Blog #10

• A paragraph about how you think you will use data collection (surveys) and/or reporting (Excel) tools as a teacher. Be specific about your subject matter area and the grade level.
• A paragraph on topics you found most interesting from reviewing your classmates’ blogs.
• A paragraph on what technology-related skill you would like to learn next, why, and how you will achieve this goal.

ILP "Participation" - Lynda Tutorials

Hello Earthlings! Only a couple more weeks of school left, so buckle down and hang in there, I believe in you!

This project was my first time using Lynda, a website that hosts thousands of courses on a wide variety of topics. I'm really surprised I haven't taken advantage of this resource sooner, there are some seriously cool topics covered. I decided to watch a video on the basics of video production to get my feet wet in the art. I'm wanting to make music videos of some of my recorded song arrangements so I can share them on YouTube and get my work published! Take a look at my experience by clicking HERE to look at my VoiceThread.

Blog #9

Happy Thursday! I just got back from seeing my friend Josephina Guzman give a riveting perform the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the University Philharmonia. If you haven't heard it, I suggest you listen to the first movement to get started, it's truly a moving work of music.

Moving on, we will start by talking about open educational resources, or OER for short. Put simply, they are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium that are published in the public domain. That's right, that means no copyrights, so you can keep them, reuse them, and remix them with no restrictions. That is wonderful news for us teachers! As the popularity of OER increase, we will have access to so many resources without restriction, allowing our lessons to become more complex and refined. I found this article about OER that talks about the potential to lower the cost and possibly even replace textbooks one day. Resources can range from textbooks to entire courses online that students could access for free. It's worth looking into if you're about that! It's linked HERE.

I have become even more efficient with Powerpoint after pumping out these assignments back-to-back. I have gotten the hang of some of the more advanced features of Powerpoint. I created a fairly basic presentation for a mock-AP Music Theory classroom on chromatic chords and that one was pretty tame. I am, however, a big fan of the non-linear powerpoint, because the possibilities are vast. I looked online and saw people who made entirely programmed mini games with Powerpoint alone! I would have liked to do an adventure RPG where the player chooses a path that offers multiple endings, but I didn't have the time so I created a Jeopardy game. I am happy I finally got to learn how teachers do those things! There's so much that can go into the design, it's truly fascinating. Because my topic was The Office, I designed mine around the aesthetics of the show's logo. Check out some screenshots of my works below. If you'd like to play The Office Trivia Game, leave a comment and I'll post it!

Blog #8

I got a pretty quick handle on Diigo, which makes me confident that my students would be able to use it because I'm not always the fastest with new technology! I never knew there was a way to bookmark pages in the cloud. I could see this being extremely useful for group projects with the annotation and comment tool. When researching and collaborating, this can all be done wirelessly so if group members cannot meet up the work can still be done. I have already used it personally to bookmark important music festivals I want to audition for. The tags keep things tidy!

Powerpoint has been the most common presentation tool to aid lectures that I've seen in my schooling. While it continues to be relevant, it can be of great assistance in learning at each level of Bloom's Taxonomy. Presenting knowledge is the most used feature of Powerpoint, because you can type all kinds of information that are written by students as notes. Comprehension and application takes it to the next step by asking questions so the students are making meaningful connections with the knowledge you present. Analysis involves grouping and separating elements and understanding each in the fullest. Synthesis and evaluation can be strengthened by having students create Powerpoint presentations of their own. They say you really know something if you can teach it!

Because my profession is going to be a college cello professor, my use of technology will be limited. However, as the profession adapts, I can see myself needing to understand how to mix audio. I recently recorded an arrangement of What a Wonderful World for cello quartet, which required me to know how to write music in Finale, record and mix sound with audacity, and perform each of the four parts proficiently. I have also made short music videos before that required me to know how to edit video. Additionally, I made posters for my senior recital which forced me to learn the best ways to present the information (and I have received a lot of compliments!). Point is, while my main profession is teaching cello, I will always have to use technology on the side for special projects. As things become more digital, it will be important to understand these things as a musician. 

