A Teacher’s Thoughts

I had a brief conversation with the music teacher at our school yesterday. Her classroom is well equipped with computers and she has students work on projects using midi software. I suggested the idea of podcasting student projects and performances. The response was so positive. If you could see our school at this time you would understand how nice that is. We are mid-renovation and the students come back in less than a week!

Often times I think teachers see the possibilities of new technologies, such as podcasting. And in this case our music teacher clearly understood the potential power of this medium. She is familiar with computers and software for recording and editing music. In fact, she suggested using Audacity. But when the bridge between working on a local machine and running a website must be crossed, the span, I think, appears too far even for technologically comfortable people. The perception is that this difference is the difference between a user and a professional. This sounds a bit like “web 1.0″ where web designers basically had control of content due to the technicalities of getting it on the web.
Enter, Web 2.0. With new tools, providing content online is quickly and easily learned. In fact, most of my students will likely have their blogs up and running before they get to her class and will already know how to create and upload the podcast. Now the teacher can be the student as part of the plan and the technology will be seamlessly integrated into the music program.