Going...global.

Are you all ready to go POSTAL?  AAAHHH!!

...hold the phone...

              ......Freudian slip......

                                      .....this is embarrassing......

                                                                 .....one second......

I am clearly a little excited about my post today.  Allow me to try this again...A-a-a-hem!

Are you all ready to go global??  

I am proposing a challenge to all of you today.  It may take some of you out of your comfort zone.  That's ok.  I am calling it the "Punxsutawney Phil Challenge."  It's time to come out of your little hole that you are so comfortable in.  If you see your shadow, don't be like these professional scaredy cats.

Embrace your shadow, and what you have to offer.  But you also need crawl out and see what the world has to offer!  Let's all take a step back from your own classroom, team, school, district, etc. and see what other professionals are doing out there.  After all, didn't we enter this biz to better the world by bettering our students?  We can't grow successful students if we are scared of our own shadow.

How do you do this, you ask?  I'll do my best to explain.

We all have professional learning communities.  Let's maximize the potential of this concept.  "They" call it a

Personal

Learning

Network.

Think of your PLC, on a grandiose scale, and of course combined with the inter-webs.  Oh where, oh where would we be without the inter-webs?  We'd be stuck in our Punxsatawney hole- that's where we'd be!  So, what exactly is this glorious PLN that I speak of?  Take a gander at this video. My very own teacher created it, I love how it is clear and easy to follow for the novice.  She may or may not be reading this right now- I'm hoping for brownie points.  uh-wink!  It tells of all the different ways we can connect to other professionals using different avenues online.

Need an idea of how to teach rhythm vs. steady beat?  Want to know how other teachers are teaching recorder?  How do other teachers handle students that do not show up to performances when you can not require it in your district?  How do others get parents involved in creating sets for your elementary performances?  A parent called again about how you did not give their child the lead in the play.  How do you deal with it?  Need a good unit or lesson on the instrument families? So many questions!  Well guess what-there are so many answers!  You can connect with others and communicate with others using some of these avenues:

• blogs
• facebook
• twitter
• nings
• social bookmarking (which I'll talk more about later in this post)
• webinars

Now, how do you connect with others once you have chosen your avenue of choice?  Start with this list of PLN resources.  Then, narrow it down from there.  Once you get started in one of them, it's almost like a domino effect.  You will find more and more groups/people to connect with and before you know it, Bob's your uncle and your new best friend lives in Thailand.   

If you're a music teacher like me here are a few of my go-to places to get you started:

Blogs:

• http://mrskingrocks.blogspot.com/
• http://www.mrsmiraclesmusicroom.com/p/about-me_10.html
• http://www.musicalaabbott.com/
• http://www.soundscapemusic.net/blog
• https://techinmusiced.wordpress.com

Facebook:

• Feierabend Association for Music Education

Social Bookmarking

Everything is so social these days, right?  There is a reason for it.  In order for our students to be successful, they need to be comfortable in social settings.  Everything they do is social. We need to train ourselves and be comfortable in this "social" world, because that is all they know.  We don't want to hold them back

 *** Shout out to all the helicopter moms out there: if you complain to the principal that your child did not get a band-aid for a scrape that could barely be seen and was not even bleeding, you are not setting your child up for success.  However, I am doing all that I can with my social bookmarking skillz to further your child in music class.  Yes, that was meant to be spelled with a "z" for emphasis.  

I am so glad that you are questioning what social bookmarking is.  I had not heard of it until the class I am currently taking.  So, get this:  social bookmarking is basically an amped up bookmarks list- like the one you keep on your toolbar.  You know, the one that holds only a few of your favorites.  So you click on your drop down menu to show the other bookmarks, but you have to scroll down for days to find the exact one you need. Then, you forget what the site was called, so you scroll really slowly in order to find it. Or heaven forbid you go in to work tomorrow morning; find that your cute desktop background is that ugly, plain, blue color instead of your adorable little girls; go to find that video you saved in your favorites and...

You see that your lifetime collection of bookmarks is gone, because IT came and reimaged your computer over night.  Did they notify you?

No! They did not!  But I digress...