I found this awesome site that will help me stay up-to-date with the latest innovations and direction of technology. It's called EdTech, and there are articles sorted by categories like classroom, business intelligence, hardware, and internet. It is even divided into two sites, one with a focus on K-12, and another which is focused on Higher Education. With it, I know I can keep myself informed!

Blog #7

Hello good people, and happy Thursday! One more day until FSU's spring break, so I know everyone is anxious to get out the door and get the vacation started. Before we go, I want to share my twitter experience, some pictures of my new website, and my take on assistive tech.

After using twitter for over three months, I have learned how valuable the platform can be for getting connected to personal learning networks. Much of social media gets a bad rap for attention-hogging and flashy, amusing things that waste users' time. In my opinion, how you use it determines its worth. I follow a few of my favorite psychologists, philosophers, musicians, and orchestras. Their posts are more educational than distracting and I always find myself learning something new about the career I hope to have in the future. The downside is that I find it hard to think of things to tweet out, because the account is for a class. Therefore my posts have to be in some way related to the course to have any kind of coherence.

I loved using Wix though. I have used it to make a website for another class in the past so I had a decent grasp of the user interface already. Unlike blogger, you can drag and drop things around the page and really customize the design. The limit is your own imagination! I did learn how to embed a calendar that syncs to my Google calendar which will be extremely useful in future projects. When I am a college professor, it's something I will use to keep my studio connected to current projects and classes/masterclasses/concerts. I can also share resources to help my students practice so they can be as prepared as possible for every lesson. See some screenshots below, or visit my website by clicking HERE!

As we advance technology, the quality of life improves for everyone. I had a friend in high school who used assistive technology. He had autism, and his thoughts moved so quickly that his handwriting was unreadable. He had permission to use a laptop every day to take notes and write essays so that he could be on an even playing field with the rest of class. I have also seen videos about video games that have adapted controls for people who have disabilities that affect the use of their arms and fingers. The controllers are tailored to the parts of their body they do have control over so that they can play video games that they wouldn't be able to with a traditional controller. I can see myself needing certain adaptive technologies for students in a music class. One example I can think of is braille or enlarged sheet music for visually impaired, linked with devices that help them follow a conductor without being able to see them.

Have a safe and relaxing break everyone!

ILP "Design" - Prezi

Hello everyone, I hope you're having a fantastic first week of March! I have just completed an informative presentation about effective practice. It dives deep into musical practice, but many of the concepts included can be applied to other things, like effective studying and athletic performance. It was useful to remind myself what constitutes good practice while also creating an interactive presentation for other people to benefit from! I live by these practice habits, so I am proof that the process really works. Comment any questions you might have, I really hope this benefits you all!

Secrets to Effective Practice (Prezi)
My Prezi Experience (VoiceThread)

Blog #5

Welcome back to another weekly blog coming at you straight from Tallahassee! It's been a humid one here. So much so that my fingers started sticking to the fingerboard of my cello! Today I'm going to share with you some of my experiences with the technology we've used in the first two months of this course.

Initially, I was a little bit salty that we had yet another account to create on Diigo, but truth be told it's not that bad! We used it a lot recently and I'm getting the feel for it. What I like about it is that you can save websites and categorize them. I like being able to highlight and annotate the things I read online, so all my notes for it stay on one place, saved under my account. I can access these on any computer, so it's very practical. In the class, the comment boards in our group get super messy with the annotation spam, but I imagine it's only that way because there are 20 people doing it in a very short span!

Blogging has been mostly positive as well. It is easy enough to use. I enjoy the way that I can type blogs in a text window and it will automatically format once you publish. Additionally, I can input code in HTML to embed videos, pictures, and other media. It has simple options which is great for ease of use. Simple options, though, mean not a lot of variety. There aren't very many site layouts available, and figuring out which buttons changed which modules (text color, size, etc) was kind of a nightmare at first. I prefer sites like Wix that let you drag and drop text boxes and media. They tend to be more user-friendly. In the future, I can see myself using the knowledge gained here to start a genuine cello blog of my travels, performances, practice routines, and more.

