Tech for Sight-Reading Practice

                Many music teachers are still looking for that silver bullet that allows them to practice sight-reading quickly, effectively, and above all…DAILY! The challenge of passing out music and collecting it just for a five-minute exercise is inefficient. I have successfully used classroom book sets, like Rhythm Sessions for Strings by Gearhart & Gearhart and Bach and Before for Strings by Newell, but again, there is a small time loss in distributing and collecting these materials. Enter www.SightReadingFactory.com.

                www.SightReadingFactory.com is a random generator sight-reading website designed for every instrumental or vocal education instrument. The user can select an exercise to be generated for an individual instrument like solo oboe, or a heterogeneous group of instruments, like a string orchestra or mixed vocal ensemble. Next, the user chooses settings. There are six ability levels ranging from simple stepwise quarter and half note rhythms, all the way to triplet eighth notes leaping an octave and involving accidentals. Any major or minor key signature is available, as well as all basic compound and simple time signatures and tempo markings. The user can also choose how long of a study period s/he wants before a metronome begins to click off.

A screenshot sample of a Level 3 exercise for String Orchestra

                Beyond these basics, I maximize the tool with the “disappearing measure” feature. Accompanied by a metronome, students can hear the beat, and once a measure is finished it disappears. To take this further, when the exercise counts off in the beginning, I hold off the students’ performance two or four more beats so that the music disappears before they arrive at playing it. The skill our students learn is much like driving. We don’t look at the lines passing us on the highway (the measure we are playing). Instead, we look down the road at what’s coming (the measures ahead of us). Above all, 100% of our students are totally engaged in this activity.

                Other tricks that I use with Sight Reading Factory (SRF) include having students perform the excerpt in a different octave or completely transposed to another key. Interval reading comes into play, knowing how far to skip or leap in a foreign register. To emphasize learning of intervals, we utilize the companion website to Progressive Sight Singing, performing “flashcards” with our voices and solfege hand symbols that strengthen interval recognition up to a fifth (so far). There is more to come about this resource, but I find it couples well with SRF.

                SRF is affordable and worth every dime. A one-year teacher subscription is $34.99 with student account add-ons for $2.00 each, and they accept school purchase orders. The site offers great tech support and updates often. In a classroom, teachers need a large scale projected image hooked to the internet, and they are ready to go. I use a large overhead image, as well as a smaller SMART board image for our wide-ranging ensembles. If you are looking for that daily dose of sight-reading medicine, I encourage any music educator to give Sight Reading Factory a try.

The Flipped Music Classroom: How to "Handel" It

I began this school year with the flipped orchestra classroom in mind. I realized immediately that even more detailed planning is needed on my part to make sure the objective is clear to our students. First, the students need an understanding of the difference between rehearsal and practice. Rehearsal is that which takes place as a group; practice is the activity done by the individual, whether at home or at school. I sought to flip because I wanted to become more involved in the practice, the individual struggles and successes. Our first “flip” occurred when the students received 20 minutes each Tuesday to practice individually or in small groups while I walked around observing, assessing, and assisting only where it seemed needed (i.e. they fail to correct repeated mistakes). Following this guided practice, students then break into chamber groups where they can continue working on the classroom music, or they can work on student-chosen chamber music by some of the great composers.

Taking the flipped classroom even further, quite by accident I've had a group of students begin forming their own 15-piece chamber group during our 20 minute tutorial period. Right now, they are just enjoying running through tunes. While still in a nascent stage, the next step is that they lead themselves in selecting music, rehearsing, and making group decisions on what and when to stop and fix. Eventually, they could even switch instruments and teach each other’s instruments.

The model of a flipped classroom that I've always known includes teacher-created videos for the students to study at home. The closest comparison that I have witnessed is teachers and several university professors recording excerpts for the students so that the student may see a professional performing at a high level with the option to play along with that master. Taking this to the next level, a technology company called SmartMusic allows students to record and be assessed by the computer. While really great, my hesitancy here is that the students may become reliant on their eyes and not their ears to fix their mistakes. I guard against the video game mentality, regardless of how motivating it can be. Take Guitar Hero…I’ve found trained musicians find it less intuitive because music involves so many more parts of the brain than just lining up symbols and buttons.

YouTube videos, professional recordings, and now even companion DVDs to our method books are valuable resources that I encourage students to utilize. An especially useful YouTube channel comes from violinist, Todd Ehle, who has created 60 quick videos on numerous concepts of string playing, from the basics of posture to the finesse of advanced both strokes. We learn language best by imitating, and these resources are especially beneficial in the formative years as students are mimicking how to create beautiful phrasing lines and sounds. In the long run, I would hope that they form their own performance opinions and move away from just imitating the ideas of others.

