I can’t believe I am on week seven of my learning project, the final week!

While working on my learning project I was able to explore different types of medias, things like the Simply Piano app, Instagram, Canva, podcasts, YouTube, and simply searching for information using google. It was interesting getting to learn through the use of technology. I believe this project has helped me a lot not only as a learning but also as an educator. I now feel a lot more confident in exploring different technologies and medias that would enhance the classroom learning experience for students. Testing out new ways of doing things is no longer a daunting task, it’s more of an adventure. An adventure that I will take alongside the many students I will be lucky enough to teach in my career.

Here is a quick recap of my journey through learning piano:

Week One: Learning Piano

  • My starting point and my plan
  • Getting organized
  • Using the app Simply Piano
  • Labeling my keyboard

Week Two: Ode to Joy

  • Exploring my app
  • Learning the first keys
  • Playing by ear
  • Playing “Ode to Joy”

Week Three: Reading Music

Week Four: Exploring Canva

  • Exploring canva.com
  • Documenting my learning
  • Starting “I See Fire” by Ed Sheeran

Week Five: Podcasts

  • Listening to Podcasts
  • Learning practice tips
  • Learning scales
  • Playing “I See Fire” by Ed Sheeran

Week Six: Instagram

  • Exploring Instagram
  • Finger control and strengthening exercises
  • Staying out of rabbit holes

Reflection of the Learning Process

Overall the learning process was something I found quite enjoyable. Not only did a learn a bit about how to play the piano, I also learned more about myself as a learner, about different learning and teaching strategies, and how peer support can make such a big difference in the experience. It’s hard to teach yourself something and to learn on your own, but through my blog posts and the comments I was receiving I felt like I had this whole group of people cheering me on. As a teacher we need to remember this and cheer on students with their learning, and help them to support their peers as well.

Looking back at the learning tools I had found, some I really liked, while others not so much. Podcasts are still not my favourite, and though I did enjoy using Instagram it was also very distracting and easy to get off track. The app worked really well, but at times was way to structured and became really repetitive and almost boring making it hard to focus. I think one of the more helpful tools I used was when I used Canva to document my learning. It was great keeping track of what I was doing, and I was also able to go back and review things as well. I ended up using both the power point and in the end, I even tried out the video editor. Both tools were very helpful for my learning.

I am very excited to use these tools in my future classrooms to help my teaching strategies, and to help students to explore and learn.

To finish things off here is my most recent Version of “I See Fire”

As you can here I haven’t made it past the first page in the song though my technique and sound have started to improve. My goal is to continue practicing and learn the entire song, along with learning other songs.

Thank-you for following my progress of my learning project I hope you have gained some valuable information about online learning tools, and maybe you were even inspired to start a project of your own!