Future Music Educators

On Monday March 8th, I had the privilege to participate with 14 other undergrads from GCC in the #Musedchat hosted on Twitter. With the exception of Tweedgrid freezing on multiple occasions, the experience was amazing.

To say that the opportunity to chat with many music educators at all levels of experience was valuable would be an understatement. The topic of the chat was integration of web 2.0 applications into the music classroom. There were some awesome links posted, as well as ideas of how to use certain applications in multiple ways. The group also discussed the implementation of technology in the classroom in general. Cases were made for using technology for the sake of learning to use technology, as well as only using technology if it doesn’t distract from the education. To see the entire chat, check out the archive at MusicEdMajor.net!

This opportunity is such a great one for undergrads. While things like web 2.0 applications are discussed in Music Technology classes, the applications are always changing. Music students learn about very useful applications to use in their career, but the reality is that by the time they start teaching, there will be completely new applications out there. Technology changes so quickly that the things learned in music technology classes will be outdated by the time they are used. By participating in #mused chat, undergrads have the opportunity to not only see how real teachers are using the things they are learning about in the classroom, but to also discover other techniques and tools that are being used.

The event was found very useful by other undergrads as well. When I asked some of them what they thought of it, they stated that they felt it was very beneficial. This is one response that I got from Elizabeth Heist, a junior music education major at Grove City College. This was her first encounter with Twitter:

The Musedchat was informative and interesting. Everyone had great ideas and suggestions about how to integrate web 2.0 into the music classroom. It is amazing to be able to talk to music educators from all over the world. My only negative comment is that it is very overwhelming because there is so much information flying around all at once. Overall I think that the idea is of musedchat is great and hope to participate in it again.

It was very awesome to see people like Elizabeth who have never used Twitter before be able to log on and chat with music educators everywhere.

If you would like to participate in the #musedchat, it happens every week on Monday from 8:00-9:00 p.m. EST. If you are not familiar with Twitter, check out my article : Music Education and Twitter?, and join in the discussion!