There are a lot of great pedagogical things to do when every kid has a laptop, but it also creates a bit of a chaotic classroom. Since they all have PCs (note the Mac bias here), it takes the students anywhere from 1-3 minutes to power up and log in. Now this doesn't seem like a lot of time, but with a class of 40 it definitely is! And, since we use Windows, invariably someone cannot log in and has to restart, which puts them behind. Oh, and the battery power is real low so along with those 40 laptops in the classroom we have 40 power cords which need plug points (or plug ins for you American-English types). But I digress ...
... Laptops ... The coolest usage so far in my class for the laptops has been practice cards. All of the students can access our class OneNote (a Microsoft Office Suite product) documents and each student gets their own "tab," their own section of the document which only I and they can see/edit. So when they practice at home, they record directly onto the "tab" and when they return to school, the file is uploaded automatically (with a few glitches here and there) to the server so that I can listen to it. Yesterday afternoon, I listened to (almost) all of my students play their assigned piece and provided comments onto their OneNote tab. A wonderful formative assessment of their playing.
The high school students are learning about counterpoint and using it to understand intervalic relationships. Since they all have Sibelius on their laptops, we can use the notation software to get the two-part counterpoint pieces composed, but better yet, shared with other students. Next week in class, I will teach them how to transpose so that they can share with students who play other instruments.
These are just two examples of using technology in the band room at ASB. It's interesting, challenging and professionally stimulating to help students prepare for the 21st century.
Reid
Wow, I wish that was true back in Minnesota!
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