Module 2

As a music educator it is important that I find time to allow my students to be creative.  I will allow my students to create compositions and give them time to improvise.  Kratus(1996) believes there are seven levels of the development of improvisational abilities.  The levels include exploration, process-oriented improvisation, product-oriented improvisation, fluid improvisation, structural improvisation, stylistic improvisation, and personal improvisation.  I can honestly see the different levels of this in my own classroom.  Just the other day, two students were improvising on the spot back and forth.  It was amazing to see this musical conversation. Both students have been rapping for a long time and are very skilled at it.  Another student of mine can come up with a melody extremely fast when she is writing a song.  As a teacher, I notice the ones who are struggling and I often send the students who are successful with creativity and improvisation over to them to help.

I would like to add some technology in my music classroom.  I have used GarageBand in the past and loved how it already had premade loops so that the students who struggled with composition were succeeding at writing on GarageBand.  This week I used both Noteflight and MuseScore.  I can see how there are plenty of benefits from using these two programs.  You can hear the notes as you write them down, you can have multiple instruments play the piece you are writing, you really could do so much with it.  One thing I like about GarageBand that I did not see on the other two programs is that you can record yourself singing over the accompaniment.  This also allows more room for improvisation and record it.  I do like these two programs, but I think it would be difficult to use in my classroom since I have so many beginners who do not know music notation.

You can check out my version of A Bicycle Built for Two here.