Reflections on the Final Friday

Thinking back through this week, I am struck by the enormous challenges we faced within the workshop to come to some common ground. Within the context of this summer session at Chungang University, the participants of the workshop were those students who could find time over and above their curricular commitments to their program. In that context, those who chose to participate did so with such dedication and effort that I can only admire their energy and perseverence.

I have reflected on this process and found that working through a translator forces me to come to a deeper undestanding of what constitutes the essence of the content. I am further challenged by exploring what can be the personal tasks assigned that take students to some level of application and understanding.

So today was spent on a sight-seeing of a different kind: an inward vistation of the landmarks of each session this week, an inventory of goals and processes.

The Spiral Curriculum for Chungang University Workshop
A Personal Assessment

Concepts and Goals: Each Step takes us into more complex stages of the original concept. Each assignment requires that you make something, and that what you make has personal meaning.

• Learn to publish your web page on the Internet using basic html code.
• Learn about images (file types), how to process them and how to display them on the WWW.
• Learn about sound files (file types), how to process them and how to post them on the WWW.
• Learn about digital audio, and how to edit and process sound.
• Learn about web authoring through a web authoring application such as Dreamweaver.
• Learn about processing images and sounds as movies and displaying on the Web.
• Learn about the pedagogical theory and design you have just experienced.

I am exploring how we might better integrate such activity into the educational experience of the students. The very nature of this workshop as being an added activity on an extremely demanding schedule makes it difficult to achieve the stated objectives. Even so, the students are to be commended and admired for their patience and pesreverence. Equally important has been the contribution of the computer staff at Chungang University. All materials and server arrangements have been assembled and implemented in an extremely professional manner. The energy and diligence of our chief contact and engineer In Heung Choi has been indispensable, along with the assistance of Han Ji Yeon who provided a quiet and effective support.

Professor Hong-Ky Cho's thoughtful and considered translations of entries in this blog, suggests a process that might be built upon as we work to sustain the contact and cooperation we have begun in this summer of 2006.

Martin Kim's devotion and interpretation has provided an additional luster, and Mr. Jin Hwan Woo's quiet and supportive presence has shaped this visit and experience into a very memorable introduction to Anseong and Chungang University. The help of students Haerina Park, Youngju Kang, Tae Hee Kim and others, helped us surmount technical hurdles throughout the week.

The academic and spiritual support of President Bum Hoon Park and Dean Tae Yeon Choi have provided a framework for future association and cooperation. What we are attempting is an inspired effort to bring our cultures together in ways that we learn from each other while also continuing to develop those intangible assets that make our efforts distinctive and meaningful.

Getting Ready

Since I am accustom to working in a studio at NYU or in a wireless classroom where we can download whatever we need for particular assignments, I am adjusting to a situation where we are trying to set up everything in advance. Below is sampling of some of the discussion going between CAU and myself over the Internet. Martin Kim of Chung Ang University has been extremely patient and helpful.

I hesitated to say much about software needs, because I can usually adjust to whatever situation I find. I am not used to a formal computer lab, since I like freedom of movement and a different configuration more conducive to group discussion. That is why I was hoping we might find a space something similar to the wireless classrooms that we have at NYU. However, I am very adaptable, so we will work well within any environment available at CAU. It would be nice if there is an additional space where we can sit more informally and talk since it is virtually impossible to get much discussion going when people are sitting behind computer stations.

This is a totally paperless workshop. This means all materials are on the Internet and the participants post everything they do to their servers to publish on the Internet. They will be learning the rudiments of web authoring through simple applications of html code. That is why it is essential that we have somewhere between 50-100 MB for each person on a server and the capacity to upload and download materials. I also explore how to find applications on the Internet and download them as needed, but I am assuming that CAU's firewall may not permit that kind of spontaneity.

It is also essential that we can go to Google's eBlog site and start a Blog. We will blog every day. This blog was begun in anticipation of the CAU workshop:

One of my graduate students, Youngju Kang, is a graduate music technology major from NYU who might be available and could be very helpful in translating technical descriptions if needed.

I put all information on the web, so we don't use books or handouts. Here are websites that contain materials related to the workshop content:

http://pawed.blogspot.com/ Performing Arts Web Ed
http://webmusicing.blogspot.com/ Webmusicing
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/gilbert/resources/ Tech Resources for Performing Arts Ed
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/gilbert/musedtech/ Technological Trends for Music Education

This last one requires that you enter: Username: john
Password: john

Programs (Also called Applications) We Will Need

CAU: 1) The Window version is XP Home Edition, so Moviemaker is not installed. (Only “Ulead Video Studio 7” is installed. This is Movie Editing program) Do you think we need to get Moviemaker?

