John+Grunwald

__**Web 2.0**__

__Google Earth - Composer Tour__

I was very excited about the possibilities through the use of Google Earth. However, I have been a little disappointed in some respects. The first idea I had was to create tours in Google Earth that would illustrate the lives of various composers. Students could research and learn about locations in regard to birth, death, monumental concerts, places of residence and job. They could use Google Earth to create a movie tour traveling from place to place and include their own narrations along the way. My disappointment came through the fact that it is a little tricky to create the tour as you might like. Second, so far, as I click into the street view on the map for a close up of houses or landmarks, when setting the tour the pictures were clear, yet in the tour they came through blurry. Another frustration came from the fact that I thought you could record the tour and then record the narrations separately. Lastly, when I saved my tour, it came through as a .kmz file which is fine if you have Google Earth on your computer. I haven't found a way to share it with others that do not have that program installed.

Even though I have found some draw backs, I feel that the possibilities still outweigh the negative aspects. My tour is lacking the audio, but here is an example of the tour that I created that would illustrate the places I lived as I grew up. (to view, you will probably have to open Google Earth and then choose file and open to view the tour)

__Glogster - Blues Promotion, Composer info, Musical Advertisement__ http://edu.glogster.com/

I played around with Glogster at the end of the year for a possible project for my fifth grade students. I ran out of time in the school year in order to use it with them, however I did play with it myself. I did find that creating a poster was fairly easy to do and leaves a lot of room for creativity. The posters the students can create can be very simple or very media-rich based on the ability of the students. In my example, I spent about a half hour creating a poster including pictures and video of my daughter pitching and ideas of what you need to gain success. One problem I did discover was that uploading video takes a long time if you are just uploading from your computer, however, I uploaded my videos and then linked to the videos through youtube. This example is still a work in progress. Some of the videos need to be turned sideways on youtube and I still wanted to add music. In glogster, you can turn the videos and it looks fine, however, if you click on the expand button on the video it blows it up to it's original size and orientation. That means that some of my videos are great for people who have their head attached at a 90 degree angle. This problem is resolved by pre-planning. Another nice feature is that if you click on the individual pictures, it also blows up the pictures so they could be seen easier.

Areas that I thought about using glogster in my classroom would be a poster created to relay information, pictures and sound examples from composers we have studied in class. Originally I was going to have them create a facebook page for their composer from a template in powerpoint, however I feel that this would be a much easier program to use for the students and more media-rich.

Other possibilites could be used in my Blues Music UbD unit where I was going to tell the students that they were concert promoters and had to create a concert poster for a blues musician of their choice. They had to create a fictional concert and location with pictures and possibly even sound files. All of these could easily be displayed through glogster.

One last idea could be used as if the students were hired to promote a specific Musical. Using text, video and pictures, they could create a promotional poster for any musicals we have discussed or researched in class.

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__Online Timeline - History of composer's life (or in this case....other greatness!!!)__ __http://www.xtimeline.com/__

This embedded example doesn't seem to show some of the "view" options that are available. This is a pretty easy tool to use. Adding events and media appear to be fairly easy to understand. Besides the information in your timeline events, you can upload pictures or videos to enhance the information being presented.

When actually at the site, there are some other views that can be toggled. The timeline could be viewed as just the titles or as the text and media laid out in the timeline format. Each event can be clicked on to get extra information that was added by the author.

In my class, this could once again be used by creating a timeline that details birth and death locations, places of residence, job locations and other monumental events in a specific composer's life. Some of my pictures in my example were taken from Google Earth, and thus is beginning to fuse multiple tools together to create a final product. media type="custom" key="6431699"

__**Wordle**__ - Compser review or introductions http://www.wordle.net/

Wordle is also a fairly easy 2.0 tool to master. There are some options that you can change, however, it seems that much of it is fairly randomized as far as creation. Returning to an old stand-by, for example...students studying composers can research composers in a group. They can form a list of words that are of importance to the person they are introducing or reviewing. By creating the wordle and leaving the actual names out, students can look at the words associate with the different composers and try to figure out which composer the wordle belongs to. My example below is of a wordle that I created with names, places and important aspects of my life, however I left out my name. This way someone could look at the facts that I have listed and guess that it is me instead of someone else in our class.



