Posted by Andrew on June 23, 2010 at 8:27 am
The #MusEdChat held on June 14th was a great opportunity for future music educators. The topic for the evening was “What have you learned in your teaching experiences that you DIDN’T learn in school?” This was an exceptional opportunity for future music educators. Those who participated had the opportunity to not only learn from the experiences of what worked for teachers, but were also able to ask specific questions to educators in the field.
One of the undergrads participating in the chat was Brittany Bell. Brittany is a frequent participant in #MusEdChat held every week on Mondays at 8:00 PM EDT, and it was evident reading through the chat transcript that she took full advantage of this opportunity to learn from professionals. So, I asked her to do a guest-post here at FutureMusicEducators.Net to share what she gets from her experiences with #MusEdChat: (more…)
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Posted by Andrew on March 9, 2010 at 11:37 pm
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 Technology changes so quickly that the things learned in music technology classes will be outdated by the time they are used.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!
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Posted by Andrew on March 5, 2010 at 8:40 am
Social networking sites are vastly changing the scene in many areas of everyday life. The most well-known of these sites is Facebook, where friends can create profiles and communicate with each other. These sites are changing the way, and the capacity in which we communicate as well.
Twitter is no exception. When I first heard about Twitter, I assumed it was a site dedicated to the equivalent of a Facebook status update, and just decided it wouldn’t be worth the trouble to get one. It has been my experience that others follow this train of thought as well. But as I have recently discovered, Twitter is an amazing communication tool (if you use it correctly, of course)
So how does this affect me as a future music educator? With technology rapidly advancing, we must constantly be on top of the latest technology because there is a very good possibility that we will deal with these things professionally after we graduate. Not to mention, as educators, we are expected to continue learning throughout our careers.
Logically, the best way to accomplish both of these efficiently is to continue learning through technology. Twitter is the perfect place for this to happen.
This Monday, March 8th at 8:00 p.m., there will be a worldwide inaugural Music Education chat hosted on Twitter. There will be a multitude of people with experience in the field of Music Education, including college professors and current teachers, as well as quite a few Music Education undergraduates. Well over 100 people are anticipated to participate. This is only the second ocurrance of this, so it is the perfect time to get involved and join in the discussion! Interested? Just follow the directions below!
SIGN UP FOR TWITTER:
Go to Twitter to sign up for an account. It is a pretty easy procedure. Just add your name and email address, and create a username and password. Then confirm your email address, and you should be good to go!
FOLLOW PEOPLE:
Now you need people to follow. For purposes of the Musedchat, I strongly suggest that you follow Dr. Joseph Pisano (@pisanojm). Just go to the “Find People” tab and type pisanojm into the box. This should bring up Dr. Pisano. Then just click “Follow”. Easy enough. Now, if you go back to your home page, you should see many useful tweets from him, many of the recent ones regarding the upcoming chat. @Zweibz7 is also a good person to follow.
BASIC TWITTER SYMBOLS:
When you start looking at Tweets from others, you will see lots of symbols you probably won’t understand if you are new to this. I’ll briefly cover the ones that are useful to the musedchat.
@ – this symbol is used to communicate with one specific person, but your post will be visible for others. So, for example, if you have a question about musedchat, simply go to the top of your home page, type in @pisanojm, and then type your question. When Dr. Pisano sees this, he will have the option to reply, and then the post would look like: @yourusername – response.
RT – This is a ReTweet. If there is something that somebody posts that you like and want to share, simply type in RT @otherperson’susername, and then paste their tweet. Or, you can simply press the Retweet button at the bottom of their post.
#- This is probably the most important symbol for the Musedchat on Monday! This symbol, followed by a name makes any post that contains it searchable, and puts them all together. This is essentially how Twitter chat is possible. So on Monday, everybody who is participating in the Musedchat will have “#musedchat” in their tweet somewhere. This allows everybody who is looking at #musedchat to see the tweet and respond to it. Check out last week’s chat by typing musedchat into the search on the right sidebar of your Twitter homepage.
MAKE CHATTING EASIER:
This is a current project of Dr. Pisano. Chatting on the Twitter page makes keeping up to speed on the conversation difficult. So Dr. Pisano has found quite a few alternatives to this, including TweetGrid and TweetChat. Check them out on MusTech.net! They will be sure to make your chatting session much more manageable.
I hope you found this article useful. These Twitter chats really are a revolutionary way to talk with people across the world about relevant topics in Music Education. I hope you will take advantage of this awesome opportunity. If you have any questions, feel free to tweet me @andrewritenour (type my name, Andrew Ritenour into the find people box to follow me!). I’m sure Dr. Pisano would be happy to help as well (@pisanojm) Remember, this Monday at 8:00 p.m. on Twitter – #Musedchat. I hope to chat with you then!
Happy Tweeting!
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Andrew Ritenour is a junior Music Education major at Grove City College in Grove City, PA. He is actively involved in many performing ensembles including brass quintets, concert bands, marching bands, and choirs. Andy plays Tuba and Euphonium and is the Brass/Marching Instructor for the Somerset Area HS Marching Band. You can find him on twitter at @andrewritenour. 