Music Technology Presentations

As the new term begins for Australian Schools I thought it timely to share the keynote and resources from my 2012 Music Technology Day in Sydney. Start planning, integrating and innovating with your classes today. Resources mentioned below or linked on my website to the right!

I had an amazing time thanks to the Association of Independent Schools (AIS), Australia.
The room was full, Apple gave me a bank of 20 iPads to use on the day and Allans & Billy Hyde’s Music came to the party with keyboards, recording devices, USB peripherals for the iPads, Propellerhead Balance Devices as well as Korg Nano Series and M-Audio Gear. From 9am to 3pm I was able to deliver the above Keynote, demonstrate the devices, give music educators time to interact with the iPads and all things Music Technology.

I asked all attendees to visit a Google Doc prior to the day where I linked the following resources and asked them to download/sign-up to Twitter, Evernote, Dropbox etc to make the day run smoother. The first part of the day focused directly on the teacher being connected, organized and technologically up-to-date. The rest of the day revolved around various resources and projects I had taught, or been a part of, that utilised music technology being integrated in the classroom with beneficial and extraordinary results.

1. iPads, Controllers & More Part 1
2. iPads, Controllers & More Part 2
3. Keynote on the Mac for Score Analysis
4. Keynote on the Mac for 20th Score compositions, from Dr Paul Stanhope’s lessons at my new school.
Parts One, Two and Three

In addition to the links and ideas discussed about teachers continuously learning, developing their skills and integrating technology as part of their pre-exisiting lessons, I was also able to share projects I had created for my students in Sibelius, Finale Notepad; & analysis lessons using Stems that I downloaded from sites like Indaba Music. Music Teachers should really check this site out! For a small yearly fee you can use the stems you download for educational projects within your school, and you get to work with real audio. That is, audio from famous and upcoming artists.

However, the best part of the day was when we were able to Skype with Yoon, @Doremigirl.

Yoon is a music educator from the US who I had met over twitter when exchanging music education resources. She kindly agreed to chat over Skype to a room full of Australian Music Teachers about her school, the way she taught music and to provide us with real examples of her (then) current projects.

As part of her 2011 A Year in Review Project, Yoon (Mrs L) developed a Rapping, Music Composition iPad/iMac recoding project for her junior music students. Yoon went through the process of setting up the project, the problems encountered and the successes. You can hear the student works via the Soundcloud player below.



All involved commented on how much they loved the Skype session (thank you Yoon) and how it inspired them to do something similar in their classrooms. Have you Skyped in your music classrooms?

Images used with permission from http://www.flickr.com/photos/peff/