What do music teachers do in the summertime? Hopefully there is time to rest, relax, and have some fun. It is also a time to gear up for the coming school year. Time to purge outdated stuff and revamp the resources. Professional development ("PD") is so important, but not just any development -- meaningful professional development! When courses are offered that are relevant to your teaching situation, sign up! It may be necessary to seek out these opportunities, and it may mean travelling afar to get what you need. Or these opportunities may be right under your nose (well, almost)!
This summer, 2013, there are two PD offerings that I am very excited about. The first one is with the Music-COMP Music & Multimedia Summer Institute. I am choosing to do an Independent Project since I have always wanted to have time to do certain things but never seem to get around to doing them. My project is entitled "Bringing Digitized Materials Into the Music Classroom." This may include such music technology tasks as converting old audiotapes to .mp3 files, adding audio files to existing Microsoft PowerPoint files, creating accompaniments for repertoire used in my music classroom using GarageBand, exploring and utilizing a document camera (I just got a NEO3 Hovercam), and creating .Notebook files to be used with the AppleTV/projector and iPads. I also hope to create new lessons using technology (i.e. student iPads). So there is lots to do.
This blog will serve as the place for me to review and reflect on each day's work at the Summer Institute. If I get done even a fraction of what I mentioned above, I'll be in a better space than I am right now!
The second PD opportunity I found out about through The Fun Music Company's on-line blog and newsletter. For the first time ever, there will be a 2013 Virtual Music Education Conference! I signed up right away as I saw the list of presenters that are lined up for this. The great part is that I can continue to do other things and then access the conference site when it is convenient for me. Janice Tuck at The Fun Music Company asked participants to submit questions for the presenters, so I took some time to look at each of their bios and I generated a question for the people I'm most likely to check out during the conference. The Fun Music Company is located in Australia, but I can access this without a plane ticket and I can refer back as often as I like. I'm very excited about this. I will update this blog after the conference begins at the end of July.
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