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I find it fascinating to look back on the craziness of the past few years and how it has drastically changed what we believe about education in regards to online learning. Online learning has existed in some form for decades (originally just the logical next step of traditional distance education) but it had not gained wide usage until the covid-19 pandemic made it a necessity for schools around the world. As a music education student, my classes were completely changed from what I had expected; performance classes became lectures and experimental composition groups, theory classes largely went asynchronous and became a task to do every week, and music education classes became meetings where we would all take turns struggling to do our mock teachings over zoom to a screen with all the cameras off. It was a strange time, but it gave me a lot of free time to explore and develop my other musical interests. Notably, during this time I started playing bass quite a bit and spent a lot more time working on jazz vocabulary and repertoire. I believe online (synchronous and asynchronous) certainly have their merits and can provide benefits, like increased flexibility, but the drawback of not being able to play in large ensembles and losing out on the social aspect of university was difficult to overcome. I would be open to online classes in the future, both as a teacher and a student, but it is important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of those methods and tailor your course to meet them. 

“Doctor with stethoscope and globe in his hand” by focusonmore.com is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

As with other professions, it is important for educators to reflect back on the pandemic and be prepared for a similar event in the future. It is important for us to consider what went well, what went poorly, and what new options are available for us. As a music teacher, online learning arguably has the most significant impact on music than any other subject due to almost all music programs being based on real-time collaborative ensemble playing. An online learning environment fundamentally changes the way our classes are run, and naturally affects the content and assessment as well. For me, if we are unlucky enough to have another event that keeps us all isolated (or if I am teaching online for any other reason) I would shift the focus of the class away from performance and repertoire and move it towards (largely inquiry-based) projects. A specific project that I like is an album review, which will allow students a considerable amount of freedom to critique, discuss, and share any album of their choosing; this will help students feel engaged as well as helping to teach valuable skills like discussing subjective matters like artistic expression. Additionally, I would like to do a project where students research the music and biography of various musicians and composers and share them with the class. If you took the time to read all this, I would love to hear what other ideas you have too!

I would link my H5P video here, but it does not seem to want to work! Regardless, I spend around 20 minutes or so adding elements to my screencastify video, as well as exploring around the site quite a bit to see what options were available, and I now feel like I have a grasp of the basic concept of H5P interactive elements. It took me quite a while to figure out this resource, but it seems to be very powerful and can have a lot of possible uses. I am interested to find new ways to utilize this in the future, especially in a music context. There is an endless amount of high-quality music education content on the internet, but often it is focused on concepts that may not be perfectly applicable to a music classroom. With editing tools and H5P, as well as screencastify, it can be easier for me as an educator to better curate and tailor this content to the needs of my students and to the content outcomes of the course I am teaching.

In our last class, we also discussed the idea of a flipped classroom, where students are expected to learn or interact with the material before class, allowing the class time to be used for higher order thinking (as per Bloom’s Taxonomy). This is in contrast to a more standard model where direct instruction can take up a majority of the class time, and students often need to do additional work outside of class on their own in order to practice or demonstrate the concepts covered in class. As a music teacher, a flipped classroom is both perfectly in line with the standard way an ensemble is run as well as being opposite of what is needed, depending on the situation and content. Being a performance-based course generally, there is an expectation that each player/student should be practicing their own parts at home and within the band class the teacher/conductor facilitates putting those parts together. However, at the same time, it can be very difficult to find ways for students to learn some of the higher order concepts and ensemble skills in their at-home practice and thus requires in-class direct discussion. So, the nature of music classes in some ways encourages both flipped and non flipped classroom models at the same time, though it is good to be aware of the distinction.