Visiting Lecturer: Fitchburg State University

I am happy to announce that I will be teaching a new graduate course titled "Technology Integration for the 21st Century Classroom." I consider myself a technology guru when it comes to integrating technology into the curriculum. I will not lie, I have no idea and no interest in what makes a computer or internet work. What I do care about is going through the vast educational technology that is out there right now and weeding out the good from the bad. I have much experience working with other subject areas and have received a lot of technology training from Apple and from my years teaching for Virtual High School. While at Pentucket, I served on the District-Wide Technology Committee. As a result of all these experiences, I want to give teachers a hands-on opportunity to embrace technology and feel comfortable making lesson plans using technology.

Here is the course description:
This course is aimed at giving educators hands-on training of the latest tools for creating a 21^st century classroom enriched with meaningful technology. Each class will feature project-based guidance on a specific type of technology followed by a discussion of implementation into all content areas. Candidates will incorporate what they learned into a Weebly website for future use.

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Band Room: A New Design

Just in case we ever get a new or renovated high school (I might be dreaming), I wanted to be prepared for helping input the best design possible for a new band and chorus room. I ended up attending a clinic by the Wenger group. Wenger is the company that made the acoustic shells on our high school auditorium stage along with the two "soundproof" practice rooms that were installed back in the 1960's. The company is now the standard company used in the United States for music room design. I learned many things at this clinic. Firstly, I learned that most bands and choruses have their own rehearsal rooms, practice rooms, and offices. We spent a long time focusing on where sound goes after it leaves the instrument. Our music room has a ceiling that needs to be at least four feet higher. Additionally all the equipment in the room cuts down on reverberation. It is suggested that any closets or storage areas in a band room have open grilled doors so that air and sound c...

Learning Theory through Pop Music by Matthew F. Finnegan

Did you know that most pop music has a four beat pattern where the snare drum usually accents beats two and four? Example: "Get a Grip" by Aerosmith! At 8:00 am I attended what I consider my favorite clinic thus far at the MENC All-Eastern Music Educators Conference. Titled "From Simple to Complex: Leading the Listener to Learning," clinician Mathew F. Finnegan gave great examples of how popular music can be used in the classroom to teach music theory. The idea is this: teaching music theory through the old school fashion of notes on a page and through classical music does not work in today's classroom. In order to create the motivation for students to want to learn theory, we need to reach out and use the music which relates to them the most and connect it with the content we want to teach them. I found this clinic to be very inspiring. Here we just focused on the beat, but this clinician has already established how to incorporate pop music with the teach...

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