Personal Growth Plan

Tai Kimmerly

Carolyn McCarthy, Dr. Sandra Plair, and Jodi Spicer

CEP-810 Teaching for Understanding with Computers

05/04/11

Personal Growth Plan

As a music teacher, there are many forms of technology that can benefit my classroom. There are several reasons I would like access to this technology. The first being engagement. My subject lends to engaging children, but the level always increases when I add some sort of technology component. For instance, I once lost my voice and walked around all day with a wireless keyboard on a string hanging around my neck. The computer was connected to the television, so everything I said showed up in text on the screen. They were mesmerized.

My second goal is assessment. Often times, assessment needs to be a one on one thing in a music classroom. I would like to explore ways of involving technology to do this more efficiently. I developed a Jeopardy game that should work with our school’s clicker system (CPS), but the two software versions are not compatible. The project has been pushed to the side until I can either figure out how to make them work together, or until I find software or technology more suited to the task.

Another goal is to become a technology source for my building. We were discussing the new publishing center that is a big hit in our school’s media center. The main goal of the center is to get students excited about writing and increase quality. Anyone can see work published in the library. The drawback is that there is not enough space. Maybe I could propose a similar project using Google Docs. The students would still be publishing their work for others to see, but on a much larger scale.

There are many ways I would like to increase my skills with technology. First, I know very little about how to work my mp3 player. This could be a tremendously helpful, time saving thing for me to understand and use. I would also like to increase my knowledge of music programs that are available for free online. Often times, only smaller versions of the software I need are available via the internet. For instance, a great program for music classes is Super Duper Music Looper. An express version is available online, but with reduced features, including the inability to save a project.

That being said, my knowledge and use of technology is constantly growing. When I was searching for notation software online, I came across Noteflight. It is basically a music notation cloud computing program. I had completely forgotten about it until today when a student made up a melody on the keyboard. We wrote it down and entered it into the program. He had a printed, professional copy of the music he wrote before he left the classroom. These are the things I would like to do on a regular basis, involving situations and programs that I have not even thought of yet.