Dan's MSTU5814 Blog

Remembering Dr. Russell P. Getz and Recent Thoughts on NAfME

noreply@blogger.com (BrownieD) — Mon, 09 May 2016 22:16:00 +0000

Thirty years ago, today, May 9th 1986, I lost one of my first great mentors in music education, Dr. Russell P. Getz. Dr. Getz had recently finished his 2 year tenure as MENC (now NAfME) president, and in the Spring of 1986 was on sabbatical researching the music of his beloved Ephrata Cloisters. Our time together was relatively brief, yet he was, and is, a profound influence. To teach music, to him, was a form of activism, and I recall one of his stories about a music educator who would say, "you fight for your program until your head is bloody (figuratively speaking), then you come out, clean up, and you go right back in and fight again."

Getz was a man of passion for music education, who spoke his mind, and did not suffer fools gladly. Before, during, and after his tenure as MENC president, he pushed for expanding curricula beyond performance; searching for ways to reach more students, to give them a greater say in the classroom, and to strengthen teacher education programs. Getz also sought ways to incorporate then budding music education technologies and the use of electronics. I vaguely recall some rather primitive theory exercises on an Apple IIe, yet we were caught up in his enthusiasm for being on the "cutting edge."

Finally, Getz believed that if you were going to be an activist on behalf of your students and music education in general, you needed to be an active member in local, state, and national organizations. We all joined MENC our first year and I've remained a member since.

"Active," though, is another story. I pay my dues, go to conferences from time to time, submit proposals to present, and send students to state festivals, but is this enough? Can I/should I do more? It is a strange coincidence that I find myself reflecting upon Dr. Getz at the same time our NAfME board is confronting allegations its executive director made comments about a lack of diversity in our leadership that, if true, were ill-informed and frankly, thoughtless. I hope our board will be open about sharing exactly what was said, and why he apparently left the meeting.

Keep in mind, we vote for our organizations' presidents: local, state, divisional, and national. Part of the diversity issue comes from a degree of membership apathy, no? I can't tell you when I last took the time to read a bio on who was running for national office. It's also been awhile since I cast a vote for NAfME president. NAfME is like a distant planet to those of us teaching on the public school assembly line, just trying to keep our programs afloat and vital. Many of us see and teach over 200 students per day, everyday. Like unions, we pay our dues and expect our leadership to lobby and represent us. Then we largely ignore them until we need them. As with any elected body, they tend to reflect the membership who vote. This is not an excuse, just the reality I see. Perhaps it is different elsewhere. That would be heartening.

Meanwhile, if we are keeping even one eye on the ball, it should be apparent, that the increasing diversity of our country is not reflected in the makeup of NAfME, and that this is a problem. I am angered by the alleged comments/actions of our executive director and by the lack of diversity on our board, but I am equally troubled by a membership that seems either surprised by this, or is largely unaware. Why do we, as in so many areas of public life, wait for the inevitable flash point before we react to the larger problem? I attended the NAfME conference in October and was horrified at the presentation by a keynote speaker, Allen Vizzutti. Then I looked around at the audience applauding him and understood. I spoke to this soon after the event on Facebook. For me, his talk was as much an affront to diversity as Butera's alleged comments, but went mostly unnoticed, despite my efforts to get the word out. If Vizzutti's talk was not vetted, it should have been, but the positive reception he received from so many fellow members is troublesome and a wake up call.

My mentor, Russell Getz, decried what he felt was too passive a membership and advocated for ways to encourage participation and advocacy at all levels. Apparently, we have a ways to go, but perhaps this is a call to action. We can look to the board for answers and ownership of the problem, but as members we should look to ourselves as well. Don't just join the organization, be the organization. Speak up, write letters, by all means get involved, run for office, especially encourage those you feel would bring a new voice to do the same, and most importantly, be informed and vote!

