Wonderful Instructional Videos on Note Names - Week 5

Great Music Instructional Videos!

     The student’s I am working with on this particular lesson include those at the age of 3^rd grade and up in a general music classroom.  These videos are preferable for older aged students as they focus on learning note notes of the staff.  This is a concept that isn’t expected of students in K-2.  Each video focuses on different elements of the staff; however, both reinforce the concept of notes on lines and spaces.  I would pause the second video after the treble clef discussion with 3^rd and 4^th as this is only required of 5^th grade students.  What I like about these videos in the visual aids and simplicity in which the instruction is presented without overloading the students right away.  What I find that most instructional videos are lacking is in the inclusion of intervals.  In order for students to gain a better understanding of the music they are reading or singing, they should be able to realize if they are singing steps, skips, or leaps.  This transfers to easier note reading as well as the ability to sight read or sing solfege pitches.  Just for fun, I’ve included two additional videos that include a very short video with song to explain a little historical facts about how the staff was created and a catchy tune to aid in memorizing the note names from my favorite music program and website, Quaver’s Marvelous World of Music.  Students seem to learn best when they make associations as well as when they are able to put a song to the text, which is seen often in the world of music.

Kids Music Workshop - Reading Notes on the Lines and Spaces

Guitar Games.net - Part 1 - Reading the Staff with Woody

Quaver's Marvelous World of Music - Notes on the Treble Staff Song

Quaver's Marvelous World of Music - Guido creating the staff

Reflection

Of course as I woke up this morning, I suddenly realized that I inadvertently left off the final thoughts of my reflection in my copy paste frenzy last night!

For this project, I chose to use clip art items from public domain by using the website www.wpclipart.com.  This website has a few minor stipulations for use which include: “You can modify any of the images in any way you wish, you can use the images in your own work, both personal and commercial, you can use the images, altered or not, for any printed work, you can use on or several of the images on websites (for school, personal or even commercial use; however, you should not redistribute (as a collection) a lot of images online.”  Since I was able to experiment with the use of Creative Commons in a previous project, I was excited to try out public domain photos.  I knew that this video is geared toward a younger audience and clip art would be a nice option for this presentation.  Since this site contains pictures in public domain, it specifically states that no attribution or linking is required; however, since I used multiple images from this website and truly appreciate the work put into sharing these pictures, I will ensure that I create a link below the video for others to experience.  Paul Sherman, the creator, did mention that a link would be nice, but isn’t required.  

Sound Story - Reflection

Reflection:

When creating my digital story, I followed Mayer’s multiple principle as stated in Swisher’s article using graphics to enhance student learning as well as illustrations that explain the process involved in creating note names as a mathematical function.  Swisher also discusses in depth Mayer’s principle of modality in which material is presented both as visual respresentation and auditory narration.  This process has been proven to increase working memory capacity; therefore, hopes to aid in transfering information into long term memory.  This would then in turn reduce the cognitive load needed to process new ideas.  It is also noted in Swisher’s article that when words and pictures are presented at the same time, it is processed by both the verbal and auditory channels as studied with dual coding.  As warned, I was careful not to include text in addition to narration and graphics, falling in line with redundancy and overload included in the modality principle.

One other piece I was careful to pay attention to when creating my slides and narration was the temporal contiguity principle. The temporal contiguity principle is related to the split-attention effect but focuses on the physical relationship between narration and animation.  I was careful that both pictures and narration appear simultaneously in my project.  Swisher says that this too in turn aids in creating connections and freeing up space in working memory.  So I tried to ensure that all graphics were meaningful and presented simultaneously with the narration.  This was easy to accomplish as I was careful to omit excessive text in addition to graphics.

Digital Story and Final Draft

Pictures from http://www.wpclipart.com/ (public domain)

Final Draft - Narration
Hi! I’m Quarter Note and a member of the Note family. I’d like to take you on a journey; an exciting adventure into the world of note duration. Wait, what is duration you ask? Great question! Note durations are how long you play a note. It can even be the length of silences as well! You’d be surprised at how easy it is to remember your notes and rests, well, as long as you know your basic music rules! So let’s begin our adventure and learn all about my family. First, let’s meet my dad, Whole Note, my mom, Half Note, and my brother, 8^th note. It’s funny how we got our names… would you be surprised if I told you we were one big mathematical equation? That’s right. Let’s take a look and see how this works. First, my dad, Whole Note, lasts for 4 beats. If we were a pizza, dad would take up the entire pizza. Next, mom, Half Note, is 2 beats. She would only take half. See any connection between their names and how much pizza they take up? Now it’s my turn. I am Quarter Note and last for 1 beat and as you guessed, I take up a quarter or ¼ of the pizza. My little brother 8^th Note, is half of a beat and takes up an 1/8 of the pizza. Now that you know a little more about my family, I’d like to mention some other family members that are very important to me, my cousins, the Rest family.  Funny thing, we all share the same first names! We merely have different last names, and of course look VERY different! Notice how notes have dots or note heads while rests seem to have no resemblance what-so-ever. Now that you know all of the Note and Rest family, you are ready to begin music composition. A composition is music written by a composer, or someone who writes music. Tune in next time, as we learn about placing rhythms on the staff and learn in detail about measures and time signatures! This will get us one step closer to creating a true music composition.

