Web 2.0 Tool Alert: uJam

by Michael Grzelak

Just wanted to highlight an awesome web 2.0 tool that I started to use after a conversation with a fellow teacher on Twitter (#edchat). It is called uJam and it allows a person to create a free account to make free songs.

I have zero musical ability (I am not lying... it's pretty bad), but this site does not care about my lack of musical ability.

There are four different ways to use the site for music creation; the way I used it was simple -- I recorded my voice.  My focus was giving directions for a test. After I finished recording (and I did attempt to sing a little) the site was able to sync my voice and speed to a variety of background music options.  I was able to change the style of my voice, the tone, the pace, and so much more.  It was awesome!  If you do have the ability to read notes... well... still check it out as you can manipulate certain features to make your songs sound better.

My students thought my song was dorky, but sometimes that is the role of the teacher in order to gain some interest.

Have your students play around with the site.  They will love it and it can be used for project creation.  It has an endless amount of creative potential and your students can actually create a song of their own and save it as an mp3 file.

Imagine your students with headphones on, but instead of listening to their songs they are listening to class-created music that will help them review/learn content.

Only 70 years behind the times...

And you think your school is behind the curve?

The Vienna Philharmonic has finally caught up to the 'War Years'... as in the 1940's.

To accompany your easy listening, here's a bit of knowledge about what the computer landscape looked like in 1945 courtesy of the Computer History Museum.

On Changing it Up

Been teaching my son to hear music.

Confirm: I've been teaching my son to 'hear' music. He's eight years old and has been playing trumpet for two years. Loves jazz and has posters of Miles Davis taped to the wall next to his bed.

But early on it was all drone all the time. Long notes played for as long as possible, generally in the bottom range of the trumpet, and repeated over and over and over.

I wonder why this was. After all, he was taking music class and learning songs. But when we'd play together improvising, he was just droning on.

Now, as a guy with a foot in the world of free improvisational music, I really didn't mind this per se; but I did feel like as an eight-year-old he needed to think about trumpet in a different way and get the experience of changing it up.

So I changed my instrument.

Whereas I had been playing mostly guitar and piano, I switched to double bass.

And suddenly his sound started to expand. And he started to bring snippets of melody into our improvisations. And his trumpet got more talkative. And he seemed to 'get it' more.

We often forget that as teachers, we are the ones who set the tone. And the instruments we choose to play -- sometimes out of habit more than pedagogical conviction -- directly effect the way our students both learn and express themselves.

So be willing to change it up. Don't let a tool become a given.

Keep yourself on your toes and you'll start to hear melodies in your students.

High Zero

All teachers lead double lives.

Mine is as an improvised music festival organizer. And that festival happens this weekend in Baltimore.

If you are around town, check out the High Zero Festival at Theatre Project. This is the 11th year of the fest which teams up free improv musicians from across the globe together in one-of-a-kind ensemble performances.

The performances are ecstatic and eclectic and way out-of-compartment in scope and ambition; you get to take part in the experience of seeing musicians really go out on a limb -- sometimes managing a precarious leap to a hitherto unknown branch and sometimes missing.

It's an exhilarating experience and we like to think it's pretty darn unforgettable.

Alas, Math.

In the case of the paperless math resources, I thought it was interesting that by-and-large in terms of integrating tech into math teaching (at least at the secondary level) the math folks seem so far behind the folks in the humanities. And that's hardly the fault of math teachers; rather, as many folks have pointed out, it's a problem with hardware and the ways by which we think about physically using a computer.

In a serious way, if you don't have a Tablet, you don't have the full applicability of tech integration to learning math.

Whereas in the humanities, typing itself is hardly a detriment. And the keyboards we use today are really no different than the typewriters of our past. Therefore, tech in the humanities was quickly and easily able to get into the business of creating hyperlinked text databases, encyclopedias, and online books whereas math teachers were left to struggle with the question of how to 'show work' via a keyboard.

And I think it's especially pertinent to note this advantage that the humanities have had whereas so often it is suggested to us that math and science lead the technological revolution.

Certainly math and science have been the developmental foreground for digital technology, but what are the most popular uses of that tech? A cursory look suggests that it's all about reading the news, sharing photos, and listening to music.

Journalism, Photography, and Music.

Hmm. I wonder how many folks would consider that triumvirate at the top of the tech revolution?

And (I know it's a loaded question, but what the heck) why then don't we give the same elevated position in education to journalism, photography, and music that we do to math?

Could you imagine what high schools would look (and sound) like if journalism, photography, and music were four-year requirements?

Here's to hoping the technicians designing computers actually catch up to the digital needs of math teachers and their students. And here's to the folks in the humanities and arts who are using tech in authentic ways everyday.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely High School Band

Now this is a project: Band Director Brian Rabuse, of the Central Berkshire Regional School District, led the Wahconah High School Band And Chorus in a performance of the entirety of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band!

Catch recordings of these amazing performances here. For my money, 'When I'm 64' has never sounded better.

