As the weeks go by sometimes I feel like learning to play the guitar has shifted from being easy to hard, and vice versa. I have used MANY resources to ensure my success in playing Payphone by Maroon 5. Last week I felt good about my path and thought I would ride that idea out until the end. Now I feel incompetent with that path and have moved back to a previous resource: the video below by Fingerstyle Guitar Lessons. To recall, the difference between fingerstyle and strumming is that fingerstyle uses fingers and single strings are played and strumming uses a pick and usually requires you to play all…
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#fakenews
To continue the conversation surrounding digital citizenship, increasing our students’ digital literacy is one of the ways we can ensure they are reading accurate information. Furthermore, they are completing projects, scrolling social media, and spreading information confidently and competently, especially knowing that the information is accurate. Fake news is all around us. For the most part, people see something with an eye-catching headline. This leads to being blinded by the title and, therefore, ignoring the important information that tells a person its accuracy. I can attest to this “blinding” because, even though I have the information to tell whether something is correct or accurate, I can still read things and…
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If Happy Ever Afters Did Exist
If my title reeled you in again, I am happy you fell for it and welcome back! This week was delightful for my guitar skills. I am starting feel competent at something musical. I did have to enlist in some help this week from a few family members: my sister, Danica, and my cousin, Madison. They both have played the guitar and/or had lessons for quite some time now. Resources used this week: Payphone Tabs from Ultimateguitar.com JustinGuitar from Youtube: Stop Struggling with Strumming! Breaking up the skills This week I decided to start to pick (pun intended) away at the skills involved to play the song. I started with…
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I Spy with my Little Eye…
Someone that I do not know but recently know a lot more about! In the last two EDTC 300 classes, we have focused on digital identity and citizenship. In this week’s prompt post, we were told to go snooping into someone in the class to see what we could find on them. The purpose of this is to get an idea of what their digital identity reveals about them. It is much like if your friend or family member starts dating someone and you want to know as much as you can about the person. I felt like a cop, however, it was very exciting for me to dig up…
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I’m at a Payphone.
I am clearly not at a payphone, however, I AM writing to you guys about playing the song Payphone by Maroon 5. This week I wanted to do something new and create a very fast, chipmunk-y version of myself learning to play. Check it out below. WATCH ME LEARN TO PLAY PAYPHONE BY MAROON 5 I hope you are beginning to understand the frustration behind learning an instrument. I played the clarinet and saxophone in my elementary and middle years and I DESPISED it. I didn’t care enough to learn the notes. I just used to copy where people’s fingers went and it got me through to grade 9 when…
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Teaching Digital Citizenship
Hi, and welcome back or welcome newcomer(s). This week we were prompted to make curricular connections to Ribble’s Nine Elements To Digital Citizenship. Digital citizenship refers to the responsible use of technology by anyone who consumes these devices to engage online. My background in teaching is that of high school Health, Wellness, Social, etc. All of these subjects can easily be introduced to digital citizenship and I will focus on health education 9 for the purpose of this post. Current Applications to Digital Citizenship In most curricula, they include a list of broad areas of learning, these include building: lifelong learners, a sense of self and community, and engaged citizens.…
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I Know How To Shred
I may have misled you with the title of this blog post. I entirely DO NOT know how to shred… yet haha. I am truly not sorry because my heading got you here and I am certainly glad to have you here! I am holding onto hope that the goal of playing a Maroon 5 song is a possibility. In fact, I have a renewed sense of hope because I have found the app and website, Ultimate Guitar. If you watch my walkthrough, you will see exactly how the app works and how I intend to use it. Please note that I had a goal, I wasn’t feeling confident about…
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Calling all MSN users
Hello everyone and welcome back! Circa 2005-2009 Yes, I was one of many individuals that grew up using MSN as the main way to connect with my friends and family online. This platform allowed me to update my status to my current boyfriend’s name with a heart beside it or share what I was listening to. Back then, it was considered “cool” to have the newest music and we did that by downloading songs illegally from Limewire. This platform completely ruined most people’s computers because of the extensive viruses included with the app. Although, I was not worried because I had the coolest and newest music on my MP3 player.…
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Q & A with Tina and Allysia
Hi everyone, Tina and I sent out a Google Form last week to prompt emerging teachers to ask questions regarding teaching outside of university. We are among a few others in the EDTC 300 class that has experienced teaching outside of university. We wanted to do this to help promote the transition for the soon-to-be teachers in this class. Tina’s blog post has episode 1, and below is episode 2. If you have any more questions, feel free to reach out to either of us! Deepening the Discussion Document As we spoke of in our podcast, here is the document from the Ministry of Education. Use this document as a…
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Fender Bender
Welcome back to my guitar journey! As always, I have used FenderPlay for the purpose of this week’s lessons. I am definitely in need of some adjustment to my goals. When I first started I said that I would spend 3 hours a week learning the guitar, however, after understanding the pain I would go through from playing so much (see GIF), I think we need to dial that back. As of today, I will practice a course until I memorize the sequence of the notes and play to the tempo. I am finding that by not spending the extra time on these courses, I am falling behind on skills…
