Project 3 Reflection

In contemporary dance, we often have technological challenges with music. As dancers, not only do we need to cut music for performances and competitions in order to make it fit the parameters of our dance - we often need music that fits to our choreography as we don't always just create dances that fit with the music. We are also fairly concerned with using unique music that facilitates emotion without the use of words. This requires the ability to use technology to cut music and create music tracks. This is a problem that I and many other dancers face on a regular basis. At BYU, we take our music to Troy for his expertise. When I was in high school, I had to use a terrible program on a PC that literally took me hours to use. With our lives as busy as they already are, we need something more time effective. Luckily, Garageband is the solution to my problem. It has the ability to cut and create music tracks. The only downside is that it is only for Macs (which I don't have).
So, for my project, I decided to teach myself how to use Garageband by working on campus computers and going through the tutorials online. I created a rubric for my future students to follow and did the project myself to create an original piece of music as evidence of my work.
Through this project, I luckily learned how easy it is to 1. teach yourself a new program with tools from the web 2. cut and create music quickly with the ability to add loops, change tempo, etc. in order to create realistic pieces of musical art.
Thanks for a great semester!

The Finale!

This is the final blog post....for this class that is. It definitely will not be my last blog post. :)
Question 1: One of the first few weeks of class, we all had to create a personal learning network. This has become very helpful in allowing me to contribute to some domain of knowledge. From my google reader PLN, I have been able to access important documents, etc. that have been helpful in multiple dance classes throughout the semester. So while I have not added much to the domain of knowledge that exists on the internet, I have used technology to contribute to the domain of knowledge in my everyday classes.
Question 2: Even though we stopped commenting on the blogs of those in our group, I have often still looked at their responses to learn from their experiences. I use technology to collaborate with others mostly through the use of email as well.
Question 3: Technology will be used in my classrooms mostly for feedback purposes for my students. I want to have my students videotape themselves and learn from watching their own dancing. But it can also be used when they write their semester research paper as they find their own PLN and learn from others in the field of dance. They are going to need to learn how to put together videos of their best work, by using movie programs as well.
Question 4: There wasn't a week that went by that I did not learn something new. I did know some of the things that we went over, but not as in depth as the assignments allowed us to go with them. I think one of the things that hit me the most was the importance of teaching technological etiquette to our students. Overall I also learned that if you just do a little searching, things will come fairly easy. You just have to put in the effort first. Technology has so many resources that are easy to use if you take a little time to figure it out.
Question 5: I kind of answered this in question 3, but I will use movie making and filming, I will also have my students create a PLN to learn to network in dance and I will definitely use a website in my classroom to help both myself and students stay organized. Etiquette, safety, and copyright will always be implemented as we just use technology, and as a dancer, I will forever be downloading videos or ripping dvd's to help in the learning process of my students, since dance is such a visual art. :)
Thanks for a great semester.

Project 3 Ideas

For my third project, I have come up with two ideas to go from. In a Math Classroom, it would be great to learn how to use a smart board and put all the lecture notes online from the smart board in case students need extra help or miss class. The more probable project that I am going to do comes from a dance classroom. In performances, it has become very commonplace to use videos of dance. This comes from the problem that as the world is advancing in technology, the arts are becoming lost to the fast-paced easily accessible applications that we have all around us. In order to help keep the arts alive, the arts need to grow with technology. Videos of dance are not only used in performances, but for advertising, resume's and auditions. However, in order to complete a video project of dance, you have to learn to take different angles of the movement and put them together so that the dance flows naturally. I am probably going to be working alone for this project. I'm not sure if I am headed in the right direction with it, so any insight you could give would be great. Thanks :)

Safe Internet Use

As Educators,
I think we need to be very conscious about what kinds of assignments we are having our students complete online. When giving out an assignment, we need to complete it ourselves first as a student might to see if we run into anything that could be a potential problem for them. We need to ensure the assignments we are giving out and information we are telling them leaves little room for sketchy internet problems. We also need to stress to them, even if we think they aren't listening, the rules of internet safety and then we can monitor their use at school if we are their teacher :)