MY FINAL AND FINAL THOUGHTS FOR CLASS

noreply@blogger.com (BrownieD) — Mon, 04 May 2009 00:30:00 +0000

In writing this entry, I am both reflecting on the class and considering its implications for my practice. Contained within as well are what I consider ongoing projects which will continue long after posting for this class has ended.

When I signed up for Digital Media in the Classroom, I was struggling to get a class blog off the ground in the school where I teach. I felt it important to find out more about how blogging works, to understand better its influence in the lives of young people, and the potential obstacles/challenges for implementing a class blog in a public school setting. What follows are a few of my observations.

First, I came to understand there is more to blogging than simply writing out your thoughts and responding to those of others. There is a rich amount of information and support online for those who choose to seek it out, and it is (I feel) part of the blogger's responsibility to make these connections visible to others. Robin's site is a great example of this, as are some of those I have bookmarked on my own blog.

Second, I see how easy it is to set up and work with a blog. They seemed rather intimidating when just viewing them - I had little idea the templates were already in place and I had merely to "upload".

Third (and this is very important to my goal of creating a "Band Blog"), keeping up a blog is work. One has to keep it relevant, up-to-date, and in the public eye. One has to draw others to it. At the moment, I am one of the few at work to consider the use of a blog for my students. In that sense, the novelty is a draw. Students will come to me because there is no competition. What will happen when several of their teachers are keeping up blogs for their classes? How will I keep my blog relevant, so that it attracts the kind of traffic that makes it useful to the class? The challenge is devoting enough time to its upkeep without impacting other responsibilities. It may well be I will need to enlist the help of students. After all, it is their band, therefore their blog. Also, they are the true digital natives and what may take me some time or thought, they may take care of in much less time, freeing me to concentrate on my strengths.

Forth, there is continued skepticism as to the use and value of blogging in my school. We have invested in software to make class blogging possible. I was strongly in favor of this technology. Now that we have it (bundled within our new district website) there seems no rush to encourage its use or even acknowledge its existence. Our filtering system operates with a lack of trust in both students and teachers by blocking access to all blogs outside the school website. The degree to which this isolates our classrooms is a continued challenge we must overcome.

Each of these points have been informed by my work on this blog, readings for class, my own outside experiences such as the YouTube Symphony, and reading and responding to others' blogs. My experience as a blogger is just beginning. To consider my blog a final project is to consider a journey that is just beginning, and will long be in the process of becoming.

As my target audience is ultimately my students, I will now focus my energy on my students' Band Blog and Class Page. Consider this my ongoing project if you will. It is very much in its formative stage, as students are only now receiving their log in passwords and I only just have my head around blogging, rss feeds, podcasting, vlogging, and the like. I do hope to have it running, with their input and ideas, by the end of this year and ready to go from day one in September.

For me, web 2.0 is a gateway to a community of ideas, online interaction and conversation, and community-built knowledge bases. I imagine it is at least that to the digital natives I teach. How to properly bring that vast resource into the classroom as a tool to enhance learning, to open up spaces for dialogue, to increase the capacity for a community like band define itself, is a goal I will continue to pursue. Hopefully, I can aid those in my academic community to see it not as a threat to their way of teaching, or an impediment to student attention and learning, but as I have described it: a means to support community-based learning, and of sharing and building knowledge together. That would be a great way to define "Band".

MY FIRST VIDEO!

noreply@blogger.com (BrownieD) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 17:56:00 +0000

This is my first attempt at posting video - it offers a very brief reflection on what I have learned in this class.

YouTube Symphony Observations

noreply@blogger.com (BrownieD) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:14:00 +0000

Sorry I didn't get this up sooner, but I did survive the YouTube Symphony experience and live to tell about it. Once again, good old Carnegie Hall succeeds in making Lincoln Center look old and stodgy.

