Capsule Summaries

A review of web-based resources for communication and education

purposes

Edmodo.com Edmodo is a Facebook-like site which allows users to communicate in a very “Facebook way”. One of the key points which makes Edmodo attractive (for now, at least) is that it is not being blocked by the IT department, in my school division, yet.

• Users are able to select focus communities which interest or serve them. Categories are varied from general interest areas in education – essentially the main study areas within the educational realm – but there are also member created groups and groups sponsored by educational based research and support facilities.

• Edmodo also offers the ability to create, manage and compile lessons and assignments which are then available to students. This reduces the amount of paper usage, and allows the instructor to maintain a running record of student work.

• A disadvantage would be that there is no monitoring of the students’ performance on the assignment, so it would not be a viable summative assessment tool, but would be an excellent way to ensure that students do have the opportunity to build their skills and knowledge of certain concepts.

• Anyone who has Facebook experience would find Edmodo very easy to use. However, research is showing that Facebook is not utilized by youth nearly as much as twitter or other social networking services, so it may not be seen as “cool” enough for today’s students. That being said, there is always an interest in “retro” items, and this might be just old-fashioned enough for students to find fun and useful.

Sound Junction This was found through LiveBinders, in Teaching Trisha.Teaching Trisha is a huge resource for a multitude of topics from “Avatars” to “Writers and Editors”. I am not sure how LiveBinders works, but it appears that the main binder authors compile vast amounts of resources covering a wide variety of subjects.In the Musicians tab of Teaching Trisha there way more resources available for exploration than any one person could try out and review in a reasonable amount of time, but I found Sound Junction to be a very useful piece of software.• Sound Junction is an online instructional and interactive site which allows the user to read and learn

about numerous topics such as musicians, instruments and voices, music in context (an important element in our new Manitoba Music curriculum), composing and remixing , as well as a Composer’s Forum for people wanting to share their thoughts about composing and music in general.

• Within each of the main areas, there are links to articles about the subject, audio and video examples and/or explanations, and in most cases, an element of interactive manipulation to engage the user in the important audio aspect of the art form.

• The depth of each page or tab within the site is astounding, and has clearly been well thought out and designed to engage the user.

• Browse mode takes you to a basic search and employ style approach, but there is also Journey Mode which tracks your exploration through the various concepts and genres.

• One drawback of the page might be the vastness of the material available and the intensity of the home page’s appearance. Although younger students may be more comfortable with the visual and potential intellectual overload, an instructor would need to be very selective and specific about how this might be used in support of a class lesson or project.

Ultimately, with an appropriate amount of preparation, a resource such as Sound Junction would be very infinitely more informative and instructional for a teacher or a substitute teacher than an “informative” video on the subject.

Zamzar.com Although there are numerous sites which offer file conversion, I have found Zamzar to be very efficient and fast enough to save my presentation when existing technology was unable to do the job. • Zamzar is simple to use and the free service offering to convert files up to 100MB in size.There are some advantages to becoming a paying customer. These include; conversion of files up to 1 GB in size, paying customers’ conversion requests are put in the “front of the line” so to speak, so that their conversions will happen more quickly, a personal INBOX through Zamzar to manage and store files, no expiry on converted file retrieval, and other advantages depending on the level of subscription (payment). • One important consideration when using Zamzar would be the conversion/use/abuse of

copyrighted material. Conversion of one’s own creation for personal or educational use is one matter, but the conversion or piracy of copyrighted material would be another matter entirely.

I don’t think that teachers would want to encourage the use of Zamzar with their students. Although, there are many available programs and services available to our students that can already breach the protocol and ethics of responsible usage of copyrighted material. It once again returns to the matter of teaching our students how to use the tools available to them in an honest and responsible manner.

Twitter.com Twitter is an online open social networking service, allowing members to communicate with each other, or in the form of a general posting. Users are also able to follow people or topics (labeled with “hashtags”) that are of interest to them. Once a follower, users can also post their own comments using up to 140 characters per “tweet”. Although many people (according to Wikipedia “generating over 300 million tweets and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day”) find Twitter a very useful tool for keeping in touch either personally or professionally, my experience (as mirrored by a number of other people with whom I have discussed this) followed this pattern:

1. Wow, so easy to use!2. Now, how do I follow someone … anyone …?3. Ah, now … how do I stop following that weirdo? 4. Ok, I know that my friend “insert name here” is a twit, so how can I find him/her?5. Oh, right it’s a tweeter, not a twit … there he/she is6. Cool, now I can stay in … oh wait there’s 5 new tweets for him/her, better check

those …oh wait, there’s 5 more …7. Never mind, maybe I will just see if there are any interesting hashtags that might

pertain to my assignment or subject area …8. Here we go … a meaningful and useful purpose for this huge network.

