Alex Ruthmann’s Blog

Now that the semester is finished, papers marked, and grades assigned, I am starting to clean out my office at Indiana State. However, instead of sorting, reorganizing and planning for next year, I am boxing everything up in preparation for my upcoming move to beautiful Lowell, Massachusetts.

Beginning September 1, I will join the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. I am so excited to join my good friend and colleague, Dr. Gena Greher, at UMass Lowell. Over the past 6 years, she has helped to build a phenomenal music teacher preparation program. One of the most impressive aspects of the program is the depth and breadth of the partnerships among the music department and local schools. In each music education course, students have extensive experiences in the local schools applying what they learn on campus to real-life situations with real students. During one of my campus visits, I was impressed by the number of local K-12 students on campus after school. Almost every night of the week there are local students participating in after school honor ensembles, creative sound play classes and the UML String Project. Many schools have similar programs, but none that I know of are infused so extensively in the local community. And, very few music education programs truly integrate hands-on field experiences as extensively as UML.

Also of note are the innovative general education courses that bring together the arts, sciences and local community. Students can take interdisciplinary courses like Performamatics, ArtBotics, and Radical Design. Each of these courses have major service learning components interfacing UML students with the local community. One project I hope to become involved with is their Assistive Technology Program. It would be great to work with the engineering students on developing music specific assistive technologies for special needs students. I wish I had these kinds of courses in my undergrad!

UML Music Education and GUI Programming students working together to create
original graphic notation software in the Spring 2008 Performamatics course.

This Fall I will be teaching courses in music education research and technology in music education. I get a little bit of relief in my teaching load so that I can spend some time in the local schools getting to know the program and area. My Technology in Music Education students will be working closely with music technology classes at Lowell High School exploring innovative ways of using technology in their own teaching through working with real students and teachers in real classrooms. I’ll be updating this blog much more regularly as a part of that course in particular.

Dr. Greher and I are already starting to brainstorm new professional development and Masters-level courses in composing and technology for Summer 2009. Dr. Greher brings extensive experience in technology and creative musicianship as a former music producer for the advertising industry and from her work with the Teachers College Creative Arts Lab in New York City. Stay tuned for more information in the coming months!

With the change in job comes a change in contact information. My new email address is Alex_Ruthmann @ uml.edu. I will continue to check my ISU email through the end of the summer, however.

See you online!

The Young Professionals Focus Group (YPFG) of the International Society for Music Education (ISME) has just launched a new online social network - http://ismeypfg.ning.com/ where music educators from around the World can come together to share research, lessons, music, and educational strategies with each other.

This site was launched as part of a pilot project using the Ning social networking platform to bring together music educators in advance of the 2008 ISME World Conference this July in Bologna, Italy. Even if you can’t attend the conference in Italy, please stop by and join.

To start, we have a number of projects integrated into the website:

1. Research Mentoring - This group is for you to post questions and abstracts and to discuss anything related to your research or research in general. As the conference approaches, we will post the exact times and presentation schedule for our research sessions.
2. Social Lounge - Use this space to talk about anything and to get to know each other. Post your itineraries, places to stay in Bologna, and anything else you’d like.
3. Sharing Practice - This project will be formally launched in a month or so. We are looking to gather stories and examples of what music learning and teaching are like across the World from the perspective of ISME young professionals.

Stop by http://ismeypfg.ning.com/ to meet other music educators from around the World!

This July, I will be teaching a week-long summer course at Central Connecticut State University entitled Podcasts, Blogs, & Wiki’s… Oh My! This summer’s course will focus on using Web 2.0 tools and Ning social networks to extend and support K-College music classes. These tools provide an easy and collaborative way to get your music program online, to create online communities of practice, and to support student assessment.

Come on out to beautiful New Britain, Connecticut. Tuition, including 2 graduate credits, is only $500!

Here’s the official blurb:

Podcasts, Wikis & Blogs—Oh My!
In this hands-on class music teachers will develop strategies to support and extend student learning with online collaborative tools such as social networks, blogs, podcasts, and wikis. These tools provide easy ways to get your music classes online integrating text, video, and audio. Strategies for using these tools to facilitate assessment, writing across the curriculum, and reflective journaling, as well as to support performing, rehearsing, practicing, and composing will be explored. Applications of these tools in settings from elementary through college will be shared and developed. Prerequisite: None. Examples of tools for both Macs and PCs will be shared. Targeted for elementary, middle, high school and college levels, general music or ensembles.

50096 MUS 536, Sec 04, 2 credits, $500
July 7-11, 1:15–5:45 pm & Thurs 7-9:30 pm

More information and registration available at http://www.ccsusmi.com/

I’ve blogged before about using social networking technology to extend and support learning in music classes. When I was teaching middle school general music, I used a custom website with a third-party blog, multimedia player, and wiki. Since then, I’ve continued using social technologies with my college classes, and most recently with Ning.

Ning has been a great platform for setting up private social networks for my college classes. I use it as the online presence for all the classes I teach, rather than courseware tools like Moodle or Blackboard, because of its ease of use, clean design and integrated audio and video players and storage. What before took a lot of third party tools and time to code and program a website is simplified with Ning. My students and I log in to one site and set up our own personalized profiles to share, discuss, collaborate, and reflect on our compositions, teaching, or readings for class. Anecdotally, my students spend more time on class material responding to posts, sharing their music and providing feedback to each other on their peer teaching videos… most of it outside of class time.

I recently shared how I have been using these social networking technologies with faculty and students at Shenandoah Conservatory and at the University of Illinois. When speaking with music education majors and local teachers, many saw the potential of sites like Ning to support learning in K-12 schools, but rightly expressed reservations about the advertising and some of the design features of Ning. (Thanks to Steve Hargadon at http://education.ning.com/ for sharing that Ning now will eliminate the ads for K-12 Ning sites!!!) These concerns may now be set aside with a new private social network platform designed specifically for K-12 at http://www.imbee.com/.

Imbee has many of the same features of Ning, including blogs with integrated audio and video players/storage, but without advertising. Imbee also has intriguing and extensive parental and teacher controls. Each student account is connected to a “parent sponsor” who has ultimate administrative control over the content for his or her student or child. The design of the site is also kid friendly with bright colors and a clean layout. Take a spin over to Imbee.com and take their tour!

INDIANA MUSIC EDUCATORS ASSOCIATION, JANUARY 16-19, 2008

This multimedia project was created by Northwest High School Multimedia Artists

• Sarah Beaty
• Chet Patterson
• Jeremy Pierson
• Tiarress Stokes

Under the expert supervision of Jacquie Dennis, Director of Choral Music at NWHS, with assistance from Kenneth Sallaz, ISU Music Business Major.

IMEA Technology Chair/Indiana State University:

• Dr. Alex Ruthmann

Butler University:

• Dr. Tim Brimmer, Andrew Cunningham

Special Thanks to Apple, Inc:

• Joseph Lee & Dick Hamstra

This project was created, edited and produced with four MacBooks using Apple’s iMovie, published on the internet using Apple’s iWeb.

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