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Month: February 2024

The Audacity

I tried the app Audacity for the first time this week. This is an awesome tool that allows you to make your sounds with different objects or sounds tools. I would compare it to moviemaker for music. It allows you to record a sound where you can split, cut, duplicate, and move around to make different sound tracks.

This is what the app looks like. The red button you press to start recording and then press the pause button to stop recording. The two arrows you can use to move frames from as small as a millisecond to make sure your cutting the sound at the right time. If you right click on the line that goes across as your music is playing, it gives you options to delete, split, and many other things that I do not know how to use. I recorded three different cords separately in a song that I learned while playing the ukulele this week. I cut it so that the transition between cords was flawless. I also duplicated each sound and played it in the same pattern to make the song longer. There is so much that you can do on this app that I didn’t get the chance to explore. Although, by just knowing the basics, I was able to make a song I have been struggling play and make it sound decently good. The only problem with this app is that you can only share your audio to one site called audio.com. It is free to sign up and has a lot of different sounds you can use from other creators, but it would be nice to have the option to upload it to more then one platform if needed. Once you have uploaded your song, you can name it, give a description, and post it as public or unlisted, very similar to how you are able to post YouTube videos.

This is the example sound clip I made from my ukulele recording.

I would use this tool in a music and drama class. I would give the kids full autonomy to use whatever instruments or objects they can find to create a song. This would allow them to be able to move the sounds around to make it sound however they want. They can also overlay different sounds to make it sound like more instruments are being played at the same time.

In the SAMR model, I feel modification is the biggest transformation as it allows for the creation of music in class to be significantly redesigned. Instead of having students in groups trying to create something, where a student might not play at the right time or mess up a cord or a note. They can record these instruments and cords individually, and put the song together so that it sounds like there is no mistakes.

Living in Slow Motion

Last week I watched Andy Guitar’s first and second day free Ukulele lesson on YouTube. I had a lot of trouble with the new strumming pattern that was introduced in the second video. So I just practiced going over it again and again without trying to switch cords until I could get it down. Then once I figured out the strumming pattern, I found myself struggling to be able to maintain that pattern while also being able to switch cords fluently. At the end of the lesson we went over the song “Take me Down to The Riptide” which is a song I was hoping I would learn how to play at some point during this journey. I found Andy, went through this song extremely fast and I was never able to catch up, or I would mess up and fall behind trying to play at the same pace as him. This is were I changed the video to 0.5 speed. This allowed me to work on switching cords and playing the strumming pattern at my own pace, and getting comfortable with it. I ended up working my way to playing the song at 0.75 speed and it sounded super good and I was super proud of the strides I made from last week to this week.

Being able to change the speed of the videos on YouTube is such an amazing feature that is extremely helpful especially in fast paced videos like the one I was watching.

Next week, I am going to try Day 3 of Andy Guitar’s free Ukulele lessons, I am also going to look for a new site on a different platform and compare the two of them. I want to know which platform is better for promoting learning and what video is easier to follow and learn.

Looking Into the Future

Technology has constantly changed throughout history, making major leaps and strides for every aspect of life. I remember when my elementary school got our first smartboard. Everyone was super excited about it, and made all the student super fascinated about what was happening on the board. New technology enters the classroom all the time, and it is always exciting for teachers and students to use this new technology.

In Wesch’s video, he talked about the power of YouTube as a platform and the different sites that support different videos. I found it extremely interesting how the majority of the videos posted onto YouTube are meant for less then 100 viewers, but often have the tendency to blow up with views and create trends. This made me think of all the videos I made as kid, whether it for class or for fun at home that I would make videos but post as private so that no one else could see. It makes me think, what kind of interest those videos could have gotten from the public if I had posted them for other people’s enjoyment.

Also, a question that we pondered in class was how people have built a relationship with technology and how that can be beneficial or negative. Technology is used for everything now-a-days and can make life al lot easier. It is easier to hold on to records of documents or look back on things that I have learned in classes in the past. It is easier for me to communicate with my friends and family and make plans. I also think that there is a lot of abuse to the advanced technology that we see today. I feel that it is because young individuals take this technology for granted, especially AI, and are not taught how to use it properly. I was placed in a class recently where students have been caught cheating by just simply copy and pasting essays out of chat gpt. Also, I feel students are starting to become anti-social. No one communicates face-to-face anymore. They are busy chatting through Roblox, or online through video games. I have also seen people sitting beside each other and texting one another instead of talking. I also noticed, that when you take the screens away form an individual in school, they do not know what to do. They cannot keep focus, some of them do not know how to have a conversation with another individual.

Looking into the future, technology is extremely beneficial when you have healthy boundaries around social media, and are taught how to properly use some of the advanced technologies that we are blessed to have today. Although, in today’s world, technology is often abused where people have more experience with their face in their screens compared to being face-to-face with another individual.