I found this week’s reading to be a nice refresher of the ways in which technology can be used on a regular basis to make functioning at work possible. There are certain technological uses that I have in place such as my classroom blog. However, this chapter has presented me with some ideas to add onto my blog. Mostly, I simply post pictures of events that my groups have attended or special lessons that I take pictures of and post on the blog. At the beginning of next year, I would like to develop a calendar on the blog to share with parents and possibly administrators to keep everyone updated on events going on throughout the school year. Also, the discussion of communities of practice (Bauer, 2014, p. 176) interested me. This would be a great idea for all of the music teachers in the school district where I teach to get involved in. As teachers, we always discuss how we do not have time to interact with each other outside of our four meetings throughout the school year. Creating a community of practice would give us a chance to stay in communication with each other on a regular basis and work together to gain professional development.
Bauer (2014, p. 185) mentions that one of the best ways for a person to develop his/her TPACK is to use it on a regular basis. I have found that I work the same way. I can listen to all of the tutorials and read all of the instructions on how to use a particular type of program, but the best way for me to learn how to use it, is to actually use it. This course has presented several new technologies that I am very excited to try to use. SmartMusic is a program that I am going to try and get my district to buy for my classes next year. Also, this week, we are learning about using the OneNote program. Just watching the tutorials has encouraged me to start using this in my classrooms. I would like to use this as a tool for my students to learn and find resources to aid in their learning. Also, OneNote seems like a very useful tool to help share information that needs to go out to students and to parents.
Reflecting back on this week’s reading, most of the content in this chapter is material that I am already aware of. A lot of the content, such as blogs, and online education, I can relate to because I try to use it as much as I can. In order to learn more about the music technology available to music teachers, I would like for our district to sponsor more professional development in this area. Besides simply doing it ourselves, having professional development would be the best way for us to implement these new technologies into our classrooms and to remain current on even newer technologies.
Bauer, W.I. (2014). Music learning today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.