IMEA Conference 2010: Day 1

I'm blogging live from the Illinois Educator's Music Educators Conference. Thanks to Dr. Neal Smith for pushing the higher ups to get us this access. I'm going to just update this post throughout my journey though presentations. Here's the first one!

Presentation 1: "Getting Webby" Clinician: Mrs. Brenda Muench
She showed us her classroom and now she's teaching us about using Skype. We're now talking to Zach G. who's a 2nd grader at her school. Wow, I need to start using Skype more. Especially to talk to friends and colleagues who are starting to spread out all over the country! She says she can use this to talk to experts in her classroom. Ex. Hear violins played through Skype since her school doesn't have an orchestra!

The next thing she shows my fiancee might enjoy, Listening Adventures this would be great for a elementary instrumental unit! (My favorite general music topic) New York Phil Kids is next she says older kids(3-5) go to the game room to check it out. There are a few neat games here, including some basic composition stuff.
What about composer projects? Classics for Kids includes podcasts on a lot of composers. This is from Cincinnati Public Radio. It also has printable bios, worksheets, wordsearchs, pictures..etc... Free stuff for instrumental lessons! Theory and free sheet music!

Need a Virtual Keyboard or virtual drumset? There they are! Here's a cool one called Play Auditorium cool game. Not a class activity, but I want to play with it! Free notation software? Here it is MuseScore. Free recording from your computer? Of course! Audacity layers, speed, pitch all there.

There was a bit more, but she started running out of time. So much stuff. Luckily, it's all available on her blog which is down in my "Freesen's Readin" list. Next up...

Presentation 2: "Google Me" Clinician: Carol Broos
Her Presentation it's all here because she's honest about how fast she goes! I should google Golden Apple Scholars...wow! Carol's Blog FYI. I need to check out this "prezi" thing...here I am reminding myself to Google that. I think for this one I'll just list what I want to work with in this one.
- Google Squared - a Google Labs search that will give you all the information in a table!
- Google Groups - set up for email activity and this could be useful.
- Google Maps - New tricks for an old dog! You can put in infomation and embed! Who knew!
- Google Alerts - right under my nose. Yet wasn't using it!
- Google Forms(through Docs) - I started playing with this, but I think I'm going to work on this more. Freezing columns, all the summary and data tools are great. I will be using this a lot more.

I really enjoyed Carol's presentation. I'm such a huge google fan(obviously I use blogger) Now the conference has started. I'm so excited. IMEA is really here!

Since this got long I'll probably do another post tonight. Then more tomorrow.

Today's Rehearsals Brought to You by

Today's Rehearsals were Brought to You by The Flip!!

I have been playing with a borrowed "tech toy" and I'm loving it. I have borrowed a "flip" video camera and even though it's white and pink, I find that I'm always finding a way to get it out and use it!

Most recently it recorded some rehearsal time earlier today at SIMS. I'm not really happy with the sound quality, but I don't think there's much out there that could beat the portability and ease of use for this device. If you've got something better let me know.

This video is a run-through "Christmas Proclamation" during 7/8 band rehearsal this afternoon. I try give the students at least one straight run-through per day so they have something to really play on during the (sometimes) tedious rehearsals during that last period of the school day. It's getting there, and lucky for us we still have 19 days until the concert!

This last video is just what happened when I turned the flip on for a bit of 6th grade rehearsal first this morning. This lovely band is what I see first hour MWF. They're a great group of kids and they're learning so much so fast.

I see a lot of great applications for video as a classroom tool. How are others using this type of technology to help students and themselves? Comments welcome as I am still collecting data for my presentation in January.