 • Granted, many espouse the wonders of Twitter as a professional development tool, but I

found it simply overwhelming to be faced with the huge amounts of information moving through even one of my “favorite” hashtags.

• Most often, I know what I need to get, and I go in and get it, then I am out. I don’t have the patience to sort through every option before I find what I am looking for, nor do I need yet another distraction to keep me from getting what I need.

• Although I cannot see me using this tool as a part of teaching tool-box when there are much cleaner and effective ways to administer my materials, I do still return to twitter periodically to see if there are new posts that interest me within my designated interest area(s) – essentially I use it as a Search Engine that knows what I want and is populated by colleagues who have done the leg work already.

MusicTheory.net Designed by Ricci Adams, MusicTheory.net has grown from a free, basic, straight-forward tool designed to teach students note names into a well-thought out multi-faceted online tool that offers instruction, practice and tools all with the intention of building students’ knowledge of practically all music rudiments – there are even guitar exercises which are very good.

• Each of the main areas of the site breaks down the focus material into manageable sub-categories. Then, each sub-category (for example – note identification) is further broken down into specific areas of concentration. The result is a place where a student can go and very quickly track down the area that they know needs extra drill or instruction and can have the information reviewed and practiced in a very short period of time.

• The parameters in the “exercises’ section are very well thought out, allowing for students to include black notes, or any number of sharps or flats, or frets on the guitar neck.

• The rhythm exercises allow for varied time signatures, and the exercises in all can be customized to approach the material from almost any direction a student would like to take.

• There are a couple of other great features of the site: a staff paper generator allows the user to print staff paper (single staff or piano staff) if they wish to work on a hard copy version of their music skill development.

• Finally, there are presently 2 IPhone versions of the software available: one has the lessons and exercises ($1.99) and the other has those plus a partial set of the “tools” section of the site ($3.99). There is promise of more to come.

I think that I really enjoy this site because the instructional approach and the many varied ways to presenting and practicing the concepts are very close to my instructional style. As well, students not only enjoy the “gaming” feel to the exercises, which track your performance, but they begin to see positive results almost immediately. Students who want or need more practice can find it within a couple of clicks. Additionally, the level of the theory instruction can support the most novice learner all the way up to university level chord and harmony theory.

Smartboardmusic.org I had to include at least one site which provides music games online for free.Smartboardmusic.org is one of many sites which are designed to provide fun activities (games) for a variety of music students, young and old, novice and advanced.As is the case with many of these sites, there are some very simple levels to each of the games/areas of focus/style of games etc. that are available for free. Basically, if you have a keyboard attached to your computer, most of these games will work, although some will play much better with a mouse. For most, a set of speakers or headphones or ear-buds will certainly make the most sense since these are all about the audio development. Some games will track progress, some won’t. Most often, the lower level games are to draw your interest, after which it is a registration process to access the higher levels, or a subscription – which will often mean that you have also subscribed to numerous other games online, or providers that will be able to provide you with more options for skill development (although, if that is the case, not all of the activities will necessarily be music-based). I have encouraged all of my students to explore these types of games and tell me which one(s) they prefer – not because I really need to know, but if they are spending as much time as it would take to actually try all of the free demos available, they will be reinforcing their music skills despite any efforts to do otherwise … even a deliberate incorrect answer can signify increased understanding.

KhanAcademy.org I had the privilege of teaching Grade 9 math this year, and found the KhanAcademy site through search for some extra resource materials available on the internet. Frankly, I needed to review some of the topics that were part of my up-coming curriculum, so I was looking for refreshers. This site is an excellent resource for science and math-based concept instruction or reinforcement. There is no registration required. Once on the site, it is a simple matter of typing in your topic to be searched, and the result will be all items that refer to or relate to your topic. Each topic is then presented in a video format where the instructor (a disembodied voice) explains the process or concept while demonstrating on a live chalkboard – the writing appears, but you can’t actually see the chalk or the hand. He is obviously working with a tablet and is able to change the color of the chalk, the size of the line, etc.

My students found it very interesting because just like their “real” teacher, the instructor was able to change directions, present concepts in different ways, and even make errors in the presentation and correct them. I found the site very helpful because presented materials in a very similar style to my own, often in the same order as I would have presented. Additionally, I could link to specific lessons on the page I have created on my school’s website so that my students (and their parents) could always have access to additional instruction or review whenever they had internet access.