Caitlin Atwood EDU Blog

 For a Maker Studio lesson plan, I believe that I could incorporate something based on technology integrated into music for my students. From what I read in the different articles, what a Maker Studio is in different schools varies. Working with music technology could be a resource in the Maker Studio. Students could explore the intersection of these two areas by designing and creating musical instruments using Maker Studio materials, whether it be a physical thing that you could use or something electronic. I would start the class off by discussing the relationship between music and technology, especially in the music production scene in the modern day. After giving a general introduction to the Maker Studio, I would lead a brainstorming session where students could discuss different types of instruments and how these instruments produce sound. Materials needed would be any craft supplies that the maker studio has, which could vary from studio to studio. We would also use a sort o...

 The grade and subject area that I am hoping to teach in the future is high school band. I think one way that I could incorporate authentic data sources and data visualization activities into my classroom by doing a short lesson on the positive affects of being involved in music. I could find a graph to show students the differences between how students excel in school while involved in music, versus without. Some challenges or barriers that I would face while trying to incorporate data into my lessons is really....how would I find a place to put it in band rehearsals? Usually, music ensembles in high schools don't have a full class period like "core" classes would. They either meet at a shorter period of the day, or band and choir split a block. While I would want to show students this data for them to see how music can help them succeed, I would need to plan way ahead to figure out when the right time would be to present it to them. I would say that the way I would help...

 For one of our Ed Tech Lab meetings, we went down to the AR/VR lab in the library and discussed different apps/games we can use. For AR apps, the one app that I liked the most was the Skyview Lite. It was super fun to see different stars and constellations while learning some information about them. For the Virtual Reality portion, I tried to do the walk the plank game, but I got too scared to actually do it. It felt like I was actually about to fall off of it and it felt too real. I also tried doing the Google draw game and that was a lot of fun. The only problem I had with this game was that it kept going in and out and was lagging. (That made my head hurt and I felt dizzy from it)

 For the All Things Google activity, I decided to explore the music fun widget. For the first part of the activity, I had to recreate a song that was already made and put the blocks in the exact same spot. I was able to do this pretty easily because I had the template in front of me telling me where I needed to put the blocks. For the questions on this mystery song, it sounds familiar because I have heard it in the general media before. The piece sounds haunting and kind of sad, so I imagine this is some sort of funeral march. I think that this piece is Marche Funebre by Frederick Chopin. This was a fun game to mess around with, but I wish there were different options for tempo, rhythms and other things like that. I could see myself potentially using this to teach students about pitch and differences between high/low notes. I could also use this to teach what chords sound like.