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!