Megan has set up a wonderful Web Assignments page on her website where she posts a new web assignment for her students each week. The page is set up like a traditional blog, so you can subscribe to the RSS feed or, better yet, have your students subscribe to the RSS feed and complete the web assignments as part of their weekly lesson assignment!

While searching for a music timeline tonight I came across this great site - The Classical Score. If you click the “Linear Display” links in the left hand column you’ll see a great layout, including World Events, Musical Characteristics, Genre and Forms, Theorists and Treatises and Collections, Composers and Major Works, and Hymnology. This is a fabulous resource for teachers and students alike!

Wow! Check out this great collection of links to piano-related books that are in the public domain and can be downloaded for free! Thanks to Annie Grieshop for taking the time to provide this valuable resource. I can’t wait to spend more time browsing through these!

Check out these digital flashcards! You can find note names, key signatures, intervals, triads, piano note names, reading piano notes, guitar note names and reading guitar notes - all at the click of a mouse! You can even set specific parameters in most of the categories so that it is appropriate for the level of the student using it. Doesn’t this seem more fun than traditional paper flashcards? I can envision using it during a lesson with a student or giving it to them as an at-home assignment. And I’ll definitely be including it in my list of websites that have games or activities students can complete to earn extra points.

Have you seen D’Net’s new website? It is loaded with all sorts of free downloadable worksheets and game ideas and now that she has her new site up, everything is categorized and easy to find. You must check it out!

Just tonight I came across several other music-related blogs that look wonderful! I’ve added them to my feedreader and my blogroll and look forward to keeping up with them. If you have a blog or know of any other good ones I should add to my list, be sure to let me know!

The Collaborative Piano Blog - The piano in ensemble. The piano in real life.
From the Bench - Notes on Piano and Music
Music Practice Tips - Your daily source of practice tips and inspiration
Graham English: Blogging Musician - Tips, news and thoughts on the world of songwriting, ear training and music theory from Graham English
Musings at Musespeak - A Blog belonging to Calgary Piano & Theory Teacher, Pianist and Writer Rhona-Mae Arca and Musespeak(tm) to muse about music, from teaching piano to playing piano and from writing music to performing. Basically, all things musical.

This year my students can earn extra points by completing web challenges. (I got this idea from Wendy and her Web Rewards.) I included this list in the front of each student’s assignment book:

www.emusictheory.com – Click on Free Theory Drills in left sidebar. Select a drill from the list. Wait for loading to finish, then click Start Drill. (You can adjust the settings for each drill by clicking the Settings button in the upper left hand corner.) Record the following information: Name of Drill, Completed, Errors, Score, Time, Average Time

www.musictheory.net – Click on the arrow beside the Trainers option. Select a trainer from the list. Wait for loading to finish, adjust the settings and begin completing the drills. Record the following information: Name of Trainer, Number Correct, Number Incorrect, Percent

www.teoria.com – Click on Exercises. Select one of the exercises from the list in the left sidebar. Select the desired options and click OK. Record the following information: Name of Exercise, Time, Percent

www.pedaplus.com – Click on Games and Quizzes in the left sidebar. Select one of the games or quizzes. Play the game or take the quiz. Record the following information: Name of game or quiz, Score

www.practicespot.com – Click on the orange section that says Visit Our Website. Click on one of the links under Free Tools and Resources. Complete one of the on-line drills or print off and complete a worksheet. Record the following information: Name of drill, Number of points possible, Number of points correct, (bring in completed worksheet)

www.ptg.org – Click on Learning Center in the left sidebar. Click on the Just for Fun icon. Select and play one of the games listed. Record the following information: Name of Game, Words used (hangman), Time (concentration and puzzle), Bring in completed work (word search and origami)

www.musiclearningcommunity.com – Click on Free Games in the left sidebar. Click any of the red underlined Play links from the list of games. Play the game and record the following information: Name of Game, Score

My students have loved playing these games - coming in with as many as 100 recorded in one week! So far, Music Learning Community is the favorite. Does anyone know of any other sites that have music games for students that I can add to the list? I’d especially love to know of games geared toward young beginning students.

Robert Duke is speaking at the next plenary session and the topic is Beautiful

“For many years of my life I’ve been working with people who teach children about the arts. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t hear the word Beautiful enough from people in the arts.” He proceeded to play a recording of Cecilia Bartoli singing Giunse alfin il momento…Deh vieni, non tardar from Le Nozze di Figaro, Act IV for the next five minutes while he sat in a chair and the audience just enjoyed listening. He follows it up by saying that every human being ought to have an experience like that every day. The problem is that we’re busy. Most of us in the room got into the music field because of that.

One of the things that Dr. Duke hopes for all of his students is that he will be able to make them intellectually uncomfortable…because that is when learning takes place. He hopes to accomplish the same today.

How often do we work to include something beautiful in each lesson we teach?