JVG: We will make do with the operating system,although XP Home Edition has many problems in consistently processing multimedia. What will matter will be your sound and video cards, so we will just have discover what the limits are when I am there. Audacity adjusts to the sound card of the system.

You don't need to get Movemaker. I will get a copy of Ulead's Video Studio 7 so that I can make a tutorial for using it.

CAU: 2) PowerPoint was not installed at this moment. We will get the Powerpoint ready. Is this Powerpoint program for your(teacher’s) computer(laptop)? Or shall we install this Powerpoint to all students’ computers? And this Office should be English version? Or can be Korean version?

JVG: I am not sure what Korean version means,. They should be able to do PowerPoint slides in English so that I can give them feedback. I have PowerPoint on my laptop. I want the teachers to know PowerPoint since this is the standard presentation tool for conferences and symposia, and they can also teach their students to use it.

CAU: 3) For “Studio 8” of Adobe, I think we may use the trial version which available for 30 days. I’m not sure whether “Adobe Element” also has trial version. For Audacity, we will get it ready.

JVG: Perfect. Adobe Element also has a trial version. If you are able to get Dreamweaver and Flash, we would use them toward the end of the workshop, so trial versions are fine. I already have them installed on my laptop.

CAU: 4) we want to know the information about your Mac laptop,

JVG: My Laptop is the MacBook, top of the line (the black one). It uses a standard VGA connector for the Projector and a mini-stereo jack for the stereo sound.

5) Other essential applications from JVG:

We need an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program installed on computers so students can upload and download files. Perferably one of the newer designs that are simply drag and drop interfaces rather than text driven.

We need several alternative Browsers installed on each computer. Firefox is essential. Opera or Netscape would be additional browsers to have available.

iTunes is needed for sound File Management and conversion. It is also useful in learning about Podcasts.

The Feast of Stephen

A dramatic discovery for me was to learn of Stephen Downes, someone I have never met, but who has been an inspiration as well as serve as an oracle for the new era of teaching and learning in an age of connectivity, creativity, and collaboration. I stumbled upon Downes as I was making my way through blog after blog of delightfully creative Singaporeans who had discovered blogging long before I did. One blogger, Deadpoet's Cave (which he now calls the Defunct Deadpoet's Cave, because he fled Google for his own Domain, which can't be found now), drew my attention Downes last December.

Discovering Stephen was a feast of colossal proportions because I was not aware of the new dynamics emerging in the technology of teaching and learning. I have always been an enemy of the first stages of CAI (Computer Aided Instruction) because of its positivistic stance, and so I had moved to my own ideas about CEI (Computer Enhanced Instruction), which was also not really what I wanted to achieve in making technology more integral to teaching and learning. I wanted a dynamic platform where learners created knowledge by making meaning through creative process. I found this in the work of Stephen Downes. Deadpoet has quoted Downes:

What happens when online learning ceases to be like a medium, and becomes more like a platform? What happens when online learning software ceases to be a type of content-consumption tool, where learning is "delivered," and becomes more like a content-authoring tool, where learning is created? The model of e-learning as being a type of content, produced by publishers, organized and structured into courses, and consumed by students, is turned on its head. Insofar as there is content, it is used rather than read— and is, in any case, more likely to be produced by students than courseware authors. And insofar as there is structure, it is more likely to resemble a language or a conversation rather than a book or a manual.

The e-learning application, therefore, begins to look very much like a blogging tool.

from E-learning 2.0

Our workshop is intended to be an extension of this concept. It also incorporates concepts from Jerome Bruner with his ideas concerning the spiral curriculum and the importance for individuals to create their own meaning as they encounter ideas and activities. But more about that later!

Waiting to Know You

A song from the The King and I is about

Getting to know you,
Getting to know all about you.
Getting to like you,
Getting to hope you like me.

I am looking forward to that process of getting to know who you are, to understand what makes you the person that you are. I was hoping to have contact with you by e-mail before we start the workshop, but that may not be possible. Nevertheless, the process of knowing you has already begun on a subtle and profound level. Becoming aware of your backgrounds and your ideas about music will provide a context for me as to how we should approach this workshop. As I am waiting for you to join me in this mutual discovery of music in our time, I know that I emerge as a student of you in the context of your culture. Technology is providing a new way of bridging cultures, and we will be learning to engage technology in a way that is quite different from past technology, a way of sharing the uniqueness of ourselves.

Now we have an opportunity to create meaningful structures through technology, to actually establish knowledge in the process of creation. We have the power to publish our thoughts, and now such freedom of expression lead to a discovery of ideas and concepts that could transform us as musician teachers.

If you are teaching music, you are a maker of music in the world, and you have taken on the charge of passing the rich tradition of musicing to younger generations. Being a teacher means making a difference in the world, and being a musician means making the world more meaningful and beautiful through the sounding of the human soul and spirit. You are the keeper of the past and the creator of the future.