One Web 2.0 tool that I use often is Doodle. You can use it to create scheduling polls, which is great when scheduling music rehearsals for lots of musicians with busy schedules! Rather than asking everyone when they are and aren't available, you just insert times and each individual checks the box of every time that can work for them. There's also an option to select "maybe" instead of yes or no. It's a must in scheduling apps!

Blog #4

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I hope you're finding prolific love today in the form of family, friends, and perhaps even a significant other (or others, I don't know your life!). This week's blog is special because it is based in the wonderful teaching tool called "VoiceThread." It lets us record spoken explanations and lectures over PowerPoints, which is what I have done. To see it in action, check out the link below.

Academic Use of Technology with Joe Cello

Blog #3

Welcome back to this week's Bass Clef Blog, where I'll be taking you through some reactions to ELA technology standards and CPALMS Educator Toolkit. I'll also post my newsletter for Dealing with Performance Anxiety at the end.

English Language Arts (ELA) standards break down what students should know by each grade level. I chose to look at 11-12th grade technology use standards and I feel confident that I could teach most of them. I noticed that a majority of them were ones that I learned on my own, and a handful that I learned at school. Those include Microsoft Excel proficiency, online presentation software like Prezi, and database searches for reliable educational material. I am not well-versed in photoshop or online data analysis websites, so I'd have to brush up on skills there.

A great resource for teachers created at Florida State University is the CPALMS Educator Toolkit. It houses online tools for teachers arranged by grade level, such as interactive learning games, curriculum planning, and lesson plan suggestions. I searched for music tools for high school grades and was disappointed to only find one video. In that video, a luthier (someone who makes or repairs string instruments) explains the math involved in sound waves and the overtone series that is crucial to creating a good instrument. It is explained in a way that anyone can understand. It even made the concept more concrete for me, someone experienced and well-versed on the subject. I hope to find more resources like this for music in the future. Indeed, I may even like to create my own resources to add to the CPALMS Toolkit. 

Speaking of my own creations, the newsletter assignment taught me brand new uses of Microsoft Word. I no longer need a template to create newsletters or pamphlets because I can customize a design on my own. The with the simple use of text boxes and layering, I can snap items in place wherever I want. There are fill and border colors for almost everything, among a plethora of other advanced settings like shadow type and reflection. I can use it in my future career by making newsletters about private cello lessons or upcoming masterclasses in a way that stands out and grabs attention to invite people to read about it. Without further ado, my newsletter is below! It is on a topic I've read and attended classes about because I struggled with it a lot. I'm still improving, but I'm now at a place where I'm more confident than anxious and I wanted to be able to share that knowledge.

Blog #2

Joe Cello here, back from a graduate music audition in Boston, here to talk about my experience with Microsoft Word. I will also address a few issues that have arisen as a result of technological advancement, like copyright, cyberbullying, and privacy.

With the exception of timed in-class writings, almost all of my other essays were typed using Microsoft Word. I took a typing class in sixth grade as well, making typing the most efficient way to write essays and complete other assignments (such as lab reports for science fair). My teachers used Word for paper handouts of things such as study guides and outlines. Some math teachers used it to display math formulas and other relevant content. As an International Baccalaureate graduate, it was essential to be proficient in Word because of the volume of written assignments.

The volume of technology use to create lessons for my future students will make it tricky but even more important to avoid copyright infringement. I will be drawing from lots of resources and creating a lot of content for my students, so I must stay up-to-date on the laws. Even if it weren't illegal, it would be unethical to use other people's original ideas and not credit them, and I would use real-life examples to help demonstrate the point to my students.

One issue that has cropped up as a result of social media and instant messaging is cyberbullying. Because it can lend anonymity, it can be difficult for the average person to track someones usage. This gives a safety blanket for bullies. I think it could be decreased drastically if use of social media and other internet services required proof of identification. It would cut down on fake accounts, and expose people. Additionally, teachers must be vigilant to monitor the signs of cyberbullying, because they are more subtle.

