Thing 11: Digital Tattoo & Digital Citizenship

Both the videos in this section were fantastic. They were well done, eye-opening, and really got me thinking about my own social media accounts in addition to my students' accounts. The second video was scary to watch - I never would have thought to compare social media privacy settings to putting your pictures out in your front lawn, leaving you front door ajar, talking to complete strangers, and letting anyone look through your stuff and/or take a copy of your photos. The little interviews with children was great - they don't realize how dangerous the internet can be.

Another eye-opening section of this unit was the article on "The Atlantic" titled "Teens are Being Bullied 'Constantly' on Instagram." I had no idea that some of these things are happening all the time. This is probably happening to some of the students I have in my own classroom. The thing that shocked me the most was students creating multiple Instagram accounts - like hate accounts where a group of students will all gang up and bully a student.

As a music teacher, I have not really addressed digital citizenship. I have a classroom rule that students cannot use they phones. Our school building rule is that no pictures or videos can be taken.

I would like to introduce an activity into one of my lesson plans. I usually have the students do a music review at some point in the school year. It is usually a written assignment, but I have been thinking about ways to "spice" up the assignment a little bit. Since a lot of concert goers and reviewers are using social media - I was thinking of having my students to go a social media concert review with pictures and/or video (If they don't have an Instagram/Facebook/Twitter - they could write it up like a newspaper/magazine article). When introducing this assignment, we could have a discussion about professional and appropriate social media use. I could also share the article "Students Guide to Personal Publishing" with them.

I feel like this is an ongoing subject. By exploring the content in this section, I feel like I'm a little bit more aware of what is going on. I will continue to research and seek out new ideas to teach/embed digital citizenship.

Thing 19: Screencasting & Screen Sharing

For Thing 19, I chose to make a screencast and test out some screen sharing. My screen cast, using screencastomatic is above. This was really easy to use. I will definitely have some help/tutorial videos on my classroom website using screencastomatic. I also tried using Google Hangouts for the first time. I did a test with a family member. We started out with just a basic video chat. Then, I explored the screen share function. I was able to share any window that I had up on my computer. I was not able to figure out the other part, which appeared to be just a selection of what to share. This was such an awesome tool. I'm not sure how I will use this in my classroom, but I will definitely use it with friends and family. You can even add up to 10 people to the hangout.

Thing 14: Bitmoji Fun

This section was so much fun to read! I never thought about using bitmoji in the classroom. Just the other day, one of my students had a graded math assignment with a bitmoji sticker on it. I thought it was hilarious. I just read all these articles/blog posts about teachers using bitmoji to grad their students' attention. I especially liked how teachers used bitmoji to spruce up what would normally be a boring or dull topic, like class rules. I can totally see myself using it for my class expectations sheet. Also, I really liked printing bitmoji out on Avery labels and then using them as stickers. The one student I observed with the math paper really liked how his math teacher did that. It drew my attention right to the things he did well and where he needed improvement on his math assignment. 

Thing 10: Search Tools Ninja

I decided to try duckduckgo because I teach High School students (and I'd never heard of it before!). I liked the ease and simplicity of it - and it even reminded me of a google search. I also liked how the safe search options were right at the top of the page - I didn't need to search around for it in the settings.

Here is the link to my custom music search: https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=008407749930667759192:4x3jyk0odny

I compared the search of "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" across three different search engines: duckduckgo, smartpage, and sweetsearch. Here is what I found:

1. duckduckgo: only 1 ad at the top of the search. First 3 sites that came up were wikipedia, britannica.com, and biography.com
2. smartpage: 3 ads at the top of the search! First 3 sites that came up were wikipedia, britannica.com, and biography.com
3. sweetsearch: 4 ads at the top of the search! First 3 sties that came up were britannica.com, biography.com, and classicsforkids.com.

So, there were a lot of similarities, but I definitely like 1 or 0 ads, so duckduckgo was the winner for me. I also found it interesting that sweetsearch omitted wikipedia. 

This was a fascinating subject. Before investigating, I wasn't sure how I would use something like this in my classroom. I'm glad I chose Thing 10 because it has been one of the most useful sections.

Thing 06: Digital Storytelling

I decided to use sharalike because I liked how it could be used across platforms. I used my iPhone and my laptop computer. I did run into many difficulties. After allowing access to my photos on my iPhone, it would only let me choose one photo whereas I have hundreds of photos saved on my phone. So I decided to take a couple of test photos around my house. I added them to the slideshow and let the app select the music for me (I liked this feature). Then, I previewed the slide show. It looked great. When I went to save & export, I decided to use the link (https://sharalike.com/s/rD99). It shows by slideshow on the app, but when using the link, I just see the words "oops the image is not available" in place of all the images. The music does still play. I tried going through all the steps again and got the same result. The app was not intuitive to use and seemed to have a lot of difficulties (I am still not able to see any of the pictures I have taken on my phone).

