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.