The flipped classroom is an investment well worth the time and risk. Our ultimate goal should be that our students develop such a passion for learning ours or any subject that they are able to continue learning well past their days within our four walls. I am hopeful that we will continue developing a safe culture that allows us to take these risks. When we succeed, the student becomes the master. 

Tech Wars: from Home to School

In our home we have an iMac, Apple TV, personal and school iPads, iPhones for him and her, and even relic iPhones that serves as game systems for our boys or dedicated streaming audio players in far-to-reach places (think garage). It’s obnoxious. We use a wireless speaker system for whole-home audio. When it all works, we are none the wiser; when it doesn’t, it is intensely frustrating. Apple store galore, and what am I using to write this? An HP desktop computer.

I’ve heard the quote, “Apple products are for those who like to play. PCs are for those who like to work.” Each summer I become quite adept at using the iMac, especially with iMovie to create the annual “How to ENO” video. My iPhone is a wonderful tool for staying on top of communications (e-mail, Twitter, etc.). The primary balance is that I don’t let all of this tech push in on my family time and life. Above all, the lion-share of my output is done on a PC. With the use of Dropbox, I am able to work seamlessly on my home PC, laptops, or the four Edmond Public School desktop PCs that I utilize at various sites. I have tried Evernote to sync my work, but when it comes down to it, I am able to best produce using Microsoft products on a PC. Just today I used Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Publisher…and it’s our day off.

What does this mean as many of our schools consider a move toward wireless classrooms, in the cloud, using only Google’s suite of products (which continue to grow)? I have little apprehension about what comes next; I look forward to whatever it is. One of our greatest challenges in education, technology or not, is to continually create and to teach our students to be creative. Sir Ken Robinson’s widely viewed TEDTalk addresses creativity so well to say, “We shouldn't confuse ‘things not working’ with ‘therefore we shouldn't try anything.’” Our responsibility as creative change agents is to consistently evaluate if:

1. something is working and why/what parts.

2. something is struggling but may need more time.

3. something is not working and should be stopped.

4. something is working in one place but not another.

My primary concern regarding progressive changes to technology in the Edmond Public Schools is that, because of the size of even a small investment in such a large district, we may see something as struggling and thus give it more time, when in fact we should stop doing it. Likewise, because of our sprawling range of demographics from site to site, I hope that we continue trying new things, even if new ideas won’t work everywhere. Just as we expect students to process learning concepts differently, we should also expect success in one place and challenge in another even when dealing with the same new technology. We have a wide-ranging technology comfort-zone, and a key factor moving forward will be finding out what we know and building from there.

Tech in the ENO Classroom

I am a career teacher at Edmond North High School, now in my fourteenth year teaching orchestra and most recently a member of the technology committee. The growth of technology and its role in our teaching has greatly advance over the course of a decade, as one would hope. In my specific classroom, I have access to a classroom computer and two office computers, as well as strong wireless internet throughout the music facility. While students do not regularly use these computers, it is a convenience for me and the orchestra assistant to have two workstations in the office since we each spend over an hour a day simply working on administrative tasks of the orchestra, often simultaneously. The separate workstation in the classroom is necessary as it is located nearly thirty feet from the office computers. On the classroom computer, we utilize Powerpoint to scroll the daily lesson and announcements, as well as numerous websites including GoNoodle for physical stretches, Progressive Sight Singing, and Youtube, to name a few resources. Youtube is often used to show students examples of some of the highest quality orchestral performances in history. It is a truly invaluable resource.

The classroom has a ceiling mounted projector that casts an over a 12-foot image for our large classes to see. Due to its inaccessibility of height and large size, there is also a LightRaise SMART projector that turns any smooth surface into an interactive whiteboard. Ours is mounted over a whiteboard and is linked to the overhead projection and computer monitor through a four-way splitter. For use with the classroom projector is an AverVision document camera that I use to project images of method books and exercises, or to show large groups a change in bowings or other patterns in the sheet music. Also used with the computer and SMART board is a Slate, sometime called a Sled, that I use through Bluetooth to scroll through the Progressive Sight Singing examples without being tethered to the workstation.

An exception in our technology that few other classrooms have would be our pro-audio system that is connected to three ceiling-hung stereo condenser microphones. These allow for one-touch high quality recording. The stereo has Bluetooth connectivity that allows playback of numerous music tuning and rhythm apps through an orchestra-purchased iPad. Two favorite apps are Tonal Energy, a multi-function tuner, drone generator, recorder, and metronome, and Drumbeats Plus, which plays numerous backbeats and pop rhythms that add variety to our traditional warm-ups.

The only remaining need that I see at the moment is some sort of reflective device, like Apple TV, that would allow for display of iPad or other smart devices to our projector. However, the cost in frustration I have had with this technology’s reliability does not yet outweigh its benefits. Ultimately, the best technology for teaching stringed instruments is what the students hold in their hands each day: their stringed instruments, perfected for over 400 years!