways to teach things in my classroom and a PLN would be ideal to help in that situation.
2. What point stood out to you from the commenting advice? Keeping things "open" to encourage response and interaction.
3. What five blogs did you select for your comments?
Bacon's Bunch Blog Page, Beverly the Diva, places we will go, SarahQ, Songbird55

11 Tools - Tool #1

I had trouble remembering my login and password for my blog since being a mother of three young boys doesn't quite allow you much time to update a blog (but apparently, I have enough time to update my Facebook status, but that's another story). Looking forward to what 11 Tools can teach me.

Thing #23

Perhaps you may be wondering about the title...my mother had always told me that a lady does not leave the house without lipstick and earrings.

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
I absolutely loved Photo Story and can see how easy it would be to create a music video project for my kids. I think they could take their own pictures that would coincide with the lyrics in a song, then easily place them in the storyline, upload the song and Voila!!!

2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
I did not know how much organized and advanced certain areas of the internet were!!! I mean, I was stuck in the basic googling for information and jumping from one website to another to find information, but I really like the idea of organizing my websites for searches as well as having access from other computers. This course will greatly affect the way I organize my internet information

3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
Not really! I don't think that there was anything unexpected as my librarian had already filled me in on all the cool things that Library2Play would teach me. I will say that it has completely given me a creative drive to incorporate different technology into my classroom that I hadn't really thought of previously.

4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
Yikes!! I'm not very critical of the way this program was formatted. I enjoyed the flow and I truly enjoyed all the information and directions as well as the helpful "how to" videos you embedded into each Thing when necessary.


5. If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?
Without a doubt, YES!!! In fact, I am going to have to revisit this site over and over to increase and further my understanding and expertise on the things I learned. I want to become an expert on many of the "things"!!!


6. How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote 23 Things learning activities?
Magnetic!!! (I loved learning and didn't want to stop!)

Now go and comment on some of the other Players' blogs:
Well, first, I am going to go back to Thing #21 and figure out how in the world to show my video that I am so proud of!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thing #22

Did not find much use for Ning partly due to the fact that they had only one posting for Music Education and it was actually a Physical Education lesson plan. I visited the general teacher's website and discovered that there would be many benefits to using this site as a networking tool and a sharing place for regular ed teachers. Unfortunately, the only use I would be able to get would be from basic classroom management or general ideas for the classroom.

I am not close-minded to not visit again. I will wait for a while until more teachers have discovered this site.

Thing #21

This is my lovely Mother...


She passed away after a brief battle with cancer and is greatly missed. As you can see by the video and the title to my blog, she was quite the southern Louisiana bell. The song is my mother, myself, my sister and father singing for church.

I loved Photo Story!!! I can't wait to use it in my classroom as a student driven class project. I realized that I had to shorten my video because I had originally had 60+ pictures and Blogger was unable to upload the larger video. The video above is a shortened version. I hope you enjoy it.

Thing #20

I have always loved the variety of music videos on YouTube but the SBISD firewall does not allow us access to them. It's a shame especially when I want to show my class a performance of a particular piece of music. On the L2P website it does give directions on how to "get around" the YouTube block, but I am a little confused and will probably need more time to digest it all or perhaps sit down with someone who has done it before.

I know there are many wonderful music education videos, but I found this one that seemed clear...although a tad boring....

Thing #19

I immediately wento the MUSIC section and discovered a new free music site that I didn't even know existed. LastFM allows you to create your own library of tracks, artists, videos, and albums and listen to them completely free!! Of course, I did stumble across some restricted songs and albums that you have to download for a cost, but if you don't want to pay the cost, you can watch the video.

Although I do already use Pandora, Rhapsody, and a couple of other music free sites, I am glad to know there is another more popular one that won a Web2.0 award. I will have to check it out more when I have more time.

Thing #18

Google Docs is cool! I didn't even know this existed. Currently at home, our computer does not have Microsoft Office so I have encountered numerous problems with working on word documents. Also, I love the ide of now having several copies of a document around and not knowing which is the editted version. I can see many advantages to utilizing Google Docs.

I wasn't fond of downloading Open Office only because we have encountered a virus on our computer and so this was a con to me. I like Google Docs because there was no downloading necessary.

Thing #17

Thanks to B. Goode from SBISD for helping me understand the Rollyo with his creative video. I am a visual person and his video was very thorough and clear.

I like Rollyo because I have always been afraid of sending my elementary students to the internet to search a musician or song and having them find an inappropriate site. I can see how I would use this especially with a project on composers. I created a composer searchroll and can see how easy it would be to steer the kids in the right direction to find credible and accurate information.

Thing #16

Wikis! Finally!! I thought wiki was a little cartoonish type creature that ..well..I don't know what I thought it did, but boy was I wrong.

I like this!! I like it a lot!! Especially since I hate getting a group email and then some respond to everyone on the email list while others just respond to the sender. That creates more e-mails to clarify who knows what and what decisions have or have not been made. I hate those e-mails!!!

I can easily see how wikis will help my colleagues network better and collaborate more frequently. Up until this point, we relied on occasional meetings and e-mails sent out to the group. Having the group respond via a wiki will make things much more clearer and efficient. Me likey the wiki!