ETC_Final_Project

Relevant and Innovative Learning Scenario (RILS) Plan

Overview

This Relevant and Innovative Learning Scenario will be used as a culmination of concepts and ideas learned throughout the school year as well as a means to expose the learners to web 2.0 tools. In a collaborative environment, they will have to be creative as well as skilled enough to create harmonies or counterpoint.

1) Target Audience - My Target audience will be high school aged chorus students (13 to 18)

2) Materials–

• 1.     Computer – for recording or video
• 2.     Computer – for web 2.0 tool
• 3.     Musical instruments
• 4       Board and marker for concept mapping

3) Objectives– At the end of this scenario the learner will be able to:

• 1.      evaluate what makes a hook effective
• 2.      discuss and analyze components of a catchy commercial or hook
• 3.      identify hooks or commercials that were effective to them
• 4.      create a jingle or commercial for an established product or business that includes a melody and harmony or counterpoint that a classmate would remember at a later period

4) Procedure–

• 1.     The entire class will have a discussion to evaluate what makes a hook effective
• 2.     The teacher will lead a discussion on creating a definition of what is meant by effective
• 3.     Discuss and analyze (concept map) components of commercials that are catchy to them
• 4.     The class will Identify hooks or commercials that meet the definitions of effective that they created
• 5.     The class will be divided into groups of four or five members to create a jingle or commercial for an established product or business that has a melody and a portion in harmony or counterpoint
• 6.   Go to ujam.com and create an account.
• 7.   Follow the directions and sing the jingle into the program.
• 8.   Follow the directions on the site to correct the timing and the tempo
• 9.   Chose accompaniment styles
• 10. Make any other necessary editions and save the file to be played for others  

5) Web 2.0 Tool– ujam is a tool that creates accompaniments for melodies that are sung or played into the tool via the computer. Included are choices of accompaniment styles and many other editable features. 

6 ) Social Participation/Social Learning– Students will be divided into groups of about four or five in order to create the jingles. They will collaborate on deciding which product or business to advertise, making the jingle itself and creating the harmonies or counterpoint.

7) Making Connections– The learners will connect with previous knowledge because they will identify jingles that were effective for them and they will use that model to make their own. Also in the chorus class the learners learn to sing melodies as well as harmonies and counterpoint. The jingles must have a melodic component to it as well as either portions of harmony or counterpoint. Their learning will be deeper as they will have to create the harmonies or counterpoints as opposed to them being taught them. It will be relevant as commercials are something they hear everyday though sometimes little thought is put into the purpose of them. To many jingles are just entertaining and listeners don't even realize that they are being sold something. This is an opportunity for my audience to explore being a creator rather than just a consumer.

8) Create/Produce – The learners must create a 30 second jingle for a known product or business. It must include melody and harmony or counterpoint.

9) Assessment Rubric

	Excellent 95-100	Good 70-94	Unacceptable 50-70
Melody	There was melody		There was no melody
Harmony/counterpoint	3 or more part harmony/ 3 or more simultaneous melodic lines	2 part harmony/2 simultaneous melodic lines	There was no harmony or counterpoint
Memorable	Others remembered the whole jingle	Others remembered a portion of the jingle	No one remembered the jingle
Intonation	Harmonies and melodies were in tune	Harmonies and melodies were close
Time	30 seconds	Plus or minus 1-5 seconds off	Plus or minus 6 or more seconds off

10)Reflection 

      1.     The students will reflect on the experience by attempting to remembers other groups’ jingles on another day and then they will decide on which was the best or most effective

      2.     As this is a slight revision of a scenario that I’ve used before I’ve already taken steps to improve this process by including the discussions about effectiveness. I will also do what is referred to in the military as an after action review or report (AAR) to note triumphs and failures for tweaking in similar future activities. This will be written down as soon as possible to account for deterioration of memory.

Documentary on a high school jazz choir's use of the web 2.0 tool ujam.

PE5-uJam

The assignment that will require the use of this tool requires that the students create something that includes harmony or counterpoint. However, my issue of concern is that uJam recommends that only one voice be recorded. 

Because the program recommends this, I experimented with adding a second voice afterwards, but if it is possible, I couldn’t figure out how to do it. 

However, there is a level control for the recorded instrument (voice) and it can be turned all the way down. 

The solution to this particular issue is that the students will not be able to record the finished product to uJam. Instead they will have to make their jingle with only one voice, create the instrumental track in uJam, turn the vocal track all the way down and then use the ujam track as an instrumental track for a live performance that will include the required harmony or counterpoint.