A Vision of Students as Accomplished Learners
Dr. Duke states that he is always thinking about what his students will be like when he is finished with them. That helps him determine how to spend the time each week. We should teach every lesson as though it was the last we would ever teach that person. Will they leave having experienced something beautiful? He share a list of his favorite kind of student (and tells us not to write it down… ):
Attentive, Diligent, Inquisitive, Skillful, Literate, Patient, Thoughtful, Meticulous, Discriminating
They don’t come like this, though. They have to learn these things. He then shared a list of what we desire musically in our students.
Excellent Position, Beautiful Tone, Intonation, Note Accuracy, Rhythmic Precision, Clear Articulation, Dynamic Variation, Expressive Inflection
“With the exception of beautiful tone,” says Dr. Duke, “all of these are easy. Consider a child telling a story. They don’t need instruction on how to apply inflection in their voice. It comes naturally.

Dr. Duke shares about his work with young children and their inhibitions and desire to participate and answer questions. He goes on to tell how these same students come to him years later as doctoral students and are unwilling to participate, don’t want to answer question. Why? What turns these kids into this? It’s not part of the natural growth of human beings. The only common denominator is that they all went to school. “School does that to kids.”

Teaching Like Beauty Matters
Knowledge of Subject Matter
Learning Environment
Instructional Goals
Sequence of Instruction
Assessment
Feedback

The least assessed of all the above is the first. Knowledge of subject matter.

* From outside your expertise - “We are the products of university and conservatory educations in music…and that’s too bad.” We must forget the way we learned to play the piano and remember why we learned to play the piano. He exposes the absurdity of degree programs.
* Fundamental structure of the subject
* Broad underlying principles that are
…intellectually interesting and
…functionally valuable

This is not a unique phenomena in the music field. In many fields, the teachers forget the point.

Dr. Duke says that on his mind all the time is the realization that he is conveying something to another human being. Beauty takes time. Quality takes time. Excellence takes time. The goal of teaching is to help our students experience beauty in as short an amount of time as we can so that we don’t lose them. We can be really busy and do lots of teacher-like stuff and not get anything done.

What’s the Point Again?
Next, a video clip from a graduation ceremony for graduates of Harvard and MIT is shown. Graduating students are asked, “Do you think you could light a bulb with a battery and wire?” Almost always the students respond affirmatively. However, they are not successful. They are asked if they know why it didn’t work. Most are unsure. This clip illustrates the fact that all of these people have reached a very high level in thinking about scientific concepts and physics, but you hand them a battery, a wire and a flashlight bulb and they are stumped. But they have missed the point entirely. Sophisticated teachers set students up so that they look like they have a deep understanding of their area, but they really don’t.

He shared how he gave a graduate level student a recording and asked her to share for 10 minutes about the music. She couldn’t do it. Students may be able to identify keys, form, point out the theme and recap, etc. They know all the right answers, but what’s the point? Students can identify key signatures, but have no idea why it’s important to know that. We spend a lot of time teaching this sort of thing because we believe it’s important to a student’s understanding of music.

The Process of Learning (A.N. Whitehead)
The first time we approach something we want to know more about, we have a romanticized view of it. This eventually channels into Precision which leads to generalization, which is when you can actually do the thing you set out to do. You can substitute other words to see that romance must give way to struggle to eventually produce beauty. Beauty is the goal, the final aim of the struggle. However, we tend to over-emphasize the struggle and place beauty as a distant objective.

Find out what your students’ motivation is and tap into that. Help them reach their goal and experience the thing that has motivated them in the first place.

How Difficult Can We Make This?
Prerequisites lead to prerequisites which lead to more prerequisites, ad naseum, until eventually we get to the good stuff. Why not experience the good stuff now? Start with the idea. The motivation to play beautifully will drive technical development.

Two Keys to Excellent Teaching:
1. Elegance and simplicity about everything
2. Matching musical intentions with outcomes

Our students have a tremendous potential that almost every educational experience they encounter underestimates. The “meaningful stuff” must come first. Let’s help them experience beauty at every level.

Dr. Duke suggests a homework assignment: Record the next four lessons that you teach and see how many times you can have the word beautiful come out of your mouth.

Have you ever had a question about a particular scale or chord? How to build it or how to label it? Then head on over to the Piano Room of the Chord House! It’s an incredibly helpful tool! You just click the root of the chord and select from 58 different chord types. It shows you a visual image of the chord on the above piano keyboard and below shows the chord name, the intervals of the chord, the half steps of the chord and the chord spelling. You can do the same thing with scales.

The only thing that would make this wonderful tool even better is if you could click the keys on the piano and have it identify the chord for you. Anyone know of anything like that?

Check out this energetic and entertaining performance from the 2007 Cliburn Amateur Competition Awards Ceremony. Cliburn gold medalists José Feghali (1985), Stanislav Ioudenitch (2001), Olga Kern (2001), and Jon Nakamatsu (1997) collaborated for this great performance!