BP15_2009103_Web 2.0 Media Asset

BP14_2009103_Web 2.0 Comment

(Original Post by Alicia Kalb)

Web 2.0 Tools - Lala

When I was researching music Web 2.0 tools, I wanted to find a tool that would allow me to take the music that I have on my computer and have a copy online. A big part of music education for me is having my students listen to music. Often I would use my iPod during class to have my students listen, but in the event that I cannot hook up my iPod to a speaker system, I need a way to listen to with my students. The Web 2.0 tool that I found that meets this need is called Lala (http://www.lala.com). Not only does it allow users to listen to complete tracks and albums before purchase, but it allows you to upload you entire music collection and play it from anywhere in the world. There is also the social aspect of the site, which allows you to listen to friends’ playlists and discover new music.

Besides having students listen to and analyze music, I would also use this tool for daily journal assignments. In my music tech class, I asked the students to complete a daily journal. I would play a piece of music and they had to answer the question on the board. Towards the end of the semester I would have the students create a journal entry for the class. Unfortunately it was more trouble than it was worth, because it was such a hassle having each student bring in a song. Some students brought in their iPods, which technically broke school rules, many told me which song they wanted to play, which meant that I had to find it, and some used online radio tools to play their music, but it only played a portion of the song. If I would have known about Lala last year, life would have been much easier. Each student could create their own account and upload their music to the platform. Then all they would have to do would be to log in to play their assignment. We could also use this program to save their own compositions that they created in class.

(My Comment)

Eric Anderson said...

This looks like a really interesting tool. I've also had the same dilemma as you -- I want to encourage students to share their music tastes and preferences with each other so that everyone can be exposed to a wide variety of music, but iPods are also banned in my school, and asking students to bring music burned to a CD just doesn't work. Have you had a chance to try out this site yet? I'd be curious to hear how it works with students.

October 18, 2009 7:41 PM

BP13_2009103_Web 2.0 Screentoaster

When we first learned about ScreenFlow several months ago, it instantly became my new favorite software application. It was easy to use, I immediately had dozens of ideas for how to use it in my teaching to create resources for my students, and after about an hour of playing around and watching the demo videos, I had created my first screencast. As the semester progressed, and my students were learning from the videos I was making, I kept thinking that it would be an even better educational experience for them if they could make their own videos. Unfortunately, our school doesn’t own ScreenFlow, and I don’t have the money in my budget to spend $1500 to buy enough copies for every computer in the lab. I thought about buying one copy and having students rotate through the one computer that would have it, but that just wouldn’t be practical.

Then I learned about ScreenToaster (www.screentoaster.com), a Web 2.0 tool that students can use to create similar types of screencasts to the ones that I was creating with ScreenFlow. ScreenToaster can record video from the screen, audio from the built-in microphone, and allegedly video from the iSight camera, though I haven’t yet been able to get that feature to work. Videos can be exported as .swf or .mov files, which can then be posted online or edited further with iMovie.

I’m excited to try implementing ScreenToaster with my Advanced Studio Tech class next semester. I’ve always wanted to find a way to have the AST students create an instructional module on Logic Express for the Exploring Studio Tech students to use, but I never felt that I had access to the right tools to actually make that happen. I didn’t think that taking still screenshots and posting them to a webpage or creating a printable PDF would be viable formats for this project. Now that I know about ScreenToaster, I’m planning to implement this next semester with my students and possibly integrate it into my action research.

The video below is a sample video I created with ScreenToaster.

References:

ScreenToaster - online screen recorder. Capture screencasts instantly. (2009). Retrieved October 18, 2009 from http://www.screentoaster.com/

BP12_2009103_Web 2.0 Noteflight

Music notation software was a huge technological breakthrough for musicians back in the pre-internet days, allowing musicians at all ability levels to experiment with music composition by connecting the visual elements of notation with the aural elements of music. However, there were two huge barriers to entry with this technology: 1. the cost to purchase the software, and 2. a very steep learning curve to be able to use the software at even a basic level. Over time, music notation software became easier to use, and a free version of Finale (the MS Office of notation software) became available. With the free Finale Notepad, students could access the software at home, and schools could have a copy on every computer in every lab. When makers of Finale started charging for Notepad, music educators were left without a valuable tool they had relied on for teaching music composition to students.

