Culturally Responsive Teaching

SUMMARY

Explore teaching general music through a culturally responsive lens. Part 3 explores technologies to help connect with students, create engaging visuals, and track student’s learning.

by Manju Durairaj

Sing, Say, Dance, and Play in a Culturally Responsive Way — Part 3

Manju Durairaj
Posted 10/7/21
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Technology in the Music Room

The ideas, notes, and materials are the intellectual property of Manju Durairaj. Please use and adapt them for use in your music room. However, you do not have permission to share without the express permission of the author.

Since the pandemic, teachers have found themselves teaching in many different formats using technology is no longer a choice.

Asynchronous
Hybrid
In-Person

Each of these formats provides us with opportunities to explore new technologies that will help us.

Connect with students to build and maintain relationships.
Create engaging visuals that deepen understandings.
Create substitutes for tangible hard copies – including worksheets and manipulatives.
Assess, organize, and track students learning.

To help organize all of the latest technologies we find ourselves using, Mark Anderson has free resources to help guide teachers, including the periodic table app, which allows teachers to try various technologies with a simple tap on an icon.

There are countless other technology options when working with students. However, the apps I use to engage with students are listed below. Each has a short description and a hyperlink if you choose to learn more.

Presentation Apps:

PowerPoint: Microsoft’s presentation software.

Google Slides: Google’s presentation software.

SMART Technologies: Create interactive learning experiences for your students, or download ready-made free resources shared by other teachers.

Video Recording Apps:

Loom: Loom allows users to record and share video messages of your screen, cam, or both.

Music Practice and Composition Websites:

Chrome Music Lab SongMaker: An online music composition tool that allows students to share their compositions.

Xylo: A musical app that students can play and sounds like a real xylophone.

Interactive Workspaces:

Padlet: Padlet is an App similar to an online post-it board. You can organize each Padlet to either collect your ideas or invite others to add information.

Jamboard: Jamboard is a cloud-based interactive whiteboard allowing real-time collaboration between users and interacts with all files saved in your Google Drive. Part of Google Suite.

Explain Everything: Explain Everything is a cloud-based whiteboard allowing real-time collaboration between users and interaction with all files saved in your Google Drive. Part of Google’s Creativity Apps and has some more capabilities than Jamboard.

Learning Management Platforms:

A learning management platform is an integrated set of interactive online services that provide teachers, learners, parents, and others with information, tools, and resources to support and enhance educational delivery and management.

Nearpod: Nearpod is an online student engagement platform that teachers can use to create interactive lessons that students can interact with while in-person or virtually.

Seesaw: Seesaw is an online student engagement platform that teachers can use to create interactive lessons that students can interact with while in-person or virtually.

Apps that Check for Understanding:

Pear Deck: Pear Deck is a Google Slides Add-On that allows teachers to add questions and formative assessments to their slides.

Edpuzzle: Edupuzzle allows teachers to create interactive videos that check for student understanding before continuing to watch the video lesson.

Video Conferencing:

Zoom: Zoom is a video conferencing app that allows teachers to interact with students and create small groups within the meeting.

Now that we explored the technology that is useful in the music room, the following several articles in this series will examine how to build lessons utilizing these different apps. In conclusion, I will leave you with the words of Bill Gates:

Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.
-Bill Gates

In Part 1: Detangling the Terminology, we clarified terminology that is sometimes used interchangeably and incorrectly. In Part 2: Creating a Learning Partnership, we looked at the Responsive Classroom philosophy to build learning partnerships with our students. This article examined the various technologies I use to create meaningful music lessons for my students.

The following article, Part 4: Opening Routines – Creating Connections, will focus on integrating the technology as we Sing, Say, and Play in a Responsive Way.

References

Anderson, M. (2020, January 21). Free resources. ICTEvangelist. https://ictevangelist.com/free-resources/.