This program requires absolutely no expertise in anything musical so essentially it removes all barriers to creativity. Though I am very far from a great singer, I made up my jingle and uJam recognized everything about it including melody, tempo and harmony. I chose a style and I had a jingle resembling what is required for my relevant and innovative learning scenario in no time. Once I saved it, it became listed in the “My Songs” section of my account. 

My learners will definitely have a lot of fun with this tool far beyond the given assignment. Thanks for discovering and sharing this tool Joe!

This is my creation...

PE4_ujam

I saw Joe’s post about ujam but I decided to go and look for something different. I found an interesting looking tool named soundation but unless you get a paid subscription you wouldn’t be able to save anything plus it required some kind of a facility on an instrument so ended up looking at ujam. There was a tutorial there and I was quite impressed with all that it said it could do. Because of the fact that no musical skills were required to be able to use this tool, I could see how this tool could be of great use in my relevant and Innovative Learning Scenario.

 I started by making up my own little jingle and recording it right into cyber space. It miraculously found the correct tempo and I added effects to my voice.

I added a style but it was too fast so I was able to set it to half the speed. It added the chords for me and It even added some nice chords that I would have never added. I went to change a chord and I ended up finding out just how easy it was to do. I went to test out the instrument feature by changing my voice to an electric guitar. Some of the notes weren’t accurate but in the display I was easily able to move the notes around to what I wanted.

There was virtually no waiting for the application to process changes. As I pressed play I was able to hear the product even while it was processing.

BP6

Follow this link to my comments on Joe's blog as he demonstrates how easy it is to create music with the ujam tool.

BP5

Follow this link to my comments on Cassie's blog. She adds her own personal touch to her blog site by including conundrums (whatever they are).

BP7 - One minute video

This is my one minute commercial (infomercial) for schoology.com. Hope you enjoy!

BP4

I read a review of schoology from a peer and I decided to take a closer look at it for myself. One appeal of this tool is that it promises to be administrator friendly. It is set up in a format like facebook so it will also be real familiar to students. With this tool a teacher or an administrator can manage many aspects of their classes or student population, such as grades, assignments or attendance. Groups can be formed with this tool that can aide in collaborations. Unheard of in traditional education is the fact that students and teachers can now participate in online discussions. This tool also comes with an app for the iPhone as well as one for the iPad so that communication can continue on the go. 

It’s very simple to set up. All you need to do is chose a user name and a password. They will ask you to create a course and a section for it and then you’ll be in business. 

Once you are logged in you will see the familiar set up that resembles an older version of facebook. From there you can set up your profile, check your inbox, view or post to your calendar, view or add documents and assignments or just have a discussion. This tool can be viewed as a middle of the road tool because administrators can feel better about endorsing a product that they have a certain amount of control over while at the same time its familiar to students. I don’t know if it would be advisable to store personal and sensitive information on this site but it can be a great organizational tool.

PE3_iMovie

Before I was introduced to iMovie, I already knew how to crop or add Ken Burns effects to pictures or videos but the video taught me an alternate way to do it. I was able to select multiple pictures at the same time and remove the default Ken Burns effect with one touch of my touch pad. After making that adjustment I individually adjusted the crop and Ken Burns effects on individual pictures. Once again, compared to other programs that I have used, iMovie has broken down the Ken Burns effect to its simplest form.

After making those adjustments I adjusted the audio in order to make a smooth transition from the soundtrack to the flamenco dance. I was able to do that by going back to the same editor where I added the beat markers. I simply trimmed about five seconds off of the end of the soundtrack and added a five second fade. 

The only thing missing after that was some text and a fade out at the very end of the project. With iMovie selecting a title and adding text is once again very simple. 

I did have some ideas that I envisioned but couldn’t implement them because of the program’s limitations, but if you think of the limiting aspects of iMovie you must consider its simplicity as well. Probably its best feature is in the fact that you can see and hear what you have created immediately in real time without having to wait for it to render. If you're considering producing something creative and effective, I feel its simplicity outweighs its limitations by far.

...et voila! ...my promotional video for an educational tour to Quebec!

Francis Callwood

PE2_iMovie

Since I was familiar with iMovie I started my tutorials towards the end of the fourth chapter. Much of what was being covered were things that I figured out on my own but every now and then I would have a “wow! I didn’t know that!” moment. While skipping through the tutorials, what I found interesting and applicable to my project was chapter 7 – Editing to the beat

Because this chapter also dealt with still pictures I also learned how to adjust the aspect ratio. Since my project mostly has still pictures that are usually 4:3, I adjusted it to that.

