Participated in two live sessions on the ETMOOC so far. Yesterday was a short session about Twitter and today we had a session on social bookmarking and content curation. The Twitter session was helpful – but mostly it talked about the tech side, which I’m already familiar with. I know how to use Twitter, but how do I really use Twitter in my classroom? I was hoping to get some more information and ideas along the lines of Twitter in the classroom, but it was helpful as it talked about using Twitter to expand your PLN. Basically you need to follow people, start a stream of content and ideas, and get involved in the conversation.
Today I sat in on the Social Bookmarking and Content Curating session. I’ve been using Diigo for a few years now, but never really thought of using it as a part of my PLN – as a tool to help me reach other music educators. Today’s session was very helpful on how to do just that with Diigo. The session also talked about content curating – a term that was new to me. Basically curating seems to be more about collecting specific content about specific topics and sharing it in a way that collects and organizes the content. They gave two really interesting sites for curating. Scoop It and Learnist. Of the two I was really interested in using Learnist as it seems it’s being built specifically for educators, but they do not allow new users to create content. Useless as I want to start doing this NOW. By the time I get an invite to add my own content I’ll already be using another web tool. Learnist also has no way of contacting anyone for assistance or to request access to create content.
This evening I’ll be looking into Scoop It – which seems to be more broad based in it’s users. In the past I’ve used another similar tool called Gimmie Bar, which collects content, and is beautiful for graphics – bit it does not have the connectivity of Diigo.
How to use these tools? Recently I’ve been toying with the idea of writing my own music theory textbook. Even if I don’t publish it – I’d like to create my own textbook with all of the content that I like – to teach the subject my way. I’ve been teaching music theory (fundamentals of music) and an advanced placement theory course for several years now. I use several different textbooks and sources, but none of them are perfect. I’ve also been recently using several online resources for music theory including NoteFlight (music writing software hosted online) and eMusicTheory.com (a website that allows students to run through practice drills and tests in ear training and basic music theory skills) What I’d really like to do is create my own online textbook with part of it being a gallery of other websites and resources pertaining to music theory.
I really enjoyed the two live sessions that I’ve participated in so far. Looking forward to working through the ETMOOC and hopefully connecting with some other music educators and expanding my knowledge of educational tech while expanding my PLN.