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Learning Analytics in a Band Classroom

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In my experience in my practicum classroom, my cooperating teacher uses a lot of data to make decisions in her classroom. Being a band class, you cannot exactly track grades to track understanding. A student could fully understand the music in front of them, but not have access to a way to come to a concert. Their concert grade would probably be low, because they cannot attend, but their understanding would not reflect that grade. I feel like this probably shines through in other ways for other classes, but I personally only have this perspective. My cooperating teacher instead sends out surveys to the students. Once every couple weeks, the students spend one class period filling out a Google form about how they feel about their participation in class as a whole and their understanding of the individual pieces being worked on in class. I value this way of "evaluating", because I feel like it honors the core reason for learning analytics.. to help our students! With a Google f...
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Chrome Music Lab Mystery Song

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  Mystery Song Questions: 1. Do you recognize this song? Have you ever played this song? 2. What does this song remind you of? 3. What is the name of the song? 4. Who originally composed this song? Hint:
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Mount Scale-ji Music Education Game

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             I remember in 4th grade band we had a year-long competition called Recorder Karate. We had a book with recorder songs in it, and every time we proved we could play the song on the recorder, we would get a "karate belt" to tie to our recorder. This is a very popular method to teaching recorder in grade school, and it was one of my favorite parts of elementary music.                In EdTech Lab, I was put into a group of three and tasked with making a game concept that could be used in music education. I drew inspiration from my cooperating teacher at McKinley Middle School, Mrs. Phelan. She has an activity called "Mount Scalemore" where students work through their lesson books and have the option to put their character on a drawing of a mountain to track their progress.                Our group designed a very similar activity called "Mount ...
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Internet Etiquette Poster

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 A poster I creating based on an Educational Technology Lab lesson:
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The SAMR Model

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           After watching this video by John Spencer overviewing the SAMR model, my understanding is that the SAMR model is a four level process that results in making technology a part of the learning process. The four levels are as follows:      S - Substitution      A - Augmentation      M - Modification      R - Redefinition               Substitution and augmentation are focused on enhancement. Substitution is a direct replacement of old technology with new technology. This is when a student writes a paper on their computer rather than with paper and pencil. Augmentation is a direct replacement of old technology and new technology, but something is elevated about the experience. The example that John Spencer gives is when students use Google Docs to give peer feedback on a paper.                 Mod...
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Information Literacy

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          I took the online course "Is it legit? Evaluating news sources". In this course, I was given examples of good sources and bad sources and asked to choose whether it was good or bad, as well as what qualities supported my belief. Then there were video explanations of steps to take to make sure a source is reliable or "legit". Basically, the course instructed me to do a web search on the source of information, look for the source's code of ethics, check for transparency, look for an author/byline, examine how they correct their mistakes, assess what other content they put out, look for spelling/grammar errors, and see if other places posting the same content. The basics of fact checking.          One term I had never heard before in this article was "pink slime sources". According to the course, a pink slime source is a source made to look like an unbiased local news center but their content is controlled by a political part...
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My Perspective on Blended Learning

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          I remember using blended learning for a large portion of my time in K-12 school, although I wasn't aware of the term then. When I was in elementary school we had a reading program where we earned points for how many books we read, but to prove that we read the book, we had to take a test on the classroom computer. I also remember playing math and reading games in the computer lab at the end of a unit. Going into junior high and high school, we often played Kahoot or Quizziz as a study day before a test. During that time we also had Chromebooks, so we would often be asked to research things online. I didn't mind any of it, and the games in elementary school were fun.            I think that blended learning can better assess where individual students are struggling. In a lecture, you can talk about a subject and maybe get a clue of who is understanding it, but with a virtual thing like Kahoot, you can see how many...
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