For centuries, our understanding of technology has enabled us to preserve and develop this rich heritage of musicing for the world to enjoy. Now we can be more than consumers of music... we have the tools to create and share, and this opportunity is making a new world of music and musicing.

Music Education Technology in Perspective

Music Education Technology stems from the rich tradition of technology and music. The technology of music is ongoing, we have music with machines from the 19th Century resulting in one of the most magnificent machines ever conceived: the Symphony Orchestra, operated by a Conductor.

So the relationship of music and technology has always been, first and foremost, a romance of expanding the ways that we make music. As we left the machine age and entered the age of computers, we found new ways of making music, and recording technology developed as part of the machine age to create machines to capture music performance, thus creating for the first time in our history, a musical archive (library) of performers and performances.

Now we are leaving the machine age and evolving into the age of digital technology and communication. This is an extraordinary leap in technology that affects all aspects of how we study, rehearse, perform, record, and distribute music publications and performances. It is not surprising, that this technology may have its greatest impact on how we teach and learn music.

This workshop at Chung Ang University explores the parameters of this new technology and era of interactive web authoring sometimes referred to as technology 2.0 or WWW 2.0. This Blog represents a shift in the parameter, where the focus of the study and discovery comes from an exploration through Blogs and pathways through the Web that may disclose information that we can use to make meaning for ourselves. This will be a workshop about doing, about making meaning from rubrics that explore in very small chunks the technology now at our disposal.

How Do Our Students Music?

Think of music as a verb. A fundamental question for all music educators is whether our teaching provides a context of musicing. Why musicing? In English, music is the only art that does not employ a dynamic verb to describe its process. We have painting, dancing, and acting, but for music we usually say making music, performing music, or creating music, using music as a noun, and therefore a static object.

As the eminent scholar David Elliott has pointed out, we have too often taught music as though it is an object, an object to be revered, to be sure, but this focus diverts us from the true power of music. Young people instinctivecly understand that music is a vital, dynamic, and spontaneous process that requires the performer and creator to be deeply engaged in the moment. It is this quality that has made pop music movements so powerful. In this context, young people regard themselves as being in music. However, they also often feel that "music education" as practiced in most public schools does not relate to their passion for music.

Part of our difficulty has been the so-called canon of Western Music which has evolved as the content for many music education curricula. This focus on European music from about 1650 to 1900 has created substantial obstacles in motivating young people to explore and discover music in the context of "school music." In many instances, this Western Canon has also been adopted in Asian music education. But for many young people, music is something they create more than it is an object for listening. Too often we have substituted listening for musicing, treating music as an aesthetic object to be consumed by the ears.

It is important for us to undestand the process of music as it is unfolding today. Technology is transforming how we create, perform, and listen to music--- in short musicing is the dynamic state of creating/performing/listening--- and in our emerging world of digital technology, webmusicing can unlock new possibilities. As educators we need to be about our business of musicing, musicing for ourselves and our students.

An Educator in Korea

Sometimes I feel like a spirit stumbling upon the resources of the world, a wanderer perhaps in search of myself, or perhaps looking for an entrance to an elusive dimension that may hold the secret of myself. Each of us, I believe, perceive a secret within ourselves that is the clue to our identity. Life is the experience of that Identity becoming what it can be, but is always defined in the context of the lives we encounter.

Korea has been a mysterious melody within me, and for some reason I have a natural affinity for Korea and Korean culture. Harmonies accrue from the melodies emerging in the ongoing discovery of how I am revealed, of the uncovering of Being as I encounter Korean culture and those that manifest that culture. It is like a song with an unending melody, each variation unfolding a musical immediacy of such ineffable and unexpected beauty.

There is nothing more noble than the privilege of participating in the discovery of the reality of ourselves. After all, that is the adventure of education: the discovery of who we are and the revelation of what we can become and what we can achieve. There is nothing more noble than the gift of music, of discovering how music defines our identity and discloses our destiny.

One miracle of the educational process is revealed when the teacher becomes the learner and the learner becomes the teacher. It is much like the spin of Yin and Yang in a perpetual recovery of the reality of ourselves. It is in this spirit that I celebrate this opportunity to share this new adventure that defines our sensibilities as teachers and learners of the world.

Technology is the extension of human ability, the ability to see further and to reach for the stars with a new sense of freedom and power. Ultimately, good technology can empower our musicality, and bad technology can mesmerize us into the illusion of progress. In the growth of humankind, technology has evolved as the expansion of our humanity. We compose symphonies and fill the Internet with music through the vision and achievement of our technology. Our challenge is to understand who we are becoming in the face of new technologies and celebrate the gift of Prometheus, who in bringing us fire, gave us the power to be like gods.