First off, one had to notice the variety of attendees to this concert. Not your typical Carnegie Hall crowd. Second, Carnegie was very relaxed about cameras (without flash) and video cameras. As can be evidenced by a search on YouTube, a number of people posted highlights of their experience. Knowing that in advance, I would have brought my Flip Video Recorder. Check out this example: YouTube Symphony Highlights

The performance itself ran the risk of being gimmicky, and why not? It was something that in concept was new and untested. Overall, the orchestra played very well, and if the interaction with technology during the performance was rather basic, (video interludes, some lighting effects, a beautiful integration of a Bach solo cello work with YouTube video accompaniment called Women in Art, and one work by Mason Bates, which I loved, that incorporated electronics with the orchestra, Warehouse Medicine), it was the thought behind the experience. To think that interactions on the web could result in bringing an orchestra together for three rehearsal days and one concert is quite impressive. A number of the members had other day jobs or otherwise pursued music as an avocation. One physicist from Columbia could be found in the bass section. As he put it, it was great for YouTube to choose classical music rather than the "YouTube Basketball Team". Just consider the implications for bringing musicians together to perform who have similar interests.

YouTube posted the entire concert in two sections on their site under YouTube Symphony. I do wish they would break the concert down into smaller portions and post them with an "HQ" option. Hopefully, that is underway.

I heard a report in the Fall on NPR that takes things some steps further: online collaboration in composition. Musicians get together online and work, often at great distances, together on a composition. Other variations on this theme include musicians sending work to one another and collaborating on the development and editing process, often resulting in a finished work quite different than anyone anticipated. See NPR's Music and Technology Series for a wealth of ideas. You could be lost there for days.

For a more detailed examination of the Carnegie Hall performance, see my colleague and friend, James Frankel's blog - he took the whole family. YouTube Symphony Review

Thanks to Robin for posting a link to the New York Times Review.

Looking forward to seeing everyone on Saturday!

YOUTUBE SYMPHONY

noreply@blogger.com (BrownieD) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 03:53:00 +0000

On Wednesday, April 15th, at Carnegie Hall, the YouTube Symphony will make its performance debut. I find this venture fascinating because the web has the potential to bring musicians together in non-traditional ways. Of course not every group can book Carnegie Hall, but what is to keep someone from saying, "I love 20th century chamber music, if you do as well and live in the NYC area, post your CV, let me know what you'd like to play, and perhaps we can put a group together and look for a performance venue". I know this sounds rather "pie in the sky" without Michael Tilson Thomas, Carnegie Hall, and YouTube to back it up, but it does open the door to new ways of gathering like-minded musicians together to make music!

Facebook fatigue

noreply@blogger.com (BrownieD) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 03:24:00 +0000

Just got in from 6 days in Maryland at my folks with limited internet use. Will keep this brief as I have "little ones" to greet at 8am.

Found this article while I was away on people with "social networking fatigue".

What I took from the article is the following -

Social networking isn't going anywhere, BUT some people are finding they do need a break from Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, and the like.

I recall a college friend and I having a spirited debate about 13 years ago concerning the internet and its potential for revolutionizing communication. At that time he was, and still is, working in information technology. He was convinced that once technology worked out the kinks, an online conversation would be just as meaningful as a face-to-face conversation. I argued, much like the managing director at the end of the article, that there is something unique and special in live human contact. Body language, expression, and tone can only truly be experienced face-to-face. Technology can come close and may certainly help in bringing people together, but humans still appear to crave interacting "in person".

Is it possible some young people are discovering this as well, once the rush of gathering 600 "friends" is over? I don't think they/we can do without web 2.0, but I do believe they will continue to redefine its role in their/our lives.

As a teacher who looks to incorporate this into teaching, I want to make use of this technology, because I think it opens up untapped paths of communication, yet I don't want to contribute to fatigue. In other words, I don't want students to see a band blog "as yet another thing I have to check everyday". Admittedly, I am in a minority among my teaching peers as most don't use blogs, but imagine if every class set up a blog, would students grow tired of checking them all AND keeping up with their Facebook page, etc? Some of my students have 9 classes! What would make my blog more worthwhile to contribute to than another?

I'm just thinking out loud after many traffic-laden hours in the car and am certainly open to feedback. Thanks!!

