Alex Ruthmann’s Blog

Over the past two years when I was teaching middle school general music and now teaching at the college level, I have been experimenting a lot with online collaborative technologies like blogs, wikis, and podcasts.

I was initially drawn to wikis as a way to democratize my approach to teaching in my middle school music classroom. I saw wikis as a great way for my students and me to share our emerging understandings about composing and teaching music through composing. Our first project was the Emergent Encyclopedia of Composing. Here, I set up a free wiki at PBWiki.com and charged students in my first trimester classes with posting three tips to our encyclopedia. These tips could either be related to the use of the technology or tips about the composing process or musical self-expression. As the trimester continued (an in subsequent trimesters) students found themselves going to the Encyclopedia for tips when they got stuck. I also saw an increase in the amount of peer-teaching the students were doing in the classroom themselves.

A more recent project involved the use of wikis as a collaboration space among students in my middle school general music classes in Michigan and students in Steve Bizub’s middle school classes in Japan. Because of the time difference, our students never were able to talk or chat together in real-time. So, a wiki became the primary collaboration space for the project, augmented with video podcasts and email. One challenge, however, that emerged was related to the “homebrew” design of our collaboration space. Steve and I created a webpage that integrated a third-party blog, a PBWiki.com wiki, and video podcasts and iMixes through iTunes. Our students did comment that the site took a while to get used to and become fluent with. Had our project continued beyond the 6 weeks, the students may have made better use of the wiki.

Overall, online collaborative technologies such as blogs, wikis, and other online collaborative tools have the potential to extend both the physical and temporal bounds of our classrooms in meaningful ways. Many of our students are flocking to social networking sites such as facebook.com and myspace.com. These sites seamlessly integrate instant messaging, multimedia, blogs, and music in a very engaging package. How can we as music educators design and use online collaborative tools to support our students’ music learning? Through looking at how students use these tools in their own lives, valuable insights can be gained into their use within and beyond our own classrooms.

Ok, ok… I’ve made it my new years resolution to keep this blog current. I survived my first semester as Assistant Professor of Music Education at Indiana State University. Now, I can put more energy into this blog.

Stay tuned….