Thing #17

MP3 files (and MP4 with itunes) have taken over the music world. We use a digital recorder to record our students for tryouts and tests. We also have posted mp3 files of our show music on our website so that our students can listen and learn from them. We also download music from publishers websites and allow our students to listen to it. Many publishers provide that service for free, but some charge about the same as itunes. I do have itunes and an ipod and I download music for personal use all the time. My church also podcasts the services and if I miss one, I just download the podcast and listen to it on my ipod. However, one thing we have not done in our classroom is to subscribe to a regular podcast. I can certainly see the benefit from this idea, however because it can provide a regular link from an individual student to a master teacher or performer on his or her instrument. For instance, one of the podcasts I listened to was a saxophone teacher/performer and his were all about techniques for playing and improving saxophone performance. If a student were to attend a lesson with a master teacher once a week, it would cost a lot of money, so not only would it be convenient and beneficial for the student to subscribe and listen to a regular podcast, it would save him or her a lot of time and money. I previewed several of the music education podcasts. Some of them were well done and well organized, some were not. There were a good variety of topics considered and covered. I also looked around on the general education podcasts. Most of them were either too technical for me, or just did not apply at all to anything I do in the classroom.