I did enjoy some of the articles posted in this section, like "6 Reasons you should be doing digital storytelling with your students". I liked when the author compared the steps of digital storytelling to the steps of writing:

• Brainstorm
• Plan
• Create
• Revise
• Edit
• Publish
• Reflect

It really got me thinking about how I can incorporate some of these activities into my music classroom. 

Thing 05: Audio Tools

I am very excited to explore more audio tools. As a music teacher, I am always looking for new and exciting ways to get my students to record themselves for self reflection and for formal assessment. Right now, I use SmartMusic (google chrome & subscription based) and Audacity for recording. The one complaint about SmartMusicis that it only works with Google Chrome or iPad. Many students want to use their phone. I explored Vocaroo, and made a test recording (https://vocaroo.com/i/s03xXkRYWuAF) but then realized it did not work for recording on smartphones.
I also tried some of Mrs. Carpenters items from her Cool Tools blog. I tried Clyp on my iPhone. What confused me was that it kept asking me for my location and then gave me access to other Clyp files in my area. This was concerning, as I don't want this to happen to my student's audio recordings, nor do I want them to be distracted by other random recordings (it started playing me police dispatch audio clips as soon as I opened the app).

Thing 4: Twitter, Facebook & Personal Learning Networks

Twitter helped me find information - not all of it was good or useful. There was definitely a plethora of data, opinions, and conversations.
Yes, there were also interesting people on twitter using the hashtag #edchat. I did not recognize any of the names. I wonder if there is a specific hashtag to look for music education information?
I don't really see myself using twitter in my professional life. I have been to regional, state, and national music education conferences, and at no point was twitter even mentioned as a relevant tool in our field. At this point in time, I do not see myself using it. The only reason I might use twitter in the future would be to communicate with students - send of class reminders, calendar info, etc. In the meantime, I use the app Remind to do that.
I read many of the articles in this section (several of the web links did not work). Each and every one of them baffled me. I couldn't believe so many educators are using twitter. I had never heard of twitter being used as an educational resource.

Thing 3 : Photo Fun

Here is a photo that I found on Instagram. Because I am using a school computer and network, I had to log on to Instagram using my phone, take a screen shot, and then email it to myself. I hope this is acceptable.

My experience was a little frustrating because of all the social media blocks my school district has set up. I do see the benefits of using social media sites like SnapChat & Instagram - I really liked the one article written by the school librarian. In the classroom, we do not allow phones, and we especially don't allow social media. I would be hesitant starting something as to keep with building policy and to stay consistent with other teachers. I wouldn't want students to go to their next class, use their phone, get in trouble, and then say they were allowed to use snapchat in my class.

Thing 2: Student Blogging and Writing

I found it really neat to watch the video and hear some examples from a teacher on how blogging was used in the classroom (and from a wide grade range). While the video was interesting, I really enjoyed (and learned a lot from) the first three articles. There was some topics that I never even thought about. Cyber security and cyber bullying are two things that I am aware of, but I never thought about how blogging could assist in teaching about these issues. The section of the first article about getting students inspired through blogging was also fascinating and eye opening for me. I am a high school music teacher, and we don't do a whole lot of writing in class. When we do, it is usually not a favorite activity. I think the next concert reflection assignment that we do in class will be a blogging assignment. So, yes, I do see the value in blogging, especially the part where students get to interact with their peers' writing.
Here's how I might implement blogging into an assignment. One of the topics we write about and discuss in class is concert reflection/assessment. After our initial discussion, I would instruct students to start to write a concert review (as if they were writing for a newspaper or magazine. The follow up to the assignment would be to assign them a partner, have them read their partner's concert review, and then write a response on their partner's blog. The response would have to include both positive and constructive feedback, and possibly a question or two.
The only question I have at the moment about blogging vs. writing on paper is what to do with students who have limited or no access to internet at home. Has anyone tried these assignments in more rural areas?

Thing 1: Getting Started

My name is Peter Guarino. I teach orchestra and string lessons at Fayetteville-Manlius High School. My first instrument is cello, but I teach all the stringed instruments. I also conduct Concert Orchestra.

I am taking Cool Tools in hopes to better understand all the valuable web resources available to educators. I hope to integrate some of them into my teaching.