Fortunately, there is now a Web 2.0 tool available to fill the need for a free, easy to use music notation tool for students -- Noteflight (www.noteflight.com). Like traditional notation software, Noteflight allows users to compose and notate basic pieces for a variety of instruments and ensembles. Noteflight is extremely easy to learn, and the website has great tutorial videos and help files.

In many ways, Noteflight is even better than traditional installed notation software because it combines the features of notation software with the benefits of Web 2.0. Students can share their compositions with others on the Noteflight website. Compositions can be edited by multiple users. Noteflight compositions can be linked to or embedded in websites.

Beyond the traditional uses of notation software (all of which still can be accomplished in Noteflight) students can easily link to their compositions from a personal website, class website, or digital portfolio. Groups of students could collaborate on a shared composition. Students could easily get peer feedback on their compositions entirely online and away from school.

References:

Noteflight - online music notation. (2009). Retrieved October 18, 2009 from http://www.noteflight.com/

BP11_2009103_Web 2.0 Wordle

Wordle (wordle.net) is a fun and unique Web 2.0 site that has recently become very popular in my school district. Wordle is different from most of the other Web 2.0 tools that we’ve been looking at over the past few months, as it isn’t really a network or a forum or a platform designed primarily for publishing content.

According to the homepage, “Wordle is a toy for generating ‘word clouds’ from text that you provide.” (Feinberg, 2009, para. 1). The concept is incredibly simple. Users type or copy text into a box on the site, and Wordle analyzes the text and creates a graphic word cloud from the text. Words that are used more frequently in the text appear larger in the word cloud. Once the word cloud is generated, the user can change different parameters of the appearance, including the color scheme, the font, the way the words are laid out on the page, and other settings based on the language of the source text.

There is a minor issue that affects printing in Mac OSX, which is easily remedied by installing a Java applet from the FAQ page of the Wordle site.

Wordle provides several interesting educational uses. It provides an interesting way to analyze text, especially the relative frequency of use of words in a given source text. An example on the Wordle site shows a comparative analysis of inaugural addresses by every president. My Studio Tech students are currently working on a project called the “Poetry Remix Project” in which they record themselves reciting a poem, then edit and remix the lyrics into a new poem. They’re using Wordle to provide inspiration for how to remix their poem lyrics, and they’re also using the word cloud images created from their poems as background images for their project page in their digital portfolios.

The Wordle image below was created from the poem “Charlie Parker played be bop” which I use as an example in my introduction of the poetry remix project.

References:

Feinberg, J. (2009). Wordle - beautiful word clouds. Retrieved October 18, 2009 from http://www.wordle.net/

Raschka, C. (1997). Charlie Parker played be bop. New York: Orchard Books.

BP10_2009103_Flickr lesson

Every semester I have my Studio Tech students create Digital Portfolios, for which they need photos and other media. Many students want to get pictures of the music lab or the recording studio at school, or other relatively generic school photos. If each student had a Flickr account, they could post their portfolio photos to their accounts and we could create a group for all the students in the class to share their photos with each other.

I always love it when students are inspired by other students sharing their work; this often happens when we share our digital portfolios. A class collection of photos on Flickr could provide this same inspiration to students.

Advantages to sharing photos this way would be that students could easily upload photos from home or school, using tags on the photos would make it easier for students to find the specific photo content they're looking for, and it would give students the opportunity to utilize a Web 2.0 tool for classroom use that they most likely already use at home. This would help to bridge the technological gap between the students' use of technology in their home life and their use of technology in their school life. Additionally, photos would be available from previous semesters' students as well, creating an archive of available photos for students to utilize in their digital portfolios.

Since we already use Flickr as a resource for finding Creative Commons photos, this would also provide a great opportunity for students to license their own photos. It would help to introduce them to the concept from the perspective of the content creator, not just the content consumer -- the role in which they most often find themselves. It would allow us to discuss and debate the differences between the different types of Creative Commons licenses and give students the responsibility of determining which type of CC license they feel would be most appropriate to their work.

BP9_2009102_Web 2.0 Media Asset