Well the performances are done, the students did the work and I have to admit I’m rather proud of the results. Here are a couple of the final products, hopefully for your listening pleasure.
The project took a little bit of time to set up but it was well worth the effort. There were lots of ways this project could have gone wrong but as I reflect about it, I realize that some critical components of the project, made the difference between this project being a flop or a success.
- Screencasts – for Reducing Technical Difficulties – By creating screencasts of the instructions of how to complete the project I only received a minimal number of questions by email and was amazed that out of 90 students – only about 2 or 3 had difficulties with the technicalities of the project.
- Screencasts – for mastery of learning how to teach tech – Another important aspect of creating a screencast is that it really made me think through the steps of what I wanted students to do and to consider more carefully what might potentially go wrong in a project. This was my first time making a screencast and what I learned by in doing so, was that I really, really had to know what I was doing and what I wanted the students to know and do. My instructions were much clearer for this assignment because I was producing them for an audience. Just like my students who wanted to show that they knew what they were doing in their recordings, I wanted my students to have a good screencast so they would have confidence that I knew what I was doing. Having gone through the exercise twice I was well prepared when those one or two students did have a tech problem.
- Making it Public – Relevance, Accountability & Credibility – By making the project public the students had an audience and really rose to the occasion. It was important to them that they play their best because their peers would be listening. They took the instructions and the recording seriously because there was an audience. There were minimal issues with incompletion of the assignment and the public site allowed students the opportunity to compare their work with others. Once some exemplary recordings were posted, many of the students asked if they could re-record and posts because they thought they could do better. The public site turned listening to hundreds of recordings of student work into a music teacher’s dream come true because they were quality performances rather than “last minute – this is all I could muster.”
- The Point of it All and Making Abstract Concepts Concrete– The students understood that the point was not just the performance. It was an authentic assessment of listening and evaluating music (two of our major curriculum standards in music.) In band we are always talking about finding the right balance…adjusting the dynamics according to what you are playing – melody, harmony, counter melody, bass or the pyramid of sound. We work on this every day on our instruments and had only ever evaluated it as what we had accomplished as an ensemble. This project helped in allowing students to be evaluated individually on the concepts that we work on every day. They each became the conductor or sound mixer for their own ensemble, and I was able to evaluate their understanding of the concept. This rather abstract concept suddenly became more concrete and by associating their every day playing to a sound mixer – students had a more hands on experience to relate blend and balance to within our ensemble performing experiences.
- Collaboration – There were two parts to this project: the individual postings of recordings and the “virtual collaborations” of the ensemble members. In a live small ensemble– chamber music experience it seems no matter who well the groups are planned some students end up in a fabulous group and the ensemble would take off they wild fire and others will end up in a group that just never seems to move forward. By collaborating in the virtual world – everyone in the ensemble had equal opportunity to participate with whoever they wanted to. There were no weak-groups, no wasting time visiting rather than practicing, no arguing about music, no members contributing less than the others and the resulting ensemble was one based on music rather than middle school student politics.
Having completed the project I had some unexpected surprises and bonuses for having spent the time to do the extra work on this project. I think many music teachers worry about doing projects like mine because it is yet another “extra thing” that might take away from concert preparation or be a distraction to the other practice that students should be doing on their instruments. With each new project I take on that is a little “out of the box”, I become further convinced that I’m doing the right thing, because having completed this project, I also know that the concert won’t suffer. Tonight we perform – live, and the students are ready to do a fantastic job. There was no last minute music teacher having a fit about wrong notes, balance and dynamics, but rather an ecstatic music teacher because she has an ensemble full of engaged, thinking, listening band students. Allowing students a greater variety of learning experiences in relation to the concepts we teach in band produces a band of “excited about making and learning about music” students and a band of knowing musicians. The students are actually playing at a higher level than I had imagined they would at this point in the year and I am thrilled. There were a minimal number of technical difficulties throughout the project, very few incomplete assignments and the majority choosing to do the most advanced levels of the rubrics – exceeding expectations for the number of recordings and mixes that they made. The project took a minimal amount of “instructional time” away from what we were doing in the band classroom.
As a culminating activity, celebration and final assessment, the students will do an “American Idol” style electronic vote for the ensemble that achieved the best bend and balance. We will have a winner and many honorable mentions, but the reality is I already know the winners. After listening to each of the ensembles I know each of my students is a winner in what they accomplished not only as a performer, but as an independently thinking, listening musician. They are richer in their confidence, knowledge and skill in this area and as a result I am the grand winner of having a most amazing band.
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