Alex Ruthmann’s Blog

Well, it’s been a long, yet fun week here in New Britain, CT. We shared some great final projects last night ,and today will be spent tying up loose ends and testing out some of the ideas learned through sharing and discussing everyone’s blogs.

Links to blogs created in class:

http://ccsu06.blogspot.com/
http://amsband.blogspot.com/
http://rhs-instr.blogspot.com/
http://mrpalinsblog.blogspot.com/

The past few weeks have been very busy for me. I thought after finishing my last days at Cranbrook that my summer would afford a bit more free time…. I was wrong. I’ve been busy not only preparing for our move to Terre Haute for my new position as assistant professor of music education at Indiana State University, but also getting ready for my course Podcasts, Blogs, and Wikis…Oh My! at the Central Connecticut State University Summer Music Institute and for my upcoming presentations at the ISME conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I had a little bit of a scare earlier this week when my CCSU class was potentially going to be cancelled, but SMI director Pam Perry worked her magic and the course is still running!

I’m really excited to teach at the CCSU Summer Music Institute and share some of the successful projects I’ve done over the past year with podcasts, blogs, and wikis at Cranbrook and also as part of a collaborative composing project with my colleague Steve Bizub and his students at Nishimachi International School in Tokyo, Japan. Blogs, podcasts, and wikis have enormous potential for enhancing the learning experience for our students. Having students create podcasts of original compositions including interviews of their peer’s compositional process was quite a highlight of all of my classes at Cranbrook last year. It was also quite interesting to have students contribute to an emergent encyclopedia of composing using free PBWiki software.

I look forward to the class and helping other teachers enhance their teaching and their students’ learning with these tools!

Welcome to my blog. Over the next few days I will be updating this site with links and other content related to music education. I hope you visit and comment often.