This is a clear demonstration of a teacher and his students 'getting it'.

Why 'getting it'?

Well, I think it's a matter of collaboration merging with vision. It fundamentally underlines exactly the sort of practice that we strive for in our classrooms.

But, you counter, isn't this exactly the sort of project that undermines all your ed tech wonkiness? After all, you don't need computers and Internets to sing and perform music!

Yes. You are absolutely right. I don't need anything but my heart and lungs to sing music.

But think about this, perhaps, from the point of view of the listener.

I have no idea where Wahconah High School is. In a previous age, if I was ever going to have heard about the goings-on of Sgt. Pepper and the Wahconah Band, it would have had to have been through the medium of a proper broadcasting venue. Perhaps the local news would have done a story that was then picked up on by 60 minutes and was then shown as a two-minute clip at the end of a program. But, probably not.

Or perhaps the concerts might have been recorded and put out on CD; and the majority of these CDs would have wound up either in the hands of Wahconah Band's family members or the band director's basement. Probably, most definitely, they would not have made their way to me.

Instead, I get a Tweet around 10PM last night. It's a link to the audio blog of the project. I immediately listen to the concert in full as I blog about it and ReTweet the link out to my network of several hundred Twitterers.

I don't even know where it goes from there. Are you hearing about it (and hearing it) for the first time?

Just in terms of the idea of how this information was distributed, you have evidence of the power of our connected networks. And students can learn from that process just as well as having learned via the process of learning the music to begin with. This band project then becomes much more than even just the amazing concert experience it was. It becomes a lesson in how ideas get passed around the world.

Visit Wahconah and leave a comment. Let them know what it means to live in the global network. After all... it's Within You and Without You.

The Music of the Bee Gees Makes Me Want to Destroy Things

The music of the Bee Gees makes me want to destroy things.

I should give some context, perhaps. You see, I live in a very old house built during the brief tenure of William Henry Harrison as commander-in-chief of these States and therefore my wife and I often find ourselves spending weekends doing things like reframing doorjambs and replacing kitchen floors. This last weekend we demolished our bathroom -- taking out all of the walls, fixtures, and plumbing from the "modern" 1927 addition to the house and replacing everything with more viable alternatives.

And throughout the demolition process, we listened to the Bee Gees' Greatest Hits. On repeat.

This is a tradition that started years ago when we bought the old house. Back then it had holes in the roof and no working front door; you couldn't safely walk across the dining room floor for a while without fear of fall through into the basement. We worked on the house for weeks to make it livable and to pass time we listened to music on the portable cd player. Only problem was -- and this is inexplicable and embarrassing for an old punk rocker like myself -- the only cd we had in the house was the Bee Gees' Greatest Hits.

And so a tradition was born. Each time we demolish some part of the house, we listen to the Bee Gees. And inevitably, whenever I hear 'Tragedy' or 'More Than a Woman' played at the shopping mall or at the doctor's office, I immediately begin to develop a desire to swing a sledgehammer through drywall.

I tell you this because I have been thinking a lot recently about the power of music to 'locate' us in a place. When I was growing up, my mother always yelled at me for listening to music while I was doing my homework; but I think it rather eased my mind and made me more interested in the work at hand. I listened to jazz incessantly all through college and still can't hear Miles or Monk or Dolphy without totally grooving into my analytical state of mind.

And so, in opposition to the advice of past mentors, I most often have music playing in class. I stream everything directly from Pandora which allows for some useful pedagogical techniques. Pandora is an Internet-based music system within which you can create your own 'radio stations' which then stream music based upon what artists or styles you 'seed' the station with.

So, first, because I can set the general range of what is going to play (in terms of style or genre) I have an idea about what we're going to listen to, yet I happily remain surprised myself at what often come out of the speakers. In other words, just having music play softly in class -- and allowing Pandora to choose what we'll listen to on a song-by-song basis -- actually helps invigorate my own very audio-oriented mind. Sometimes I'll hear something I either had never heard or something I haven't heard in a long time and I'll suddenly feel a spark go through me pushing me to dig further into whatever matter at hand we are covering in class.

Second, music is a wonderful class management tool. I will often sit down and talk with the class before assigning an in-class small group project. I promise them that we can listen to music so long as they keep on track. On those occasions when we have individual work to do, the music often transforms our admittedly rather mundane classroom into a swanky cafe where the students actually tell me that they feel different about doing work than in other classes.

Third, music and sound is absolutely the most common yet least utilized pedagogical tool. When I am leading a discussion about Baroque Italian art in Art History, I've got Pandora set to play Italian Baroque music. When I'm teaching loops in my Digital Audio class, we listen to Hip-Hop. And none of the students have yet to put together why we listen to so much Brazilian and Cuban music during Latin class.

But they will.

Because I am convinced that the audio-locations set into their minds and memories through the streaming of hour-upon-hour of Portuguese-rendered Tropicalia will act like a bookmark ever linking the Romance Languages to their Latin Roots.

Check out Pandora. Just refrain from playing any Bee Gees while I'm around.