PLN (week 15)

Last PLN of the semester!

Apollo's Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra! Next week they begin a series of concerts - Praetorius Christmas Vespers. I highly recommend checking it out. This is the third time Apollo's Fire has performed this really awesome program (yes, I'm biased... I get to sing in it!)

Getting to work with Apollo's Fire in high school and college has been a really important part of my experience as a musician. It's given me a greater appreciation for early music and the art of performance.

PLN (week 14)

Sorry it's a few days late... Thanksgiving and work have slowed me down!

I actually discovered this over Thanksgiving when we were visiting my aunt and uncle. My uncle helped develop the Morrison Digital Trumpet (or MDT), a brass-style MIDI wind controller invented and designed by Steve Marshall with the Australian instrumentalist James. Morrison.

Morrison Digital Trumpet info

My uncle playing the EVI.

Week 13 PLN

Interesting article... 10 Things Parents Don't Tell Teachers.

Looks like kind of a cool website too: TheApple - Where Teachers Meet and Learn.

Response to Assistive Technology

As future music educators, we need to have a knowledge of assistive technology, both music-related and non-musical. Technology like SoundBeam has amazing possibilities for all students - with or without disabilities. Something that especially appeals to me about SoundBeam is that it provides the opportunity for all students to create music in the same way - through motion. Diverse groups of students (including students with and without disabilities) could work together to create music in this unconventional and very creative way.

Week 12 PLN

Music Publishers' Association of the United States.

Relating to my other post about copyright and fair use, here's a link to the website for the Music Publishers' Association, including a Copyright Resource Center.

Response to Copyright reading

Wow. Copyright and fair use protections are tricky. I always knew they were, but I've never actually seen it laid out as comprehensively as this (and it wasn't even that comprehensive). The reading, Copyright and Fair Use in the Classroom, on the Internet, and the World Wide Web, gives introduction to copyright, fair use, and educational multimedia guidelines.

After reading this, I'm reasonably sure that many of my teachers (a particular history teacher's class leaps to mind) may have not been technically following the guidelines for copyright and fair use strictly to the letter. From what I can understand, using something for educational purposes doesn't necessarily make it okay.

As a future educator, I expect that the issue of copyright and fair use will come up over and over again. This article gives me a little bit of a better idea of what is and is not ethical... however, it even states that nothing is exactly black and white (obviously taking someone else's words and claiming them as your own is plagiarism, but fair use is something else altogether). Even still, it's probably better to be safe than sorry...

Week 11 PLN

Here's a neat little website aimed at the "global choral community." It looks like there's tons of resources available without any sort of subscription or anything.

ChoralNet: The Global Choral Community.