Final Reflection Project

During the course of this class I learned many new and interesting ways to use the Internet to my advantage while teaching. If I had to choose just one of the different discoveries to continue using I would have to pick the social bookmarking. I felt that this could really help keep my students learning at a higher level. I could use it to showcase new materials found on different websites, while being ever mindful of the vast amounts of inappropriate material online today. Social bookmarking is also good for personal use. I find it incredibly annoying to be home and not remember a website that I have bookmarked at school. Therefore, if I had to pick one technique, it would have to be social bookmarking.

I feel that this course has aided my lifelong learning in a few ways. First, I feel that it gave me some new tools to use. I new basically nothing of social bookmarking, Webquests, and have done very little blogging. I would not have stumbled upon some of these unless they became popular later on. The second way it helped me was that it showed me that I did not know a whole lot about the Internet after all. I figured that I was 23 and understood most of what the world wide web had to offer and now I know that I was mistaken. This helps me to ingrain the fact that from here on out I will need to keep myself computer savvy to make it in the teaching business.

As I have stated already, I have been surprised by this course. However, it was a good surprise that will really make me think about what is to come in the future. I now know that I won't be able to just coast along with what I know about the Internet. It changes a little bit everyday and will probably never be the same for too long. I need to make sure that I can keep up with it even though it is ever-moving. This should make me a better teacher in the long run.

I enjoyed the format of the course as it was very simple to understand. Many of the online courses I have taken were often formatted in such a confusing manner that to understand the class seemed like half of the work. I enjoyed how the new assignments were not posted too soon, that would have just been extra clutter in the way. One thing that I would do to improve it would be adding in a final project where the students found their own topic and created a presentation with it. It would be similar to this assignment's discussion board, only instead of one last blog and a discussion they use what they find to show an example to the other students.

If there was another class like this I would definitely partake in it. I feel that all too often I sit through classes or superintendent's days where none of the information applies to me. Right now with the state's literacy kick band teachers are often pushed to the side for the rest of the district to focus on literacy. It is very rare that I come across a class that is suited to my needs as a music educator.

Webliography of Music Education Resources

1.
-Teoria
-http://www.teoria.com/index.html
-This website provides students an extensive training site that can better their music theory understanding. It is extremely interactive and could be an excellent form of supplemental materials for your classroom.
-There are very few disadvantages to this site and I a lot of advantages, I would give it 5 out of 5 stars

2.
-JWPepper
-http://www.jwpepper.com/sheet-music/welcome.jsp
-JWPepper has excellent service and a wonderful stockpile of sheet music for the educator. This website has really figured out the best ways to get music to the customer and it is extremely easy to work with.
-Once again this site has little to no faults and provided me with only the best experiences (5 out of 5 stars)

3.
-MusicEdMagic
-http://www.musicedmagic.com/
-MusicEdMagic is a site that is good for information regarding music. There seem to be a lot of ideas on this site to make teaching more effective.
-I have not found a problem with this site yet, but I do not know how credible it is as of yet. (3 out of 5 stars)

4.
-NYSSMA
-http://nyssma.org/
-The NYSSMA website provides music educators in New York with a wealth of information, from contest dates, to jobs that are available, and conference information. It is an extremely useful tool and when used with MENC you can get almost all of the music news that you need as an educator.
-Some of the documents on this page are hard to open, but that is a small price to pay for what it does. (5 out of 5 stars)

5.
-MENC
-http://menc.org/
-MENC is the governing body of music education in the United States. It is here that you can go to get information surrounding conferences, contests, and even get new ideas for the classroom. It provides a music educator with almost everything that they could need.
-The website is a little bit clunky and is not always very accessible, however, like the NYSSMA website MENC is well worth dealing with awkwardness.(5 out of 5 stars)

6.
-Teachnology
-http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/lesson_plans/music/
-This page of the website in particular is useful because of some of the neat ideas that it can provide a music teacher. some of the lesson plans seem interesting and I could see myself doing them if I end up in a general music classroom.
-I wish there were a few more lesson plans, it feels like this site was started and never finished (3 out of 5 stars)

7.
-Support Music
-http://www.supportmusic.com/
-This website was set up as a way for teachers, community members, and students to get the word out about how music is an important part of their schooling. It provides a lot of websites that can aid in the effort to make music education's usefulness known.
- I am not sure if all of the facts of this website line up, but the information is useful (4 out of 5 stars)

8.
-Suite101
-http://www.suite101.com/articles.cfm/music_education
-This page gives teachers new and creative ideas for their classroom. It makes the students' time more enjoyable and allows for diversification in the classroom.
- The page is pretty hard to find anything on, you basically have to stumble through it to find what you need (3 out of 5 stars)

9.
-8notes
http://www.8notes.com/theory/
-This website gives great information about some easy to intermediate music theory. It uses videos and recordings to help the student get an idea of what they should be seeing and hearing.
- This site is not as good as the teoria site, but is still an effective supplemental tool in the classroom. (4 out of 5 stars)

10.
-thinkquest
-http://library.thinkquest.org/2791/MDOPNSCR.htm
-This is a moderately large music dictionary. It holds a selection of music vocabulary that is necessary for the full understanding of musical works and thoughts.
-I feel as though this site is credible, however, I am a little unnerved using it as opposed to a hard copy of a music dictionary. (4 out of 5 stars)