MUE 6696 Module 1 Reflection

This week's activities were plentiful! I'll admit that I was a little overwhelmed at the amount of things to be done. While most of them were "easy," many of them were things that I hadn't done before. 

One of the first things that I did was set up the Feedly account. Honestly, it's overwhelming. I feel like this is probably because I don't necessarily follow blogs or music news. If I'm looking for lesson/classroom ideas I generally turn to pinterest. I'm worried that I won't have time to really go through and read all the articles that I have bookmarked on my Feedly account. But I guess if I'm making time for graduate work, I should be making time for my professional work. 

Twitter is not something that is new to me. I actually just deactivated a personal twitter account that just seemed to fall by the wayside. When I had my old twitter account it wasn't for professional reasons and I honestly didn't even think that Twitter could be beneficial from a professional standpoint. But I've been looking at districts around me and seeing if/how their music teachers are implementing technology and I noticed that every music teacher (whether elementary or secondary) had a twitter account that they used to connect with students and families. I think this is a brilliant idea! Especially in such a technology driven world where people would rather talk to each other via text/social media then have a phone (or face-to-face) conversation. While exploring Twitter and the #ufmue, I saw that a student actually set up a blogger account to keep parents and students up to date with things that are happening. I've been trying to figure out how to set up a website without having to pay for it (sorry, this is the cheap teacher coming out), but I just haven't been able to find a website that I liked. I'm considering starting another blogger just for my parents and students to follow. 

My favorite activity of the week was obviously the Incredibox assignment. It was so user-friendly, but also engaging. I definitely want to bring technology into my classroom, but feel that I don't have the resources of websites/apps that students will not only enjoy, but will learn from. This seems like a really great project to start at the beginning of the year. It will get students engaged and thinking about composition (honestly, it's pretty much impossible to mess up the incredibox loop). My only concern is having access to the computer lab for multiple classes over (at least) two weeks. Ideally, I'd like to have day 1 be mainly a tutorial and allow students to explore. Then use day 2 as assignment day - I'd have all students submit their composition to me and we'd take turns in the next class listening and discussing what we liked/heard in each one. This would also fit with my idea of having 5th grade students keep a listening log/journal/diary, but they would be analyzing/critiquing their peers. 

I'm really excited for this class and am happy that it's happening this year! I can't wait to implement some of the technologies that I learn about in here with my students.