Rubric for project 2

Rubric

IPT 286 Project 2

more on skype

I didn't answer all the questions, so this is my second post. The ways I could use it would be for teaching choreography when the students and teachers cannot be in the same place, but can chat at the same time over a computer :)

Skype

Skype is a great program to use. The quality is good enough. It isn't the best, but it works. I don't think I would use skype in my classroom. It would not be too effective for dancing. There are other ways to communicate with technology for dance that would be more effective such as producing videos to share, etc. I didn't have any problems getting it to work. :)

Downloading a video

For lesson 6, I downloaded a video off of Youtube. There are some great dance videos that you can choose from. I love how Youtube is such a great resource for dance teachers. The video I downloaded is a video that a friend of mine uploaded of a musical revue that I was in when I was in high school. A video like this could be shown to the dancers to express to them how musical theatre dance is a genre all of its own. It could also be used to have the students evaluate and critique the dancing in the show. The only problem I seemed to have was that it took FOREVER to download. I don't know if that is normal, or if there is a problem with my computer. I'm looking into that. Fair use allows me to use this video for educational purposes like I described above. However, since this is a video that I have a copy of on a DVD and a video that I was included in the production of, I have a little more leeway concerning what it can be used for.

Copyright!

It was really interesting for me to read about copyrights. It is one of those subjects that you think you know a fair amount about and when it comes right down to it....you don't. One of the things I learned that was most interesting about copyrights was the idea of fair use. I didn't realize that technically just citing an author when you quote them does not get you around copyright laws. I also found it very interesting that fair use applies to things like teaching and parodies. The exceptions to the rule surprised me.

Project 4

The Utah core curriculum in dance requires that the students have experience creating a portfolio of their dancing and of their choreographic work. Since dance is an aesthetically visual art through the use of body movement, it is difficult to get these two things across in a portfolio that does not include a video. This is an example of an assignment I plan to give my classes so that they have experience in learning how to put together a portfolio of their dancing and choreographic work. It includes critiques of them dancing, a performance, and the creative choreographic process.

My first Website

Here is my website for project #1!
http://sites.google.com/site/everydayyoudanceisagreatday/

Personal Learning Networks

For my personal learning network, I'm using google reader. I'm really familiar with google as a whole and I thought this would be the easiest one for me to use. I am working on building my network, which I'm sure will happen over a period of time as I continue to search for and find sites that would be beneficial to my fields of study. I joined the Educators personal learning network and was able to find great resources and groups that will help me connect to educators in my subjects and age group. There are also blogs, forums, and more on the site that you can connect to.

RSS Feeds

The first feed that I subscribed to was http://mathworld.wolfram.com/news/rss.xml This feed will be helpful to me since I am a math education minor. Having math resources online so that you can always access them is extremely helpful when you are trying to solve problems or figure out the best way to teach a concept.

The second feed I subscribed to was http://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?format=atom10&id=89104073181 This website is home of the national dance education organization. They list all kinds of workshops and ideas that can help progress dance in education, which will be vital to me since I am a dance education major.

The third feed I subscribed to is also about dance education. Articles about new research are posted on this website that I think will help me learn how to teach my students proper technique and how to take care of themselves as dancers. http://rss.suite101.com/dance-education.xml

About me and blogs!

My name is Rachelle Baker. I am currently a sophomore at BYU and am a dance education major and math education minor. I feel that blogs can be used in a mathematical classroom by allowing for discussions and lectures of mathematical theories. Mathematical theories can be discussed in a technological way that allows people to learn from home. Problem sets can be done from home by publishing problems and the solutions.
Blogs can be used in a dance classroom by uploading choreography for others to learn or review quickly. Discussions of dance technique and principles can also occur through the use of blogs.

Welcome!

Welcome to my Blog! This is the first post! I welcome many more :)