Week#1

Hey, hey, who's in town, everybody stop and look around...
I always love using this rhyme to being a new semester. It's not a surprise already to see all the shocking expression from the students about having to remove their shoes.
"Are you kidding me?" "No, I am not..."
"Do I really have to take my shoes off?" "Yes, you have to."
"I am just so glad that there are not holes in my socks..." "It's OK, if there really are holes in your socks...just take them off as well!"
These are always the first couple of conversations I have with the students coming all the way from College of Education to this chair/desk-free carpet floored classroom in a very weird maze-like music building.
So, what exactly are we doing in this seemingly "free" and "cozy" classroom?
It's MUSC373, the course with an extremely long offical title from the school that even the instructor (me) can't remember it all correclty. Basically, it is a music class for non-music majors. To be more specific, it is a class that talks about the non-musical functions music plays in a school/classroom setting. My audience should be the ones that are going to be teachers in the future... primarily at elementary level.
In this course, what they are taught and what they are asked to do is about how they can integrate music into their classroom teaching. So, in a way, it is not a 100% "music" class, where everything you learn has to do with the "content" of music. So, in addition to the music fundamentals (things you need to know to be able to "use" music efficiently, from reading notes to playing simple instruments or singing), my students will have to know how they can teach other subjects/disciplines (non-musical concepts) through singing, playing, and dancing. Take alphabet song for example, who hasn't sung this little A, B, C song when he/she was young? How many of us actually learned multiple table through singing that multiple table song? These are just some examples out of many. So, seriously, the purpose of this course is to help the students to be able to "connect" music to what they have to teach... In this process, however, being creative is something that is higly valued. What else can we do to make children's learning (of other subjects) more interesting and motivating through musical activities?
For example, on the first day of your kindergarten class where you would have half of the class that might never have chances to interact with adults other than their parents. How do you as a classroom teacher build up a friendly relationship with these kids? First day of the class usually is the most freaking moment for these little children. How can you make the learning environment one of warm and easy? A simple rhyme like "Hey Hey Who's in Town" might be great of help. From playing a name game, you would go through everybody's name and you would hear everyone telling one another in the cirlce their name one after the other. By the time you're done with that, the children would feel much comfortable... and that way, the rest of the day would just go much easier for the teacher.

MUSC685 -history presentation

It was a great meeting last night. Thank you for that! Here is what you need to do for next class.
A 20-25 minute presentation about one historical figure in music education as we read from the chapter (see below for your assigned person). Within your presentation, you have to include information about:
Time: the date of this person, the historical period he/she belongs to (e.g., 18th century--Baroque period, 9th century--the Medieval time, 20th century--post world war II, etc)
Place: where this person from or has any association from/connection to? Europe (specific country, if possible)? U.S.(region)? etc.
Significance of this person (his/her contribution as a music teacher/educator/trainer/performer)? What did this person do in his/her career that is so significant that we have to read about them in our hisotry book?
Other significant contemporary figures in any field
Two well-known musicians/composers in the same time period, give a short bio sketch about these two composers and find at least two pieces of works composed by each of these two composers, respectively, and make sure you find something (short excecrpts are fine) to play in class.
extra information about other part of the world: see what people were doing (in general) there during the time your assigned historical figure was active ? For example, during the 9th century, in Islamic world (the Middle Eastern regions), the courts reached their glorious peaks in medicine, literature, and mathsmatics...
Here is the list of figures:
Guido d'Arezzo (990-1050), Melissa
William Billings (1746-1800), Eric
Lowell Mason (1792-1872), Lynda
Patrick Gilmore (1829-1892), Kyle
The purpose of this presentation is to help us "connect" what we know to other subjects/things in history... Remember from one of the National Standards--know the relationship music has to history, culture, and other disciplines.
It should be a fun project to do. For this one, you can use online sources. The best place to begin with is Oxford Music Dictionary (used to be online New Grove Dictionary) on university library database. http://www.ulib.niu.edu/information/subject.cfm?subject=Music
There's no need to write a paper for that. Let me know if you have any questions about it.

MUSC685--how to post your Chapter responses

This is a brief instruction for you to complete your chapter reading assignment:

1. On your word document, just write an essay for each question and separate citations for each question. In other words, we're making each question a topic for an indepedent essay. Remember that as long as it makes sense, it doesn't need to be long. I appreciate cohesive writing that demonstrates insightful reflection.
2. So now, how are we going to make it work on the blog? I tried mine and found that we can easily make labels of our postings. So, it'll make sense if we create the labels for each of the topics, i.e., History, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, Curriculum, and Technology, we'll go over this semester first. And then we can post think this is what we do on the blog. There you will see a little box "Label Actions." Click on the label actions and Go to New Post and then click on "Edit Posts," under "Apply Label" click on "New Label. " From there, please create the following labels: Introduction, History, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, Curriculum, and Technology. As the semester goes, we can categorize our postings according to these labels we set up.
3. For example, for the first chapter reading assignment, you will have seperate postings for each of the questions I ask. Before you publish your post, label it as History. So, by the time you finish posting these six questions, there should be six entries under the History label.

Please let me know if you have any questions/problems making it work.

Elliot Carter

Who can live up to 100 year old still functioning well and compose? Amazing amzing human being~

Check this out from New York Times... 

About Elliot Carter

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/arts/music/12carter.html

First posting here...

Ha... it's much easier than I thought. I guess, it's a good sign, then. The reason I create this web blog is that I am writing a proposal about using web blog to assess students' learning. The project is not going to happen until next Janurary. But, I thought I'd give myself a try first... to see if this is really user friendly!
Anyhow, I just hope I'll have fun web blogging...

These two pictures were actually scanned from a card Zoe drew me at the end of last Spring semester. I remembered we spent some time talking about how we can use music to tell stories, and how, through the flow of music, we can actually touch people's heart.
Such a clever and musical kid! I guess...children like she are the reasons why I never really quit my job as a music teacher.