Digital Story - Rough Draft

Hi! I’m a quarter note and a member of the Note family.  I’d like to take you on a journey; an exciting adventure into the world of note duration. Wait, what is duration you ask?  Great question!  Note durations are how long you play a note.  It can even be the length of silences as well!  You’d be surprised at how easy it is to remember your notes and rests, well, as long as you know your basic music rules!  So let’s begin our adventure and learn all about my family.  First, let’s meet my family.  Here is my dad, the whole note, my mom, the half note, and my brother, 8^th note.  It’s funny how we got our names… would you be surprised to find out that we are all one big mathematical equation? That’s right,  Let’s take a look and see how this works.  First, my dad, whole note, lasts for 4 beats.  If we were a pizza, dad would take up the entire pizza.  Next, mom, half note, is 2 beats.  She would only take half.  See any connection between their names and how much pizza they take up? Now it’s my turn.  I am quarter note and last for 1 beat and as you guessed, I take up a quarter or ¼ of the pizza.  My little brother 8^th note is half of a beat and takes up and 1/8 of the pizza.  Now that you know a little more about my family, I’d like to mention some other family members that are very important to me, my cousins, the Rest family.  Funny thing, we all share the same first names!  We merely have different last names, and of course look VERY different!  Notice how notes have dots or note heads while rests seem to have no resemblance what-so-ever.  Now that you know all of the Note and Rest family, you are ready to begin music composition.  A composition is music written by a composer, or someone who writes music.  Tune in next time with me as we learn about placing rhythms on the staff and learn in detail about measures and time signatures!  This will get us one step closer to becoming a true music composition.

Reflecting on Digital Images in the Classroom

Reflecting on Digital Images in the Classroom

Multimedia Principle – Recorder Animated GIF

In Swisher’s article, he focuses on Mayer’s theory of “The Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning”.  One principle, the multimedia principle, includes student learning with a combination of words and illustrations, but warns to be cautious that illustrations have special meaning relating to instruction.  He believes that this creates “effective connections”.  I chose to use an animation of the recorder playing the three notes we have been learning in class, BAG.  The animation reinforces the three notes in the order in which we learned them in class reinforcing proper hand placement as well as finger placement.  I hope that the animation will serve as a key in retrieving information saved in long term memory simply put, through demonstration.

Coherence Principle – Educational Collage – A Thousand Words About Rock Music

Swisher also discussed Mayer’s theory of the coherence theory in which learners are presented with materials that build “coherent mental representation” careful to omit irrelevant material.  It is my goal that students are able to create meaningful schemas or connections to previous knowledge of musicians and instrumentation through the pictorial collage.  I was tempted, yet careful not to include additional needless information such as words in addition to pictures and hope that the text connected to the photo speaks to the learner and provides them with information needed to learn all they can about the history of rock music that is both concise and appropriate for their age.

Future Digital Image Projects / Instruction

I believe that in the future, I will continue to ensure that I follow the coherence principle so that students aren’t bombarded with extraneous information that could create confusion or put focus on the incorrect information.  In addition, I will work hard to focus on the redundancy principle as I find that as I try to reach out to each learner, I may in fact be putting my students at a disadvantage and overloading their working memory and losing the advantage of having student’s knowledge reach long term memory.

Creative Commons and Copyright Work

In creating my educational collage, I first looked at Public Domain images with little success for images that I felt conveyed the message I was looking for in my collage.  I then turned to Flickr and used the advanced search engine to find images that were only photos, covered by Creative Commons, and allowed for sharing as well as derivatives.  As I found photos, I realized that most photos requested attribution, noncommercial licenses, and share alike.  I used the article, “How to use and cite Creative Commons Resources” in addition to the website, www.creativecommons.net, to ensured I properly attributed each photo used from Flickr.  Since several photos required a Share Alike license, I used the Creative Commons website to license my own work to fulfill the requirement and ensure I was properly borrowing works.  I was excited to experiment with a whole new way of sharing images easily and legally through Creative Commons licensing and feel that I will be able to enhance visual learning in my classroom with these new tools.  I am sure my students will be very excited to see current high quality photos rather than free clip art works.

My Animated Gif For Teaching

My Animated GIF

 

 

Recorder Finger Chart

 

The above Animated GIF demonstrates the proper hand position on the recorder where the left hand is on top, the fingers are curved yet the pads of the fingers are flat so they cover the holes.  This animation also reinforces our notes, B A and G with the focus on how to smoothly transition between notes.