We are SO back this week and podding up like peas in a pod. Got our groups this week and it’s seeming like our pod is going to focus on something music-related for our group inquiry. For fairly obvious reasons, I am very excited about this. There are lots of music and music education tools out there and I’m excited to explore all the possibilities that we could get into.

We went over lots of learning theories and concepts today as well, such as multimedia principles that we can apply in the classroom as future teachers. One particular thing that really resonated with me was SAMR. I feel like I’ve just grown up and evolved around technology, so I don’t often stop to think about how much further technology has come and how it can be used in such transformative ways to how we used to do things. I was thinking about this in the context of score-writing; often first-year composition students are made to write out their scores by hand here. Writing scores by hand on manuscript paper used to be the norm for composers, but now we have so many different notation softwares. I suppose a substitution would just be using the software instead of writing it out. Augmentation would be using the software to play back your music and hear it – you no longer need to go to a piano or another instrument to hear what it sounds like. Modification would be using different midi sounds to inform one how particular timbres might sound together (although it might not always be the most accurate, but it IS getting better). And finally, redefinition would be now using this software to not just compose, but to share, edit, and make suggestions on ideas/compositions – something that can be done through apps like MuseScore (if you’re interested in using it, it is open-source!! You can try it out at https://musescore.org/en) . I’m looking forward to seeing how I can apply this to other technologies in my future classrooms to see how I can make the most of them!

Just wanted to leave off with one thing that Matt said earlier last week that has stuck with me, both as a joke but also kind of not right now:

“The We Are SO back within me burns so much brighter than the It’s So Over all around me.” All fax, no cap, frfr.