Photo produced by the author. As you can read in my first NLP blog post and my second NLP blog post, I was assigned to learn something new for a graduate course I am taking. You will also find that I decided to learn how to play the guitar for personal and professional reasons. My learning process did not go as expected, but I am happy with what I accomplished! I have always wanted to play the guitar, and actually had a built-in teacher that I just never utilized: my Dad. He grew up playing music and I was always envious, but never seemed to find the time to start learning. I am happy the Networked Learning Project inspired me to begin. When I first began searching for resources to teach me how to play the guitar, I was a bit over zealous in what I believed I could start with. I found a video on YouTube that taught the viewer how to play an “easy” version of the song “Purple Rain” by Prince. Now, I am sure this video would have been easy for an expert, or even an intermediate player, but it was not for me. This is when I first made a connection back to a reading I was assigned by Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (2000) that presented differences between novices and experts regarding how each of these people learn. As Bransford et al. (2000) states, “Experts’ knowledge cannot be reduced to sets of isolated facts or propositions but, instead, reflects contexts of applicability: that is, the knowledge is “conditionalized” on a set of circumstances” (p. 31). As I quickly learned, I could not begin by putting chords together and making music; I had to learn each chord individually and practice them. I had to isolate the chords so that I could hear how they sounded alone to make sure that I was playing them correctly. An expert at guitar does not need to think about isolating chords or deliberately placing their fingers when transitioning from chord to chord as I do. Further, they do not need to do this to know if the chord sounds right. However, even though I am a novice at playing guitar I did have one advantage that helped me throughout this process. The advantage was that I had grown up listening to and singing with my Dad while he was playing the guitar. As Bransford et al. (2000) states, “One of the earliest studies of expertise demonstrated that the same stimulus is perceived and understood differently, depending on the knowledge that a person brings to the situation” (p. 32). Since I was exposed to the art of guitar playing virtually my whole life, I had an “ear” for the chords before I began playing. I may not have been able to explain to someone why a chord sounded off or wrong, but I could usually hear it if it was. Not every novice guitar player would have this ability/advantage. I think this helped me significantly when learning to play, especially when it came to putting the chords together and strumming. As Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown (2011) suggest, experimenting and trying different things is a very effective way to learn. I practiced and experimented with strumming until I found something that sounded like music, and it was also very enjoyable. Marty Schwartz also comments on strumming different ways to get comfortable with it in one of his acoustic lessons on YouTube that I referenced, and it was definitely a successful method of practice for me (Schwartz, 2016a). You can check his video out below! Throughout my learning process I found that it is important to remember that not all methods of learning work for everyone, and that you may not learn things as quickly as you anticipate. As long as you trust yourself throughout your learning process, you will accomplish more than you might expect! I plan to continue to use the YouTube videos to further my learning because they were the most helpful for me. I like how Marty Schwartz explains and reiterates in his videos, and it is also great because you can actually hear the notes being played. Also, I can watch the videos as many times as I need. Of course, I am very excited to show my Dad what I learned and I am definitely planning to continue to use him as a resource. Ultimately, I would love to be able to play together. Below you will find a short video I created detailing my learning process explained above, check it out! References (2018). IWTL how to play guitar. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantToLearn/comments/822b64/iwtl_how_to_play_guitar/ Bransford, J., Brown, A.L., Cocking, R.R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school. Washington D.C.: National Academy Press. Retrieved from https://www.nap.edu/read/9853/chapter/1 Schwartz, M. (2016a). Marty Music: Beginner Acoustic Lesson 1: Your Very First Guitar Lesson. Eminor and Asus2. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNSaXAe8tyg Schwartz, M. (2016b). Marty Music: Beginner Acoustic Guitar Lesson 2: The A Major Chord. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ny8htqHHuM Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, KY: CreateSpace.
