"To teach is to touch a life forever"

Month: November 2022

Learning How To Read Chords Sheet Music

As mentioned in a previous learning project post, I am unable to read strumming chord sheet music. While the sheets may look simple, I am unsure of how long to play the chord, as well as unsure of how long to count for. So far, I have been learning all of my chords and snippets of songs through videos, so I just follow along with the creator of the video and memorize the chords and snippets. For example, to learn the beginning of Stand By Me by Ben E. King, I watched a video, and then continued to practice until I had a good memory of it. After not playing it for a while, I needed a quick refresher. To do this, I watched an old video of me playing it. I would like to be able to read the music and know how to play a song without needing to use a video or other resource aside from the sheet music. 

The part I find very tricky is thinking about and preparing for the upcoming chord while playing the current chord. 

To help me practice the timing and chord switches, I looked up some very simple songs that only involve two chords. These songs were Row, Row, Row Your Boat and the Itsy Bitsy Spider. 

From my searching, it appears that one simply just plays a chord until the word with the next chord over top of it comes up, then switch! For instance, in the first line of Itsy Bitsy Spider, you start playing F on the word “itsy” and switch to playing C7 on the word “up.” Learning this task was much easier than I thought it would be! I understand the concept, but I struggle to actually do it. The website could have been more informative. I had to draw my own conclusions rather than be exclusively told. 

Here is the website: LiveUkulele

Here are videos of me playing those two songs!

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Itsy Bitsy Spider

Continuation of Strumming and Fingerpicking

For this blog post, I decided to refresh my knowledge of strumming and fingerpicking! To refresh my knowledge of strumming, I practiced playing Stand By Me, a song intro that I learned earlier in the semester. 

Here is a video of me practicing: Stand By Me

Then, I learned some more chords. These chords are A, D, and E. I found diagrams on AustinBazaar. There were 6 chord diagrams, but I had already learned C, F, and G. This website also includes multiple videos about learning chords, as well as techniques and tips! These would be super beneficial for students to use if they were learning the ukulele. 

Below I have attached some videos of me playing these chords while strumming: 

Strumming A Chord

Strumming D Chord

Strumming E Chord

After practicing some old chords and learning some new ones, I moved onto fingerpicking. I attempted some finger picking using the chords that I learned: 

Here are the videos of my attempts: 

Fingerpicking A Chord

Fingerpicking D Chord

Fingerpicking E Chord

My thoughts on chords: 

A – This one was super easy! It was similar to the other chords that I learned earlier in the semester. 

D – This one was more challenging than A. While I was able to do it, I struggled. 

E – This one was super hard! I found this one the hardest of all three. 

With D and E, I found the hardest part to be pressing one finger down to cover multiple strings.

After this practice, I thought that I would give learning a song with both strumming and fingerpicking a try! Then… I became very overwhelmed with how fast my individual fingers would need to move to play the pattern and change chords. I do not think that I am quite ready for that, yet! Someday I will accomplish this, but I am proud of my work and effort for learning some new chords!

Keeping Tabs on Tablature

Throughout this semester, I have realized that songs are often written using ukulele tablature. So far, I have been learning songs and different patterns from videos as I was unable to read tablature. As I mentioned in one of my initial learning project posts, I am able to read standard notation with a bit of a refresher. This week, I decided it was time to become more familiar with it! With ukulele tablature, the lines represent the strings. Then, on the line, there will be a number. This number represents the fret that should be played. For example, if a line says 0, then no frets should be pressed. However, if the line says another number, then the corresponding fret should be pressed. 

Here is a video of me demonstrating: Learning Ukulele Tablature

I played all of the strings open first, so none of my fingers were pressed on the frets. Then, I played the first fret on the first string with the rest open, then the second fret on the second string with the rest open, and then the third fret on the third string with the rest open. I finished by playing the second fret on the first string. 

I found my information here: Ukulele Magazine. This was a very informative website! It describes what tablature is, as well as how it should be used simultaneously with standard notation. I only looked through the tablature section, but there are multiple different sections on chord diagrams, capos, time signatures, etc. This would be a good website to bookmark to look back on for the other information!

As well as previously being unable to understand ukulele tablature, I am unable to read chord sheet music. That is something to discover in another week coming up!

Digital Literacy: Fake News!

Screenshot taken from Stanford news

As teachers, we need to teach students about fake news when teaching them about digital literacy. Students have access to social media and technology, so they can easily spread fake news if they are not taught skills to decipher between real and fake news. For example, in The Smell Test: Educators can counter fake news with information literacy. Here’s how article by Linda Jacobson, it states that “students at an elementary school admitted that their reports of creepy clowns wielding weapons – really just construction workers with tools – were not true” (para. 9). This can cause worry and panic, resulting in emergency services being called and taken away from real emergencies.