I am away!

noreply@blogger.com (BrownieD) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:19:00 +0000

I am on Spring/Passover/Easter break, and weather permitting, I am flying south today and will be away until Sunday. Will try to check posts/email, but will not be available for the April 7th online meeting. Hopefully, I have posted plenty of food for thought and will be sure to check out the Adobe Connect session if it is posted. Thanks!

Reflecting on articles from March 29th

noreply@blogger.com (BrownieD) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:02:00 +0000

Celebrity Twitter Ecosystem
An interesting diversion from a 1971 dissertation I am reading for research. Funny to see who is following who, but hard to take what they say with any degree of seriousness. When has Martha Stewart ever said anything without a high degree of self-awareness? Airing our thoughts with an added degree of “public permanence” produces a need I think, conscious or not, to plan what we say. I wonder how many “tweets” are totally spontaneous, as they might be if we were simply expressing them out loud.

Wikipedia: Exploring Fact City
First, I am conflicted about small town vs. city life and frankly, wouldn’t want to be without either. Occasionally, Noam Cohen seems to advocate the latter as a model for life as well as a metaphor for Wikipedia.

I find Wikipedia to be a great resource. What I particularly like is the way it can take one in so many different directions. For example, I looked up New York-based composer Nico Muhly and, depending on why I was looking at Nico Muhly, could move onto the film “The Reader”, Bjork, The Juilliard School, playwright Craig Lucas, the rock band “Grizzly Bear”, Philip Glass, Vermont, and links to articles touting him as a prodigy or not a prodigy. The links are in many ways the best part. One comes away with a much broader view of the subject than if you simply read the entry. One can see Nico through his publisher’s page, an official website, his myspace page, articles and reviews from “The New Yorker”, “The Guardian”, “Smithsonian Magazine”, and “The Advocate.”

I don’t advocate Wikipedia as a source for research any more than I would have advocated the Encyclopedia Britannica. I do however find it a great starting point and a much richer portal into a subject than any encyclopedia before, online or hard copy.

Feeling Too Down To Rise Up
I have often wondered over the lack of rage in the last five or so years, as in issue after issue, our government has not only failed us, but been seemingly criminal in doing so. Has technology contributed to this? You certainly see a high degree of anger in the blog world and in comments made to editorials and on news sites. Go to the Daily Kos and Rush Limbaugh’s site and you will see anger and rage in equal measure. Does the ability to unload online make it less imperative for one to take it to the streets? People certainly say some of the most “uncivil” things online and I am not at all sure they would say them publicly, without the shield of an alias.

Disconnectedness – I am concerned with the effect of people regularly “tuning out” to the environment around them. I remember John Cage’s experiments with recording ambient noise in neighborhoods and playing it back for audiences. Those who “got it” came to realize the richness of everyday sounds as well as the annoyances. Perhaps our need to escape has resulted in a need to be disconnected from the everyday. For our students, it may be a need to escape from school. Even while trapped inside from 8-3, they use their mp3 players and phones to take themselves momentarily away from the dullness of classroom routine. The closest equivalent from my time would be daydreaming. We had walkmans and boom boxes, though boom boxes were a much more public statement, something one doesn’t hear much of today.

Is Facebook Growing Up Too Fast?
Wow, much to cover here, but I’ll give some of it a shot. First to the specific points raised by Alyson in posting these articles.

I am flying south this afternoon, (I’m off school this week), so I won’t be able to be present for the April 7th online meeting, but I wanted to address the issue of the drama teacher. I am sure he thought, with limited understanding of what was available, that this was a good idea. From my perspective however, he had to feel at least some ethical discomfort in “friending” his students. One of the reasons I have been hesitant to use Facebook in a broader fashion, is that I don’t want to be able to access my students’ pages and I don’t want them seeing mine. I am in the 20% group that makes full use of privacy settings. The last thing I want are pockets of band kids asking to be my friend. I had one student, a senior, ask about it at school, and I replied, “Not until you are out of college”. I’m assuming he will forget by then. Whether as a parent or teacher, I don’t want to be “virtually” hanging around my students’ socializing outside of class. If information comes my way that involves the health and welfare of students, then I’ll report it, but they are entitled to socialize online and off with some degree of privacy. There is a fascinating Frontline documentary, “Growning Up Online”, that does a good job discussing what is public and private online between adults and young people.