__**Skype - Connecting Classrooms and personal conversations**__ http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/home

Skype is a tool that I have been using for a couple years, however I never thought about the implications in my classroom. Even though the video below is not created with one of the tools we have been working with, it had inspired one of my ideas for application within my classroom. media type="custom" key="6432153" align="center"

Ultimately I would love to create a video like the one above that would include my choirs in the different buildings I am in, However, that is a little beyond what I have been able to master so far. This did inspire an idea though, as stated earlier.

Maybe using Skype, I could be working in one building with my fourth grade class and call into one of my other buildings and have a skype session with another fourth grade class I have. In this situation, my two classes could be able to sing together in a "virtual" rehearsal. This could be interesting and of some value, however this could be expanded to connecting to other districts and other directors. Maybe I could be working with students on music for Opus Honor Choir auditions and we could skype with another director and work with them to improve our students or to get critiqued by another source. This could be of great value for myself and the students.

A second use of skype in my classroom could be to connect my students to resources and experts outside of our classroom walls and to give them experiences that they might not be able to get themselves. An example of this goes back to a project I had done several years ago. "The Sound of Music" is based on a true story. The Von Trapp children really did exist. Captian von Trapp and Maria were real people who did exist. Eventually they settled in Stowe, VT and built the Trapp Family Lodge. At the time, I was teaching 5th grade and we thought it would be great to contact the lodge and see if we could get answers to questions about the real story of the von Trapps. Instead of getting that information from a trained staff member, we had our questions answered by the third oldest child herself. Just think how cool and informative it could be if we could skype with Maria von Trapp at the Trapp Family Lodge and my students could actually sit and have a conversation about her life and the life of her family. We could never afford to take a little field trip to Vermont and we could never afford to have her fly in, but with skype, she could be sitting and interacting in our room in real-time.

__**PLN**__

Skype is a tool that I feel is pretty obvious about its usefulness in my PLN. Having the ability to connect with other directors or professors in the music area is of great value. It is not always feasible to travel to different places to meet with other music professionals, or even have access to phones to contact them. Also, after attending a conference or reading a blog, it might be possible to skype with these professionals to get further information or to have further discussions about topics that they might be experts in and I am seeking information about.

I see some definite advantages to Diigo because of the fact that it increases your efficiency. I can spend an hour searching for music related resources, or if I am following 4 other people who are interested in the same information, I have just increased my efficiency by 5 times. With five hours of searching you can cover a lot more ground and get many more resources by "working together". You don't actually talk with each other and talk about your topics, but shared interests will give you more power.

Twitter / Tweetdeck has already started to be of value to me professionally. I have begun to follow several "music people" and groups. I have even begun to ask questions and look for answers. An example of this is a question for my blues unit I have been working on. I would like to have the students create lyrics for an original blues song and have them perform them over a traditional blues loop. I have been having trouble finding a loop to use, but I started to tweet about this and have been getting some answers. I still haven't found what I am looking for, but as more and more people follow me and I follow more and more people, the same thing happens as it does with Diigo. My one source is now multiplied based on the number of people I am in contact with.

A second example is the fact that I discovered the online timeline that I wrote about above through one of the tweets that came through. It may not be music specific, however, it is a tool that can be used in any area of school curriculum. Without twitter or tweetdeck, I am sure i could have stumbled onto it, but this way it was handed to me on a platter.

Google Reader is a tool that I feel is not necessarily helpful as far as getting tips and tricks to use professionally, but instead gives people an easy way to organize their information and feedback that is available to them. Google reader doesn't necessarily search for information for you, instead, it gathers new information that you have requested. Believe it or not, I see a difference there. It is a time-saving tool from the perspective that I can have 5 different websites or blogs that I follow with professional information, but to actually go to each site to see if there is any new information takes a lot of time. Not to mention that sometimes there might not be new information and it is now a wasted trip. With Google Reader, the leg work is all done for you. The reader goes out to see if anything is new and then delivers it to you just like your paper to your door. From there you are also able to organize, save for later and even share the information you receive in a much more organized and simplified manner. Who wouldn't want their life to be a little easier?

__**Iowa Core Lesson Plan Core Lesson Plan - Science and Inheritance**__

__**Reflections

Iowa Core Discussion Atomic Learning 21st Century Assessment Web 2.0 Students and Teachers PLN Discussion #1 TPACK Discussion**__