Week 5

This week, we learned a lot about software programs and how to evaluate them to assist in teaching in the music classroom. I enjoyed playing around with Music Ace. Although the graphics were not all that great, I could still see this approach being extremely effective in a music studio setting. If I were in a school district or school that focused on music, I could see it being useful as a classroom tool, but overall felt it's primarily focus user was in the private piano studio. I think the sequential areas of the software lessons were well thought out and met a lot of different learning styles. I also liked how the Music Ace had both the lesson mode and the game mode. Giving students an opportunity to gain new knowledge, reinforce knowledge taught in private lessons and then asses that knowledge in a fun format. I am definitely going to look into this more, once I start teaching privately this summer. When looking for other software programs, most of the lengths for the free trials that I was interested in, did not work. One that did work, was GNU solfege. I think that if this program could get a little more up to date, it would be a useful tool. Right now however, the graphics were prehistoric and I could not see my students getting interested in that. With video games as the number 1 source of entertainment for most students in the 6-8 grade range, it is important to find programs that match that style. Otherwise, they think...... "This is boring school stuff. With these thoughts in mind, is why I chose to do my software review over Smartmusic. As I have previously mentioned, this is a software program I have begun to implement in my classroom and I have fallen in love. I love that Smartmusic gives immediate feedback and allows the students to practice individually. The Diigo resource looks to be something I would like to explore more. Finding a certain amount of websites to bookmark for an assignment gave me a good sense of how the tool worked, however, not much in practical application. As I come across things that I like, I will continue to use this resource to see how I can implement this in my classroom more. This resource reminded me of the academic version of Pinterest. Much like Diigo, we bookmark things we like with the hope of returning to things once we need them. Pinterest also allows us to be social and see what others are pinning as well just like Diigo does.