August 14, 2008-Question 3:
a. Please conduct a search of music education blogs, find your favorite, and give us a description.
b. On our wiki site of www.msumusictech.wikispaces.com: Define one of the following terms in your own words:
i. MIDI
ii. AIFF or WAV
iii. MP3
iv. RAM
v. ROM
vi. GM
vii. SMF
Answer the following question on the course blog site by 11:00 am on Friday
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a. I really enjoyed the Music Ed Lounge, An open forum for music teachers. The site is maintained by Steve Engel. He teaches in California, and directs instrumental ensembles for grades 3 through 8. He also enjoys composing and arranging for beginners. What I teach is very similar to his, and I also compose for my younger students. I liked the site because of its simplicity, look, and the topics. He doesn’t have an overwhelming amount of topics, but the ones that he’s written about are concerns that all music educators have to face. He writes in a clear manner, and I’ve enjoyed reading this blog.
b. RAM is random access memory. It is computer memory that programs use. There are two types of RAM, DRAM and SRAM. DRAM is dynamic random access memory and is more commonly used. SRAM is static random access memory.
Comment by Andrew Lyman — August 14, 2008 @ 5:58 pm
I really enjoyed “Music is Not for Insects.” First, the layout. Sometimes I visit blogs and get overwhelmed by how much stuff is on the blog…and I end up not reading any of it. This blog was more streamlined with minimal ads (in fact, I don’t think I saw any). Second, the language. It’s clear and easy to follow. And the blog has some funny moments. Third, the variety of topics. It has resources and information about things related to music education and music technology but it has news about other areas of music as well–for example, he posts an entry about guitars made out of automobile mufflers ad puts a video of it (actually, a link) on the blog.
I would like to see entries put up more frequently (the most recent entry was July 25th) but I understand that we all have lives outside of computer and blogging. I would also like to see a bio of the blogger–when you read neat blogs like this, I think it’s natural to wonder about the person’s background and his/her career.
I will be doing the definition in our wiki page.
Comment by HaNa Chang — August 14, 2008 @ 8:18 pm
HaNa and Andrew,
Great posts about blogs!
Andrew–I had not read Steve’s blog. After reading your comment on it, I went and checked it out. I really like his posts, especially the one on 3 classroom rules.
HaNa - Ken’s humor and style of writing is superb. He usually blogs many times a week. I have a feeling that he is currently on vacation and will be blogging again very soon.
Amy
Comment by awillis2 — August 14, 2008 @ 9:25 pm
GM is General MIDI. This is a system of standardizing the location of sounds on a MIDI electric keyboard so that files can be shared between different keyboards and computers.
Comment by Mickey — August 14, 2008 @ 10:01 pm
I really liked the Music Ed Lounge, a lot of the things he said I could easily relate to. Especially asking what to do with the percussion section, this year I had to many percussion students who were not motivated, and it ended up making the students who wanted to do well suffer unfortunetely. I think I’m going to try out his tip of possible starting them out on bells first, and then moving them to the snare drum.
I also liked the blog on “You don’t get what you don’t ask for”. I can relate to this because I’m trying to convince the high school band director to just submit the purchase order for new marching percussion and see what happens. It is true, you don’t get it until you ask for it, I know for the most part I’m very lucky. If I need something, I usually get it, it is at the point where the general music teachers are now asking me for favors because they know I can get it for them. The only reason that I can figure out how this happens is because I have created an excellent music program, and I have complete support from 5 out of the 6 principals.
Comment by Samuel Constant — August 14, 2008 @ 11:25 pm
I went to Amy’s blog. Yay Amy! It was all about general music, and general music and technology. I can count on it for the year because the blog has postings every few days. Unlike some blogs, the page doesn’t carry the “running” conversation with commenters so I had to open the comments section to get to them. She shares other peoples lesson plans and articles. People like me how have no inclination to start a blog but loves to exchange ideas through email and (dare I say it) snail mail. I found the blog highly readable with a clean lay-out.
Comment by Mickey — August 15, 2008 @ 8:58 am
Thank you Mickey! — Amy
Comment by awillis2 — August 15, 2008 @ 9:01 am
After checking out a bunch of blogs, I ended up back where I began, at James Frankel’s blog. I’m definitely adding this one to my RSS feed! (Just kidding-I don’t really know what an RSS feed is, but I know it has something to do with keeping updated with certain blogs. Amy, do you know how it works?)
Frankel’s blog had information about everything I wanted to know about-the latest portable gear and software and also music ed/tech events. His blogroll really is a great collection of blogs which I’ll be checking for lesson plan ideas and general music ed info.
Comment by Dave Stasiak — August 15, 2008 @ 10:14 am
Hi Dave,
RSS feed-Rich Site Summary-is a way to subscribe to a website that changes information frequently, like a blog, a newscast, etc.
Jim’s blog is one of the best!
Amy
Comment by awillis2 — August 15, 2008 @ 10:48 am
GM stands for general midi. Digital music having its own language needs to be transmitted between instruments. In order to have a standard format for creating or organizing the playback of the sound information a general midi sound list numbering system is used. This set up provides consistency among various electronic digital instruments. Each MIDI Channel can be assigned a specific number instrument on the list of 128 sounds. Whenever one of the 16 standard MIDI channels is assigned a number from the sound list, that channel will play that dedicated instrument sound which ranges from, for example, piano
(#1 on the sound list) to Teiko drum (#93 on the sound list) etc. Be advised that although general midi is standard, the specific piano sounds may vary among different sound modules. One piano sound may be brighter or duller than your original.
In looking at the blogs I liked the MUSIC MATTERS AND CREATIVE KIDMUSIC BLOGS. They were not too distracting with other miscellaneous information lurking on the sides and there were practical, informative topics presented. I also liked the the resources on the MUSIC MATTERS blog.
Comment by Debra Bono — August 15, 2008 @ 10:52 am