My solution to the drama teacher, students, and their parents would be a Wikispace or some kind of classroom blog. As noted in my previous entry, our school’s website is equipped with blogging features within a class or activity. Contributions are limited to members who must log in to post, but posts are viewable by anyone visiting the site. Students are assigned an alias to protect privacy, though I can identify them by rolling the mouse over their alias. Parents are looking for safety, students for privacy, and teachers (at least this one) for a way to interact with students over class topics in a secure “online” educational environment. I want it to reflect features of social networking sites and blogs, to be user-friendly, but to be wholly separate from the social networking part of their lives that Facebook represents. Now if only my school would give students their login information!

Considering the report of the teacher and Danish Prime Minister, well, Denmark is pretty small compared to the US, so let’s take it to a smaller scale. Would it be possible for a teacher in NYC to get Mayor Mike, James Levine, Ethan Hawke, or Derek Jeeter to come and address a class? I wouldn’t rule it out, but we do have a number of barriers, virtual and real between celebrities/politicians and “regular folk”. Whether technology is something that can bridge the gap is still being tested. It is certainly easier to try and friend one of these people or respond to their blog, than to try to get into their apartment building or office and knock on the door.

I would like to address the privacy issue and Facebook’s terms of service. It was noted in the article that Facebook was changing these terms to protect themselves from lawsuits and that other sites had similar terms. Still, we need to continue the conversation of personal information being public or private, and who owns this information, particularly as we produce a generation that has a very different mindset with regard to making the private public. I know that were I to use Facebook more, I would be sensitive about what I put on my page, knowing Facebook may exert ownership rights somewhere down the road. As with anything that is still being hashed out, I do think the public will find a balance between the public and private. Some of this will come from the lessons learned from others, as with the gate chief who lost his job.

What becomes frustrating is that many of these emerging “service industries” are built on the backs of “free labor”, users who help make the decisions as to what works and what doesn’t. Then as the “service” becomes a “corporation”, users begin to feel they are losing their voice, representation if you will, and they may look to other venues. Several years ago, myspace was dominant among my students for social networking, based on an “unscientific” survey of my 120 band members. Now virtually all of them use Facebook. Facebook may have many years ahead of it, but keeping the customer happy is a tried and true maxim they should never get too big to ignore.

My School Website Progress, Or Not...

noreply@blogger.com (BrownieD) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 12:59:00 +0000

Both hopeful signs and continued frustrations on the middle school/high school blogging front.

On the hopeful side, a middle school student, having logged onto his personal page on the school website, was able to send me a message. I received both an email notification and it was there when I logged onto my teacher page. Sounds small, but it means my middle school students are FINALLY getting their login information!! A mere 5 months. I set up what may become my middle school class blog (there is a template within the teacher page for this). Though we are now on "Spring/Passover/Easter" break and I don't expect much traffic, I may try a simple post there and see if there are any comments/responses.

On the frustration side, I setup my blog for high school only to find out they have not received login id's/passwords!! Found out one teacher got them for his AP class, and so five band members can post to my high school class blog. I'll just have to demand it after break for my other 115 band members. Once they realize they need to give access to 20% of the school, maybe they will go ahead and do the rest.

More frustration comes from the overall use of the site, its potential going untested, and the timing of technology in the midst of a budget crisis. Some are questioning our commitment to this as we are making substantial cuts elsewhere. Our previous site dated from 1999 or 2000. It was disorganized and principally a place to post information. The purpose of the new website was threefold (at least for some of us): to give the site a much needed update, to give its maintenance to an outside entity, and to allow for the kind of interactions in a secure environment that were occurring throughout the web 2.0 world.