Social bookmarking allows you to keep your bookmarks out in internet space, but with so much more organization and connections than before!  Let's be honest here folks.  We are always searching and learning as educators-we can't help it.  We are always coming across 'life-changing' sites on the internet.  Sometimes, or most of the time, I don't have time to really dig in to looking at what all the site has to offer.  In the past, I would bookmark, so I could come back to it later.  In reality, did that happen?   I'm sure you already know the answer.  Let's reset the stage so we can be successful ourselves as teachers.  Close your eyes and imagine this:

.

.

.

.

.

Ok, sorry.  Open your eyes so you can read what I am writing and imagine this:

You are preparing a guitar unit with your 5th graders and you just aren't happy with how it has developed in the past.  You are starting to build up an amazing network with your PLN to go to, but you also have some of your own resources to grab from.  As you came across these life-changing sites, you tagged them with some key terms for quick access later.  You go to your social bookmarking site and find your key term "guitar."  Voila!  

You have some amazing resources at your fingertips that you had forgotten about, because you were too busy rocking at life to create a guitar unit when you came across them the first time.  I like these videos that Common Craft creates.  Watch this to intro yourself to social bookmarking.

Let's talk about...

Let's be clear.  It is not Dingo with an n.  When I saw someone type Dingo in one of my class posts, it made me think of this and I got a good laugh.  Oh Elaine!

Isn't this concept of tagging amazing?!  I wish there was a way to do this with lessons that I find and like in my good ol' fashion books and magazines that I get.  And if there is, please share with me!  Anyhow,  as you come across sites, tag them with all of the things you know you'll search for in the future.  Diigo does so much more than just tagging.  Check this out:

I love the bookmarking tool and that you can tag sites.  Often times I will find a great site, but do not have time to fully explore it.  If you are like me, and have a life outside of work, you will use the "read it later" tool a lot. You can use the sticky note to give yourself reminders on how you would use the website later.  If I do not write things down, I will forget them immediately.  When I come across an amazing resource, if I do not write down how I would use it and when I would use it, and place it in the right place in lesson plans, I will forget it.  With the sticky note tool, I can quickly write the idea down on the sticky note and will have it for when I need it later.  I like that the highlighter portion can help me organize certain topics within a website.  I can also add notes to a certain highlighted portion to remind myself of certain things.  Fun fact: the highlighted portions are added to your Diigo home page.  This is nice to see all of your highlighted portions condensed in one place.  They must have had the teacher in mind!

One thing that I worried about when finding Diigo is that I would have 2 sets of bookmarks until I entered them all in my Diigo page from my personal computer.  Check this out:  https://www.diigo.com/tools/import_all. 

Twitter?  Yes, Twitter!

Full disclosure: I did not grow up in the twitter world, and I could have cared less about what a hashtag was.  As far as I was concerneed, it was a sharp in my sheet music.  UNTIL I had to create an account for a class I was taking a while back.  So, yes, it forced me to be hip and cool.  I know...the torture of being the bomb-diggity.  I'm sure that phrase is still used amongst the youth.  If you are as clueless as I once was, try this site out.  It will get you up to speed.  How can you use Twitter as an educator?  So glad you asked!  Here are just a few ways that I use it:  

• following hashtags that pertain to topics I am in to
• Ex:  #musiced, #elemmusiced, #teacherwellness, #proudteacher
• posting happenings within my classroom. (I like to be transparent with parents)
• Ex: drumming videos, music games that we are playing for understanding
• performance promos
• connecting with fellow music educators to see all of their postings
• connecting with professional organizations
• participating in chats

If you are anything like me, I forget all the possible hashtags that I like to follow.  So, I subscribed to twitterfall.  You can add everything you like to follow in one place, and it will continually update you on just what you are looking for, rather than searching for it every time.  Chats are something that you can participate in, in real time.  Find a schedule here of some that may interest you.  One idea that came to me, but I have not presented it to my principal is starting a "movement" at our school using Twitter.  I think it would get the community more involved in following the teachers's and school's twitter feed.  Our school is big on promoting kindness.  Shouldn't we all?  We could beef up what happens outside of the school day with families by creating a special hashtag or handle that the families could tweet to.  For instance:  #kindnessIScontagiousatCHE or @CHEkindness.  Families can post pictures, videos, or ideas to either of these and get the ball rolling.  I'll keep you updated on the outcome.