Privacy is another hot topic issue that has caused much debate. Facebook and YouTube have been facing pressure to censor certain content. Additionally, people have become aware of the amount of personal data mined by these platforms that is sold without our consent. I think this problem needs to be addressed promptly to protect users. In my classroom, if there is personal content requested, I would always make sure it can be anonymous so no student feels insecure.

One final issue that I've seen ruin academic records is academic dishonesty. I saw classmates in high school kicked out of their programs because they copied sources without citing them. As a teacher, I would stress the importance down the road. I have heard of people who forgot a single citation on their dissertation and had their degrees revoked. Also, I'd share with my students how cheating never benefits the cheater in the long run. I would want to make an environment where my students care about truly learning the material, not producing grades.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Blog #1

From texting and social media to mobile news and sports, society is structured around advancements in technology that make our lives easier. People can shop at grocery stores or buy fast food, clean clothes and dishes with machines, and drive instead of walking. With all of these things, we have more free time now than ever in history. To reap the benefits of this easier life, it is essential to be competent with the technology that surrounds us. Less than two decades ago, signing up for college classes was all done on paper by appointments. There was no “Canvas” to update daily assignments. If you missed a day, you couldn’t just pull up missed assignments immediately! These are just a few examples of how technology has become crucial to our everyday lives. Teachers are encouraged to use technology in the classroom to prepare students for this.

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) created standards for technology use in education. There are five different categories, each divided up into smaller subsections that outline the goals that should be met in order to make technology most effective in teaching. I noticed that most of these standards are the same as effective teaching strategies, but paired with technology. The standard that caught my eye for students is the “Knowledge Constructor.” This one encourages students to be able to parse through the sea of data online to find what they are looking for, including verified facts and contrary ideas in order to curate informed opinions. This is one that has become harder now, with a web that is scattered with things competing for our attention, which is why I believe it’s one of the most important.

One standard that seems the most unfamiliar is “Designer.” I don’t know if I’m confident yet in my ability to create my own interactive lesson with technology. Once I have a few more resources under my belt, I know I would be able to make a lesson plan based in technology.

In my experience, digital native holds some truth. It was coined over two decades ago when technology was just entering the general public for mass use. Because of this, it required more time to understand and use effectively. Over time, user interfaces have become friendlier as to accommodate people from different abilities. I’ve observed that generally, those born more than fifty years ago adapt to the changes more slowly. However, people born in the late 1900s and onward get a quick handle on these things. In the near future, I don’t think anyone will truly be a “digital immigrant.” I anticipate that I will have to adapt to new technology to teach my students, but because I was born using and learning with technology I will adapt quickly.

Blog #0

Three syllables. Two nouns. They rhyme. I'm Cello Joe, folks, a name that reflects my love of cello-playing. Not to be mistaken as a "big violin," the cello has been a part of my life for over a decade. It is a part so essential that I am following a career as a performing musician and music educator. FSU has been my home (specifically, the music practice rooms) for the past four years. I will be graduating in May with my Bachelor of Music in Cello Performance. When I'm not practicing, I'm exercising, cooking, or spending time with friends. You might call me old-fashioned based on my strong preference for face-to-face interaction and calling over social media and texting.

There is so much available on the internet now that sifting through to what you want has become increasingly difficult. On the other hand, we benefit from being able to learn just about anything online. Watching YouTube videos is how I learned to kick a football fifty yards and play on my high school football team. It is home to thousands of TED talks which make for thought-provoking long car trips. Indeed, my roommate would have been locked out of his room all night had I not learned to pick locks with paperclips (not for anything shady of course). We live in a time where shared knowledge is more abundant and accessible than ever through technology.

What I hope to learn through this course is how to create ways of sharing knowledge in a way that is user-friendly. I want to know how I can use technology to gain meaningful attention in a way that truly helps those who experience it. We have all had the absolute pleasure to sit through (and more than likely create) insipid powerpoint presentations that lull all listeners into deep uninterested despair. I want to avoid that.