Tutorial 9a
Monday 27th of April, 2020
For the tutorial this week, James lectured about BYOD (Bring your own device) in schools. BYOD is a program that allows all students to bring their own personalized technological devices in school, as well as allowing students to be practicing these devices to get more familiar with technological software and platforms.
As a concept, BYOD has been thought as ‘unnecessary’ and ‘banned’ until recent years, when it has been basically integrated into all of the learning in schools. However, I still think that there is a slight worry when teachers try to integrate BYOD into classroom programs, because there is a high risk of students just playing around and not really learning. I would argue that if teachers are able to integrate BYOD with proper preparation and management, it would definitely be considered a learning experience, and most likely a POSITIVE learning experience.
On the other hand, there is another concept called 1-to-1 computing. This concept is a program that enrolls students each with a device in order to access the internet, school LMS and various online resources. The term 1-to-1 comes from that fact that everyone has access to THEIR OWN device, furthermore, the devices are all exactly the same and is provided by the school. This would allow fairness because all students have started on the same starting line, as well as further removing the differences between different socio-economical backgrounds.
Looking at all of this information, there is definitely a huge amount of positives through this program, such as students starting equally with no disadvantages to other students and students given the same opportunities, as well as teachers being able to help all students with any problems that they encounter because they would only be required to understand a single technology.
The difference between BYOD and 1-to-1 has been blurred over the past few years, with schools recommending to parents what technology they should buy for their kids. This change reinstated the issue of socio-economic backgrounds and should really be provided by the school if they wish to implement technology into their learning courses.
Both of these programs really connect into one concept: connect technology into education. So why should students be disadvantaged if they are unable to get their hands on the newest iPad or MacBook?
Towards the end of the lecture, James and Rebecca (back again!) also kindly allowed us to test a few applications and their compatibility in different OSs and browsers, also noting down their purpose in music education and relevancy in education. I had tested Bemuse on my iPad. It ran quite smoothly, but the implementations of Bemuse is quite hard to argue for since it is a ‘game’. Sure, Bemuse can be used in a classroom environment and is definitely child-friendly. However, I’m not sure if parents would like to see their kids’ homework as: “get a new high score on a funny rhythm game”.
Tutorial 9b
Wednesday 29nd of April, 2020
This was the first tutorial that James has gotten us to use Soundtrap and Ableton live to create mix tracks!
This was an exciting lesson for me because I had always wanted to experience with mixing.
So first, we started in Soundtrap, where James has provided us with plenty of sample sources that he has kindly provided, we had to mix two samples from this list in Soundtrap.
So I quickly mixed and tested around with all of the tools in Soundtrap and created this.
The limitations of Soundtrap is easily seen because it was unable to change tempo, hard to change key and was quite basic in mixing tools.
Then, we moved on to Ableton Live. I have never really used Ableton Live before so this was a first experience. There was plenty of things to configure with and plenty of tools to work with.
James allowed us to continue work on mixing some samples, as well as providing us with the 3rd challenge of creating a baseline pattern for our mix. We used step sequencing such as this to program a simple, yet effective beat.
So using the same folder of samples, I mixed up a few tracks into Ableton Live, edited the tempo, cleaned up some of the inconsistencies in the baseline and voilà, created a mix that I completely forgot to save.
The experience, however, was incredibly valuable to me because of the possibilities in Ableton Live.
Would this be a great edition to implement in a classroom environment? Definitely. With some planning and source materials, we can definitely utilize Ableton Live in a classroom full of teenagers.
It does look a little complicated at first, with all these buttons and keys and everything, but kids are smart, they will figure it out techniques much faster than us.
While writing this blog post, I feel like most of my reflections have been about informal learning. Where students are given a task, provided with some tools and off they go completing tasks. Music is one of the subjects that allows this to work because of its close relationship to creativity. Informal learning with music really allows students to gain and also express their creativity through a variety of ways, and technology such as Ableton Live is perfect for students to express these ideas.
…
It even comes with dark mode!
Michael's Blog 