This chapter taught me how to add beat markers to a soundtrack. By doing this, any picture that I import into the project would be imported with a time span that correlates to the beat markers that I set up. Doing this could potentially save hours of editing.

First I imported the soundtrack and then added beat markers to it by playing it and simply pressing “m” every time I wanted to add a marker. Incidentally, I created the soundtrack with GarageBand without ever touching a musical instrument.

In this same video I learned to use the precision editor to make adjustments or fine tune my project. 

This particular step turned out to be the most time consuming part of the whole process. As I started to get creative and move pictures around, adjust their durations and add video some of the markers needed to be readjusted. It took me a little while to get the hang of how the editing worked, but once I figured it out it became yet another simple process.

PE1_iMovie

This project came in just in time for me as I was charged with two similar tasks at the relatively the same time. You see, I had this assignment to complete and I was asked to do a one minute promotion video at my job this week.

As some of you may know, I went to Europe a few weeks ago. Many of you may not know that it was an educational tour. Because eighth graders are coming to our school for preregistration and orientation for the 2011 - 2012 school year, I was asked to put together a video by the trip coordinator to promote her trip to Quebec next year.

I enthusiastically accepted the challenge!

Lynda, here I come!

First, I started with a concept of what I wanted to do. I very quickly realized that one minute wasn’t much time to summarize a 9 day trip to Europe and that most of my useful footage was still pictures. I decided to do this promotion patterned off of the style of the summarization video in the Michael Wesch video.

While watching the video on lynda.com I realized that my iMovie needed to upgrade from ’09 to ’11, so that I did.

I’ve used iMovie before (probably ’08 or earlier) but I would say I’m far from proficient. I also use Final Cut Express which is much more powerful but much more time consuming at the same time. Since I started with EMDT and saw what everyone else was doing with iMovie I decided to give it a revisit. 

BP2_BandCentro

This website as well as the assignment was overwhelming for me. There were so many gadgets but even worse than that, there were so many categories of gadgets. The first challenge came in trying to navigate the website. While exploring I noticed that you could mouse over the tools to get small descriptions. Immediately 3 tools jumped out at me:                

Magisto - Image from http://www.go2web20.net/#

Penio - Image from http://www.go2web20.net/#

BandCentro - image from http://www.go2web20.net/#

I chose magisto because it promises to ‘magically turn videos into short, fun clips’ and with my challenge, I anticipated that there will be video footage taken. Also, in this ETC class there are some video assignments.

I chose Penio because its captions says that it is for simple online publishing.

I choose BandCentro because I myself am a musician and the fact that it is a management tool for musicians immediately caught my attention.

I started with the first one, Magisto and it looked interesting. It had a video to watch so I watched it. It asked me to sign up and request an invitation with my email address - I hate signing up for stuff because I have spamaphobia.

Image from http://www.go2web20.net/app/?a=magisto

Ultimately, I wasn't able to get an account today because of the volume of invitation requests.

Image from http://www.go2web20.net/site/?a=Penio

Meanwhile, I decided to see what Penio was all about. All I had to do with this one was to create a page name and a password. Inserting text was no problem but I couldn't get images inserted. I declined to rule out the possibility that I was doing something wrong because after all, it was found under the category labeled most popular.
 

Three times turned out to be a charm. I successfully got a BandCentro account and a site.

Image from http://franciscallwood.bandcentral.com/dashboard

There is a 29 day Pro Trial Period but I didn't see where it listed the differences between the pro site and the non-pro site. I immediately started surfing through the tabs. With the three main blue tabs of Manage, Promote and Settings it was very easy to start personalizing the site. I also took the liberty to sync it with my twitter and facebook accounts. Apparently there is a way for me to sync my calendar with the calendar on the site but I wasn't able to figure it out. I already bookmarked the site and I will use my 29 day trial period to see if this is something I would manage diligently.

BP3_iGoogleScreenShots

iGoogle - a new way to organize...

Home Page

FSO Page

CBR Page

ETC Page

BP1_Welcome to my blog

Napoleon Bonaparte's Arc of Triumph

First of all I'd like to say welcome to everyone out there in cyberspace. Also, I must say sitting down and just rambling on about... stuff... is just so very weird for me but I know in the coming days, week, months, etc. it will become more natural just as each class I've taken on this EDMT journey has eventually transformed from murky to clear. With each other's help we all will be triumphant!
Once again... Welcome