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Yesterday I participated in my first twitter chat. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Slowly but surely, I got the hang of it— for the most part. To find a twitter chat that I would be interested in, I searched the internet and came to this: 40 education Twitter chats worth your time. I decided I wanted to participate in the #EdTechChat because it seemed most relevant to my graduate degree: Master of Arts in Educational Technology. Pictures produced by the author. This depicts the question/answer model explained below. At first, I had no idea what I should be tweeting. As I spent some time reading through other tweets, I figured out that a question was posted every few minutes by the “leader” of the chat. It would be posted as Q1, Q2, etc. Then, the participators in the chat would tweet with answers as A1, A2 etc. I figured this out by the fifth question and got to answer it properly. The chat was not what I expected. I was thinking there would be more talk about technology and education. Mostly people were tweeting about whether or not professional development should be mandatory in the summer. However, I did find one very interesting resource from someone participating in the chat. She tweeted about how she had behavior problems in her classroom, which is something I really struggle with in my classroom as well. She recommended reading “Help for Billy: A beyond consequences approach to helping challenging children in the classroom” by Heather T. Forbes, which I now plan to do. This is where I found the idea to read the book mentioned above. This Twitter chat experience made me think of Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown’s (2011) idea that engaging in “play” is an effective way to learn, and I feel that is what I did when participating in this chat. I plan to try the #EdChat next! References
Fingal, D. (2018). 40 education Twitter chats worth your time. Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/explore/Professional-development/40-education-Twitter-chats-worth-your-time Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, KY: CreateSpace. For one of my graduate courses we were assigned a project to learn something new and I chose to learn how to play the guitar. The Project is titled NLP and I blogged about it below as well! As for the title for this post, I chose it because learning to play the guitar is not easy! Originally I was trying to learn how to play “Purple Rain” by Prince, but quickly realized I needed to go back to the basics— learning chords individually. One resource that has been invaluable in doing this is this beginner acoustic lesson by Marty Schwartz: This is a great resource because he explains things thoroughly and shows you how to play the chords multiple times. He also gives the viewer a lot of useful tips such as using a pick, and only practicing for about five minutes a day when you first start out (Schwartz, 2016). Marty Schwartz was also recommended on this Reddit page that I visited for more resources. Below is a picture of me before learning chords- I only knew how to hold the guitar! I recorded myself recently playing two chords that I have learned throughout my process. Check it out below! After watching my video and Marty's video above, you can really see the differences between me, the novice, and Marty, the expert. I have to actively think about where to place my fingers, but as you can see in the beginning of Marty's video, he does not. This reminded me of reading I was assigned for my course, Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (2000), as they addressed the ideas of experts and novices. I have learned a few more chords since filming my video above and will be sharing them soon! References
(2018). IWTL how to play guitar. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantToLearn/comments/822b64/iwtl_how_to_play_guitar/ Bransford, J., Brown, A.L., Cocking, R.R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school. Washington D.C.: National Academy Press. Retrieved from https://www.nap.edu/read/9853/chapter/1 Schwartz, M. (2016). Marty Music: Beginner Acoustic Lesson 1: Your Very First Guitar Lesson. Eminor and Asus2. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNSaXAe8tyg I hope that title didn’t get you too excited- I’m talking about playing around with technology to increase the understanding of concepts I teach! For one of my graduate courses, we had to create a lesson plan that would incorporate 21st Century Learning. If you are interested in learning more about 21st Century Learning, you can look at a post of mine below or read more at the Rio District Blog. During this lesson, the students were using all four of the 4 C’s for 21st Century Learning listed in this blog post! They collaborated, created, communicated, and had to think critically when deciding how their lyrics would introduce the books effectively. You can find a rough draft of my lesson here. For the lesson, students had to create their own theme songs for Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. To do this, they used the online program called GarageBand to create music and, since each student has an iPad and Google account at my school, they used Google Docs to collaborate in real time when creating their lyrics. The students had a week to complete this project. As Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown (2011) tell us, experimenting and “play” are very useful tools when it comes to learning, and the amount of time allotted for this project offered plenty of time for these things. Here is the theme song for the Netflix series based on Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. We used it as inspiration! Creating this lesson plan wasn’t too difficult because the technologies and assignment flowed together very well. The students have also used both programs so the technology truly enhanced their learning and collaboration and allowed them to focus on the actual content. This is a sample of student work for this project. These kids had a lot of fun with it in class! References [4 C's of 21st Century Learning]. (2017). Retrieved from https://rioschools.org/21st-century-skills-practices-stuff/ Hobbs, R. (2011). Digital and media literacy: Connecting culture and classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin/Sage. Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, KY: CreateSpace. The way people learn and gather information is changing rapidly, and it is our job as educators to grow with this change in order to properly prepare students for the society in which they will be contributing. Have you ever heard of 21st century learning? Well, the term encompasses the skills that students will need in order to thrive in today’s world. The four widely accepted ideas of 21st century learning that I found in my research were critical thinking/problem solving, creativity, collaboration, and communication. Check out the Rio School District Blog to learn more about the 4 C’s. It is my goal to continue to incorporate these essential skills and make sure my practice is working to help students of today’s world. One particular component of 21st century learning that I feel I teach with the most is collaboration. I assign many group projects and stress to my students that in almost any job they will have in the future, they will need to be able to work with all kinds of people. In the video below I explain three aspects of 21st century learning that resonated with me, as well as some specific examples of how I use these aspects when teaching in my classroom. Feel free to comment below! References
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AuthorMy name is Mallory Williams and I am just trying to better my teaching practice! Most of my posts will be about learning and understanding. Enjoy! Archives |