Introductions, Gender, and Amplification Every year in #introguitar (an open online guitar class I teach at my school, and which you should totally enrol in as a non-credit participant) I ask my students and our open learners to introduce themselves and their intentions to the group in a brief video. And rather than rehash a […]
Read more "Singing Taylor Swift Songs"As I mentioned in a brief thank you to Alec at our last class meeting, in many ways it feels as though I’ve been taking his course on The Blended Classroom for a few years now. When I joined Twitter back in… can it really have been 2009? Alec was one of the first people I […]
Read more "Adventures in Blended Learning"While it hasn’t blossomed with a wealth of open online participation (yet…?) this semester, the blended and open structure of #introguitar – as well as the new site design and digs courtesy of Alan Levine‘s WordPress blessings – has created an anthology of learning about guitar for both my own block of Introduction to Guitar, […]
Read more "The HS Music MOOC"Leading up to our first performances in #IntroGuitar, for credit students were asked to prepare brief introductions to their goals in these first efforts. Here is my introduction to the song I selected to perform, an original entitled “Judy and the Town.” While the song is a few years old, I have elected to focus […]
Read more "Learning Project: Performance Goals"Hey (#IntroGuitar) folks! Here’s a brief example of how you might contribute a course introduction during our first few weeks of class this semester. You can see many others here. While open online participants are free to jump in and begin on any particular assignment they like, even a short video introduction to yourself and […]
Read more "#IntroGuitar Course Welcome & Introduction"I have to thank TALONS (and #introguitar) alum Clayton for recommending the MelodyLab app that allows you to make multi-part video-harmonies with your phone. It might be a ways from replicating Matt Mulholland’s epic multi-part Ghostbusters theme song, but the free app introduces aspects of the loop pedal to video editing, offering this semester’s #introguitar crowd an exciting way […]
Read more "Split-Screen Storytelling"As a sort of follow-up to my last post, I wanted to share some responses I had for a few questions one of the TALONS asked me as part of his own In-Depth Study Research. 1. How long have you been playing the guitar? About thirteen years… I think. 2.At what age did you first […]
Read more "On Playing Guitar"Each spring the TALONS undertake an In-Depth Study, a five month “passion project” wherein they are asked to document their growth and learning toward personalized goals in learning a skill or craft. There are two universal goals for the In-Depth Study: 1. Know something about everything and everything about something. In school you are usually […]
Read more "An Open Learning Project"Identifying a research problem consists of specifying an issue to study, developing a justification for studying it, and suggesting the importance of the study for select audiences that will read the report. John W. Creswell While it acknowledges that “Participating in elections is the essential starting point of any democratic system,” Elections Canada’s own working paper […]
Read more "Identifying a Research Problem"My sister brought back a picture of some graffiti in Saskatoon a few summers ago that I ran with, writing one of my first songs that has continued to grow with me in the years since, and which continues to accompany me in new musical places. I’ve played this song in my kitchen by myself, […]
Read more "Graffiti: An old song with new friends at the GSGW Fall Jam"