In the future, I will be teaching elementary students, and right now, I am pre-interning in a grade 2/3 split classroom. Teaching digital literacy for this age group will differ greatly from teaching digital literacy to high school age students; teaching digital literacy to elementary students should be introductory. It is very necessary to bring awareness to the topic at a young age as students/children have access to technology much younger nowadays, so it is important that students begin to understand how to be safe and responsible online. They need to be able taught to be weary of what they are seeing, as well as taught to question and think about what they are seeing or reading.

At these young ages, one has to be careful about how they teach the information to students. The information needs to be age appropriate, so students can understand. Further, teachers need to teach students without using fear as we do not want to scare children away from the digital world. In an age appropriate manner, students need to be taught to not trust easily online. We need to not just accept what we read on the internet. Further, we need to avoid immediately sharing news you see online. One should always take at least a few minutes (or longer) to think and consider what they just read before choosing to share it in an online space.

The curriculum needs to be adapted to include digital literacy specifically. As of right now, teachers are not required to cover digital literacy. It is up to an individual teacher’s discretion whether or not they cover the topic in their classroom. Looking at the Saskatchewan health curriculum from grades one to five, a teacher can discuss risk and safety regarding digital literacy. The outcome and indicators are: USC1.4 e and i, USC2.5 a and h, USC3.5 a, USC4.4 d, and USC5.6. From grades one to four, there is no specific mention of digital literacy. These outcomes and indicators discuss risks, so one could discuss the risks of not being aware of digital literacy and fake news. USC5.6 mainly focuses on safety in regard to peer pressure; a teacher could discuss how we need to think hard before sharing online, and we should not just share an article or post that we are not sure about because our friends are or our friends told us to share it.

In terms of the NCTE framework for grades one to five, students would need to focus on being able to “participate effectively and critically in a networked world” and being able to “explore … across a wide variety of inclusive texts and tools/modalities.” We need to teach them the proper ways to interact and network online, as well as provide them experience in different age appropriate online environments, so when they are out of school and exposed to technology, students have the knowledge and strategies of how to be safe and responsible online.

For elementary students, the activity done in class would be beneficial as it was a fun way to engage students. As mentioned in the EdCan fact sheet, this will provide a more meaningful experience with more absorbed knowledge for children.

Teachers are also not alone! Librarians can be a great resource for digital literacy when they are properly trained in that area.

Hour of Code

For this blog post, I opted to do an Hour of Code option on Code.org. This activity was designed for grade two students, and it involved making a little dinosaur video game. There are also multiple other activities available for various grade levels. These Hour of Code activities have step-by-step video instructions that you can watch first before completing a task, but they are not mandatory as there are written instructions on each task as well. While going through the activity, I watched the step-by-step guides for the first two tasks, and then I opted to use the written instructions for the rest of the tasks. In the classroom, I think the videos would be beneficial for the grade two students so they can visualize the process and the steps before completing the tasks. Further, after each task, you get to test out the dinosaur game with the new coded additions.

Personally, I am not a huge fan of coding. I used to have to do in in high school, and it never peaked my interest. However, I think that students would enjoy the Hour of Code activities as a fun, new, and different activity. Also, I think coding is so important to teach students as we continue to develop and use digital things more. Additionally, it could give students insight for a future career plan if they develop a passion for coding. If I had the resources in my future classroom, I would attempt to incorporate coding into some aspect of my teaching.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cybersleuthing

This week in EDTC300, we cybersleuthed another classmate to see what we could uncover about this other person. I cybersleuthed Kaelynn LePoudre this week, and I found accounts of hers on three social media sites, as well as her online ePortfolio. The three social media sites were Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. As I know Kaelynn personally, I follow her on her private social media accounts, so I tried to only look at public information to get the perspective of an outsider trying to look in. From these accounts, I was able to gather information like her birthday, her relationship status (as well as her significant other’s name), her hometown, her high school, and her current city. Further, I was able to find out where she attends university, where she works, and her job title. Lastly, I found out her interests like nature, photography, hiking, gardening, and painting from her ePortfolio. From my sleuthing, I found out that once you can add something to a google search of someone’s name, like a hometown, you have more access to any public news articles or documents that feature the person’s name. For instance, I found Kaelynn’s track and field results from 2015.

Instagram Logo

Twitter Logo

Facebook Logo

 

On social media, most people like to hide the bad. As per the article, “Instagram is passed off as real life,” instead of just the highlight reel that it is. People post the good moments and make their lives look as ideal as possible. Every day we are exposed to perceptions of others’ lives on various social media sites, and this can be detrimental if we are in a tough spot ourselves. 

Further, social media posts can ruin lives, even just one, as stated by Jon Ronson in his TED Talk. They are forever, and they are exposed to the entire world. This can cause extremely poor mental health, as well as lost jobs and alienation from those around the person who posted something viewed as bad. Even if the post is a miscommunication, the damage is instant and lasting.

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