Learning+Philosophy

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Like your average students, I have had my share of positive and negative experiences during my education. Far outweighing the positives, the negative experiences were due to my disinterest in teachers and professors who merely lectured and assigned worksheets on a daily basis. Rarely encouraged to create or explore, rarely allowed to experiment and make mistakes, these instructors effectively destroyed the enjoyment of education for me as a youth. It is recently in technology that this fire has been rekindled within me. Therefore, I see technology as a means to encourage life-long learning in students of all ages, where the instructor’s role is more akin to a tour guide than that of a preacher.

Students learn in a myriad of ways – thus teaching is referred to as an art. Some view their education as self-regulated, where they as the learner have control over the outcome of their learning. These self-regulators may see education as a series of inter-connected events. Through these events, the learners observe their performance as required in an effort to detect errors. Other self-regulators look towards the aptitude side of education, where learning occurs through structured interviews with those of knowledge and follow-up self-reporting questions. To this end, these learners see education as a more collaborative experience where they value the experiences and knowledge of others. There are students who prefer to demonstrate knowledge through creative outlets. These learners can also be drawn to group discussion that will provide a means to use collaboration to solve problems. And still others see the need for a “mother-tongue” language, such as music, that connects all learning, experimentation and discussion under a unifying experience that strengthens through increased collaboration and social interaction. However students best learn, it is essential that they apply their ideas into a meaningful context that allows them to be both engaged and invested into their unique learning experiences.

Classrooms, too, vary in how they may present a learning atmosphere. A music classroom focusing on a lesson on theory would find students utilizing ensemble learning through various activities, including auditory recognition of pitch intervals and/or chords, elemental, thematic and historical interpretations of classical works, and creation of new works. During this ensemble learning, students develop self-learning skills while contributing to the class as a whole. (O'Neil, S. 2010) Jigsaw activities are one of my favorite ways to learn content. Unlike ensemble learning, jigsaw activities allow students to solve a problem creatively while using various skill sets and personal backgrounds to produce a meaningful product, such as a team of students comprised of a “lead writer,” a “spokesperson, ” a “music researcher” and a “podcast director” creating a detailed podcast about a famous composer and his music. Filled with differentiated instruction, jigsaw activities also enable students to satisfy the need for self-expression, develop trust in their peer relationships, experience an opportunity for success in mastering content and develop their curiosity. (Dorfman, J. 2008)

Working in conjunction with the learning atmosphere, the manner in which information is presented is just as important. In a music classroom, textbooks are not always the way to go. Textbooks tend to spoon feed students information in an all too-formatted fashion. They cannot always encourage students’ curiosity. Instead, modeled systematic instruction shows each student the value of his or her point of view and personality. Within modeled instruction, the teacher not only defines success, but also presents examples of varying levels of success from excellent to poor. Coupled with feedback that is clear, immediate and constructive, this instruction will enable students to succeed. And when the topics and/or material are shown to be relevant, student’s curiosity will increase. Students also need a mystery to discover or a problem to solve to activate their creativity. Ideally the presentation of information should be streamed like a tree of never ending branches with infinite twists and turns instead of a one-way path to a dead end.

Too often in today’s public schools, learning through creativity is disregarded as “fun time,” and not a serious, meaningful way to learn. Due to excessive amounts of standardized testing, most teaching has become focused on facts and figures, learning //how// to the solve a problem through only //one//manner (that which is necessary to get the problem correct for the test), and creativity is cast by the wayside. (Wolk, R. 2010) As students see much of the material as intimidating, a stressful environment is inadvertently created. I see technology and its applications in the classroom as the solution. Technology is a less intimidating way for students to acquire information, such as through the use of web quests to teach more abstract musical concepts of theory and transformation of musical ensembles through history. Through the use of standards-based technology projects, the students can be immersed in content, while fostering their creativity and interest. One example of such a project would be using GarageBand to create a form and analysis project. By utilizing audio and visual equipment, students can be exposed to high quality work within a genre, such as hearing a professional orchestra that would otherwise be unavailable to the students themselves in an attempt to refine their knowledge of the standards by which “good” music is judged. Therefore, my ideal classroom would have a variety of technology at the students’ disposal. (Dorfman, J. 2008)

My ideal classroom would contain seating in a modified semi-circle that can also be rearranged into a circular seating formation. This flexibility in where the students sit would promote collaboration between students, peer communication and increased participation. (Fernandes, Huang & Rinaldo, 2011) At the front of the classroom, there would be an interactive whiteboard to present additional audio and visual opportunities in the form of examples of quality music and/or examples that students may find more relevant. The purpose of the interactive whiteboard is to allow for more interactive media activities, which can facilitate Zolton Kodalys’ sequence of music learning: hear, sing, understand, read, write, and create music. A classroom keyboard is located near the seating for demonstrating aural examples or as an alternative vehicle to create or demonstrate knowledge. The remainder of the ideal classroom would be varying stations that students could use either with guidance from the teacher or – eventually – independently.

The stations found within my ideal classroom would encourage jigsaw activities, as previously explained. One of the three stations would be the recording studio, complete with an iMac, snowball microphone and midi keyboard interface. This station provides an area to record live performances, voice recordings, or create a project that has elements to be recorded. Utilizing sound-dampening material, this station can also be used as a quiet place for students to do individual assignments with fewer distractions. The second station is the collaboration station, featuring comfortable seating with pillows, a whiteboard and hanging bins of materials. This station would encourage students to explore different concepts, allows them to listen to different genres of music and explore music video performances via Internet or room resources. Station challenges are stored in the hanging bins. These challenges are designed to give students the opportunity to have more structured exploration of music genres, concepts, ideas and trends in the realm of music. Through each unique challenge, students will be working through content, while the varieties of challenges provide both enrichment and remediation. Students are able to get Challenge pages, which include title, the instructions and how to gain excess to online materials. Some could also be entirely Web based. This brings us to the third room’s station, the computer station, made up of several iMacs. This station’s main functions include researching; creating or demonstrating knowledge, experiencing media based learning activities such as web quests and leaving peer feedback through blog sites. (O'Neil, S. 2010) The last major structures of my ideal classroom are the storage for media, resources and binders. The binder shelving is located near the entrance of the classroom to provide distribution of materials with the least amount of wasted instruction time. These folders would document for each student a formative assessment and their progress of successes through the marking period.