Music Education 2.0 - By Andrew Ritenour

About the author: Andrew Ritenour is a sophomore Music Education major at Grove City College in Grove City, PA. He is actively involved in many performing ensembles including brass quintets, concert bands, marching bands, and choirs. Andy plays Tuba and Euphonium and is the Brass/Marching Instructor for the Somerset Area HS Marching Band. You can find him on twitter at @andrewritenour.

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Perhaps you’ve heard the buzz about the exciting turns music education is taking. Utilizing web 2.0 tools and applications, music educators are finding it easier to discuss and collaborate with each other about music education regardless of distance. These tools are becoming more and more like an online classroom for teachers and students everyday. Unfortunately, a newcomer to these technologies will feel quite overwhelmed when trying to become part of this online community. That is where MusicEdMajor.Net comes in! This article will explain the basics of starting to learn with the ever-growing, online community of music educators. Included are basic overviews of multiple ways Web 2.0 is being used for music education collaboration. MANY articles are linked to as well to give you an more in-depth view of the specific categories including Twitter, #MusEdChat, Music Education Blogging and RSS Feeds, iSchoolBand, and Webinars. Check out the full article here!

Twitter and #MusEdChat

Arguably the most pivotal application to the music education online learning community is Twitter. Twitter, in essence, is the epitome of the convenience of Web 2.0. Before, when trying to find information, one had to go online or elsewhere and manually search for the information they were trying to find. Now with web applications like Twitter, information you are looking for comes directly to you. This creates an environment that allows you to continually learn about music education – even discover things that you didn’t know existed!

#MusEdChat is an entire Twitter chat about various topics in music education. It happens real-time at 8:00 pm EDT every Monday night on topics voted on and suggested by participants. Simply follow the tag #MusEdChat and include this hashtag in your tweets to participate!

Music Education Blogs and RSS

Many music educators and undergrads currently write articles on their own personal blogs relating to their teaching experiences and thoughts on the subject. Many times, they will let you know when a new article is published through Twitter and Facebook accounts. You can easily keep track of multiple blogs by collecting the RSS feeds to the blogs you are interested in. This will allow you to read new blog articles right after they are published. The best RSS reader I’ve found is Google Reader.

Music PLN

The newest community for music educators online is the Music PLN (Professional Learning Network). This social network was built to house discussion and debate about music education. Set up similar to Facebook, the layout is easy to understand and the topics and groups span every aspect of music education. There are currently over 750 music educators who participate in this community, with over 1,000 personal updates. This community includes a multitude of groups, and even more forums that allow music educators to be able to discuss multiple topics with each other on a daily basis.

iSchoolBand

iSchoolBand is an amazing tool geared towards music teachers. Offering a format similar to Facebook, this program allows teachers to keep track of much of the administrative aspects of teaching all in one program. Music Educators can log inventories of instruments, music, and uniforms as well as track instruments that are out for repairs. iSchoolBand even helps with assigning instruments to students. They make it simple for directors to contact individual students, groups of students, parents, and booster organizations all from this program.

iSchoolBand also helps students collaborate with each other and their directors, aids in connecting student leaders, and even allows parent organizations like boosters to manage fund raisers. The great part about this program is that it is very user-friendly for students. With a format similar to Facebook, students can easily make their own profile, join Groups that they are a part of (Wind Ensemble, Concert Band, Marching Band, etc.), and send messages and update their statuses.

If you haven’t considered using iSchoolBand in your classroom(s), I would strongly recommend looking into it. For a very reasonable price, iSchoolBand allows you to manage every aspect of all of your ensembles through one simple program. In addition, they offer GoodWill and Referral programs to schools that cannot afford to use iSchoolBand! Head over to the iSchoolBand website to learn more about it!

Webinars

A webinar is an online conference. Webinars allow participants to connect to a room (using a computer and the internet) with other attendees and a presenter where they can all learn and interact with the presenter and each other. Presenters can show documents, presentations, or even their own computer desktop to attendees to provide attendees a true online classroom setting.

Soundtree, a branch of Korg specializing in Music, Education, and Technology, has taken the concept of Webinars and applied it to music education. SoundTree offers a multitude of webinars to music teachers at convenient times for them. Another way they are doing this is through an online music education conference held on October 11, 2010 (Columbus Day). Find out how to participate here! Also, head over to the METOS 2010 website to view the session schedule!

What Are You Waiting For?

Following these simple steps will enable you to connect with music educators around the world who are talking about many of the things you’re thinking about! One of the qualities of a great teacher is that they continually learn more about their subject, and continue to hone their teaching skills. There is simply no better way to do this than to talk to other teachers, finding what works and what doesn’t for them, and giving advice of your own. The most important part to all of these is that you participate! This is an amazing opportunity for you to develop your professional skills through discussion with others in your field using many of the tools provided to you through Web 2.0. Be sure to access the full article to learn more about each of these areas!