James Humberstone

It will be no surprise to hear that I really relished the opportunity to rewrite the Sydney Conservatorium’s course Technology in Music Education this year. It was one of those tasks that was only difficult because I could write a 26 week course rather than a 13 week course (many of the 1h50m lectures have about 4 hours of material in them anyway), and it’s a three credit course, so I’ve had to wind back the challenges I wanted to set my lucky students. Well OK, not wind back, but make reasonable demands on them to pass, and still ask them to reach for the sky. Ethic of excellence, and all that.

If you’re interested in having a look at what’s in the course, you can see the outline here. I created this page as HTML5 in Hype, then worked out how to embed all the CSS and Javascript in Blackboard – email me if you would like me to make a tutorial… it makes the average Blackboard site look a little more interesting than usual!

As you’ll see if you explore that site, we started off with some provocations about the goodness (or not) of technology in (music) education. After concluding that we need to be engaged with this field to remain relevant, but keep an eye on the research and not get carried away with any hype cycles, we undertook four weeks of skills training. We have looked at how DAWs/sequencers, notation software, recording processes, video editing, social media, gamifaction, self-publishing and more can be useful or even inspirational in music education, but it will be in the next four weeks that we’ll consider what this means in our lives as teachers and our students’ lives as 21st century citizens.

Please be involved!

If you’ve looked through the assessments the students undertake, you’ll see that the very first task is to establish an online presence and take part in social media as part of their study in this course. This is where I’d like your help. Below is a list of their mostly newly-established websites. You should find, at the very least, a blog from each lecture and what they thought about it. A few of them (and all of them ultimately, hopefully), will have looked beyond the lectures, found more information online, and summarised their own opinions, perhaps challenging mine or augmenting the information I have provided in that short 1h50m each week. Please choose a few at “random”, follow them, comment on their blogs, mentor them, ask them for their Twitter handle… whatever you can. Please welcome to the the community of international music education that is so vibrant online.

(Some students are still just finding their feet. I’ve put an asterisk after the name of students who have blogged about most of our lectures/discussions, so they’ve said plenty you could comment on.)

• Jay (NJ Zhou-Nguyen)* njmtme.wordpress.com
• Liz Jigalin* elizabethjigalin.wordpress.com
• Tim Payne* tpaynesmusic.wordpress.com
• Erin Hendry* http://thesecondmusicbox.tumblr.com 
• Jordan Smith* http://jordansmith312.wordpress.com
• Xinyang Iris Li http://xinyangirislichinesemusic.wordpress.com/
• Edward Hampton* http://edwardhampton1.wordpress.com
• Tyler Barnes http://tylerbarnesmusic.wordpress.com
• Alexandra Bell* http://abel2585.wordpress.com/
• Johnny Lam http://lamjohnny.wordpress.com/
• Andrew Challinor: https://twitter.com/abchallinor
• Lexie Ede* http://lexieede.wordpress.com/
• Nick Savvas  http://savvysavvas.tumblr.com
• * http://mmet5032.wordpress.com
• Anna http://annabanana1819.wordpress.com
• Mark Rossman markrossman.wordpress.com
• Joel http://thewordofjoel.wordpress.com/
• Tom Ross* http://tomalfross.wordpress.com/
• * http://cmtechaosb.tumblr.com
• Andrea Young: andreakyoung.wordpress.com/
• Grace Patten http://gracepatten.tumblr.com/
• http://bloggingaboutmued4002.wordpress.com/
• Lachlan McDonald http://lokomcdonald.tumblr.com/

NB because some students don’t want to partake in social media, if their website URL or landing page doesn’t give away their name, I have removed it from the list. Oh, and we’re discussing stuff with the Twitter hashtag #SCMtech (Sydney Conservatorium of Music Technology), as the title might suggest, so please ambush that online too!

Thanks for your help!