In a few different broadcasts over the past year, I’ve messed around with some of the various filters and effects available with the free version of Nicecast and found its dials and visual interface both a lot of fun and helpful in the makeshift studios I’ve set up in my classrooms and house. With a […]
Read more "Early Demos from My New Fake Band"The Bears | We are the bears by GleneagleMusic Now that we have come to the final week of the semester and school year (where did it all go???), the Thirty Person Rock Band Project, since baptized as the Bears, is trying to make its various pieces “land” in time to showcase the fury of […]
Read more "We are the Bears"In a year that has seen much public discussion of the teaching profession in British Columbia, it’s important to do a few things every day to remind ourselves that we are incredibly lucky to do this job. This spring’s Thirty Person Rock Band project has made for many such opportunities, and with four weeks of […]
Read more "The Bears in their Natural Habitat"Among the more ambitious spontaneous projects I’ve attempted as a teacher, the 30 Person Rock Band project came out of a conversation with my guitar class about what our next endeavour should be: songwriting, another recording of individual or group progress, a performance, or… something a little bigger. Something we’ll discover as we go, together. […]
Read more "The Thirty Person Rock Band"Stretch your limits once in a while. You may find you have more range than you thought. This week’s prompt for the #Talons in-depth blogging gave me the impetus to indulge an idea I had yesterday after recording a brief video (the one above) as my own contribution to my guitar class’ assignment repository this […]
Read more "In-Depth Blogging, or Learning in Public (Part II)"Though I’ve been something of a stranger in the DS106iverse this time around so far, I have been thinking about the brilliant evolution of the course design – which Jim tells me is (at least part of) the genius of Martha Burtis. Specifically, I think the Assignment Repository is a glimpse of open classroom learning […]
Read more "Gleneagle Radio Bumpers"A few weeks ago I saw a post by my “Internet-twin” Jabiz Raisdana that included a few photos and a poem beginning, Poetry is Nothing… Poetry is nothing… – Based on a poem by Jabiz Raisdana by Bryanjack As I’ve had inspiration to do a few times before, I took Jabiz’ lines and picked up […]
Read more "Poetry is Nothing"Because your smartphone does, and can use it to bring you into our music classroom. Hint: Download a QR Code reader for your phone/mobile device, and have it scan the above code.
Read more "Do you know what this is?"And each hopefully for many years to come: my back yard, and a new guitar (third hand 1), decorated as a gift given to me today by the 2010-2011 Talons class. As I told them upon opening the case the guitar arrived in, “You wonderful, beautiful children 2!” For the infinite number of times that […]
Read more "Two things I'm going to enjoy this summer"My sister saw this poem scrawled on a wall in Saskatoon in the summer of 2010, and shared it with us when she got back. I copied it down and carried it around in a journal for a few months before turning it into this song: Graffiti Grafitti by Bryanjack
Read more "Saskatchewan Street Poetry"