When we started our chat today, I Punxsatawney-challenged you.  Do you accept?  

    OR

See. I don't no'te all, but I'm not afraid to try it all!

Hello all! 

Welcome to my very first, official blog post!  This has been a long time coming.  People have been telling me to start a blog for years.  My naivety has kept me from starting the process, but now that I am somewhat forced to broach this for one of my masters classes, I'm jumping on in!  

I am going to start off with how I started this process.  Maybe you are in the same boat as I am and would like to know how to navigate the ropes in those first steps.  

This video is the first of a series of tutorials.  It gives a good starting point for a total beginner and takes you through the next steps in the subsequent videos.  This 31-year-old needed a few of these :).

I have followed several elementary music blogs over the years and I think they are so important.  I am a huge advocate of watching others in you field, but how do we do this when we are supposed to be teaching every day??  Some districts have this figured out.  It would be easier to observe others in your own building, but how many music teachers are typically in a building? Me, myself, and I.  That is a total of 1.  As I profess in the title of my blog: I know what I know, but I don't know what you know.  I would love to know what you know, you know?  That is one of the major reasons educational blogs are so important.  You can get out of your own head, your school's head, your district's head, etc. and discover what the world has to offer.  

I know we are all busy with this little thing called life.  So, once you have found various life-changing blogs, how do you keep up with all of them?  

Place them in an RSS feed.  I don't know who came up with this miraculous idea, but they deserve 1,000 points in my book.  I don't give these away lightly, but are given at my discretion.  The rate exchange is always fluctuating, so use them, while they're hot!  What is an RSS feed you ask?  Let me tell you...or better yet, I'll let this guy show you!

***DISCLAIMER:  Make sure you have had your coffee before watching this video.  The narrator may, or may not have put me to sleep, and I may or may not have drooled on my keyboard.  Any small children that need a nap are okay to sit by your side at this point.

What a time-saver, right?  We could all use a little time saving in our lives.  Now Mr. Lullaby was informative about RSS feeds and how they work, but do you know which one to use?  If you have a google account, you might use Feedly.  It links right into your account, and who doesn't like a one stop shop?  I know this gal does!  Click HERE for some Feedly tutorials.  So, to sum  up RSS feeds: they take all of your life-changing information that you get from your favorite blog posts, podcasts, news sites, YouTube channels, etc. and puts the most current submissions of these in ONE place.  Therefore, making your teacher and personal life a little less chaotic and a little more organized.  Everyone do it with me now... siiiiigghhh...now doesn't that just make you feel all warm, and cozy inside?

Now, let's change gears a little bit.  All the behind the scenes stuff that I have been talking to you about is important, but maybe you knew all of this.  Perhaps you are of a younger generation than I, and you want to move on.  All I have to say about that is, this 32-year-old is pretty "hip with the times!"  So, I have yet, more information for you.

Let's move on to something that I totally dig-VISUALS!!!  I am so excited about Adobe Spark.  My district trained us on this last summer, so I briefly played with it.  However, after rediscovering it, I fell in love with it all over again.  Look what this 33-year-old did the other day:

When I discovered this quote many, many years ago, I knew Martha must have been speaking to me.  On a side note, I wonder if Martha ever forgot her age.  I could spend hours creating visuals like this.  I am anxious to see if I can come up with a good logo through Adobe Spark for this very blog.  For those who forget little things, like your age, I'll describe this briefly so it doesn't take up a whole lot of space in your brain for other important things.  You can use it to create stories, images, or videos.  I used the "Post" option to create this image above.  ADOBE SPARK. Go to it. Live it. Dream about it.  Some other ideas to use this amazing free platform-

-(yes this is a scratched record.  Cue the sound effect).  FREE, you say?  Yup!  Free.  But, I digress...as I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted:

Some other ideas to use with this amazing, free platform in the music room:  recap your summer for your students at the beginning of the school year, create promotional images for your performances, send home stories or videos of a specific class home to parents, make proper/improper instrumental technique images to display around the room for your students.  The ideas are endless!