Well, we have an attractive looking site that is fairly easy to navigate. We have teacher pages and class pages, blog templates, and rss. What are most teachers doing with the site? In my very "unscientific" survey of teacher pages (about 20), most were using the pages to post a description of the class, a few links, and class files. Some had a picture included! We devoted a professional development day in February to the new website and what I have just described were the minimum requirements for that day. So - a number of teachers met the minimum and that's been the end of it. Others use the "file posting" feature and offer a wealth of links. Few, if any have activated any "discussions" (another feature) and blogs of course are useless until students can log in.

Is this another case of dropping technology into schools and watching it become yet another virtual "file drawer" rather than a tool to enhance learning and contribute to collaboration online?
We have an opportunity that is remaining largely unused and unnoticed and at what expense to the district. Now the district is considering cutting the position of "technology coordinator". Who will oversee the next steps? Will there be next steps? Certainly in my classroom, but I fear few others will see it as time well spent. The gap widens...

My one hope is that others will see the benefits of my students' blogging about band and try it out in their classes.

Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (BrownieD) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 15:37:00 +0000

This intro will provide a bit of background on who Dan Brown is (other than a famous author), why I am taking MSTU5814, and what I hope to gain from the class.

I have been teaching music for 20 years in a small school district in Westchester County. I work with both middle and high school students and teach band, jazz band, and percussion. When I began my teaching career, the groups were very small and there was a community feeling to our rehearsals. Everyone had a voice and dialogue was an important part of the rehearsal process. As time went on, the groups grew in size and popularity, but I began to feel the sense of community slipping away. It became ever more difficult to have effective dialogue with a class of 106 that only met for 40 minutes a day!!

A few years ago, my thoughts turned to ways in which students communicate with one another. Many educators I work with see these modes of communication: texting, IMs, blogging, facebook, and the like, as a negative influence on student habits and behavior. While I share some of their concerns, I quickly realized the potential this media has for "connecting" students in my class.

In rather primitive ways, I have sought to use what is available in my school (eboard), to create opportunities for students in band to communicate with one another about issues that come up in class, and to post excerpts from rehearsals on which they can comment. It has given voice to students in band I don't normally hear from and sparked lively debate among members over any number of issues I can't cover in one class. They are quite willing to take the opportunity to "constructively" criticize things I do in class and offer suggestions, which I appreciate. I do encourage very much a "two way street" approach. Our new school website has a blog feature for each class that I am presently in the process of setting up.

My hope is that students will feel more invested in the class, understand that their voices are relevant, valued and supported. I am also excited at the potential for keeping classroom conversations going between classes, thus making band more than a mere 40 minute elective sandwiched between two AP classes.

Currently at TC, I am working on a doctorate in music education. My research includes collaboration with students to develop a model for online communication and reflection that gives students a more active role in the direction of daily rehearsals. Wow, that's a mouthful! The goal is to let them reflect on experiences in class, discuss options with peers as well as myself, and help chart the direction of future rehearsals.

One of the issues I struggle with in my research is privacy. I am a pretty private person and not one to easily share the personal aspects of my life publicly. My students have no such issues. They display so much of their lives online. However, I think we have a role to play in sensitizing them perhaps to how public they really want to be. How? That is a question I need help on.

Another concern is with how connected some people feel they need to be 24/7. Just last night, I sat watching our high school musical production of Les Miserables. During one of the emotional high points of the show, I suddenly heard clicking behind me and turned around to see two girls busily texting on their cell phones. When I spoke to them about it being as disruptive they started to argue the point, at which time I had to take them out of the audience and finish the discussion in the lobby. They really didn't get it. I was made to think of that video post of Jonathan Stewart and Twitter. We laugh because, though exaggerated, we see the truth in such satire.

I look forward to working with and talking to everyone. Though I love technology, I am very much a novice, necessarily so as I still need time in the day to practice piano, conduct rehearsals, and read Dewey. (I think Dewey takes longer than everything else!) Feel free to share your expertise and offer advice whether I ask for it or not.