Key Aims
I would undertake a practical and academic study into the professional application of the ipad as a dynamic sound device in live sound and performance and how it can interface with other musical hardware. I would investigate the application of this in the music classroom
I would study how the ipad can be used for dynamic observational records in the classroom
I would investigate and share supportive apps and practices on mobile devices for students completing and collating work on ipads.
- Retention –exciting and innovative performance opportunities. Supportive system for dyslexic students
- Recruitment – display of exciting and innovative performance opportunities
- Value-added performance
- Success rates – greater success for dyslexic and organizationally challenged students
- Improvements in questioning, stretch and challenge or feedback to students on their work
- Improvements linked to individual lessons observation feedback
- Narrowing the gap in terms of performance between different groups of students (gender/ethnicity/learning difficulties etc)
I would identify key students that would benefit from improving their organisational skills and ask them if they would like to adopt the system (the ipad can be used as collection tool in the classroom but they will be able to access their own and class shared accounts through any technology – smart phones et c.). I will monitor this with them in 1:1 sessions each half term and attach their observations to each progress review. I would measure their actual progress against similar students from previous years and also the students in their peer group who do not wish to participate in the project (obviously they also may wish to adopt the system during the course of the year should the results become obvious to them!).
What I did:
I received the equipment mentioned above and began to install and experiment with apps. At the same time, I was able to make an independent bid for a community project that I am involved with (Pop Up Cafe') and purchase a Mackie DL1608. This meant that students were able to benefit form the full professional wireless control of mixers when they participated in community concerts, and the bid was sufficiently flexible to allow me to also use the mixer in my professional practice.
I used most of the apps, and discovered many more, and tried them out in the practical situations with students.
How was this implemented in a practical way?
Access and organisation apps
These apps were used by myself professionally and also introduced to each of my classes, both as a short intro to the whole class, and one to one as seemed appropriate for individual needs of the student (or co-worker)
Digital mixer.
The use of a wireless mixer has become a regular part of our learning and practical implementation. I was able to obtain the use of this cutting edge piece of kit using a community bid that I obtained for the pop up cafe'. The bid was is sufficiently flexible to legitimately use it for college use when it is not being used (as it is benefitting young people and the community)
The mixer can be mixed by up to ten devices connected simultaneously. This meant that I could be mixing then tag-team to another student holding an ipad who was seeing what I was doing in front of him then take over. During our major project performance this year, one student was mixing front of house - mobile around the room to hear how it sounded. One was concentrating upon mixing for the recording, and another was mixing separately for the video mix. This method allows us to soundcheck all the acts before the event - save all the settings and tweak them in the live space. This has added a new professionalism to our live events, unparalleled sound and quicker set up times. It is a far more interactive experience and a much healthier learning environment where students feel for more involved and are learning more skills, both in the preparation and live. We also mixed a festivals for Elmhurst School (perfect for sitting on their green with an ipad and a hotdog, mixing our students with one hand!) and two events at the Redbrick building in this way. Other professionals locally have been rather interested in what we are doing and this has represented Strode college to them as a cutting edge centre in the community. The second year music students have taken to this way of working very quickly - particularly one student who had their own iPad mini so they were able to learn the app very well at home, then come in and mix. (Behringer have produced a copy of this mixer -the X18- that Paul White has briefly tried and recommended to us when he visited - was was previously using the DL1608 like us, and it may be as good with more functionality for less than half the price - details to be released this summer. Thomann also stock a tiny Digital lighting controller MUX box for theatres with built in wireless Android and iOS control for less than £200. This appears to be a huge growth area that is coming down in price for the whole performing arts sector)
Music applications
Certain aps were explored and used as interactive starters with various learning aims. This helped to make the lessons refreshing and stimulating. In one instance, students were able to formulate distinction level comments during a discussion we had after playing a music management 'game' co-authored by the Musicians Union and Aardman. The students downloaded the app to their own devices and came in the next day with stories about how they had 'completed' the game - and achieved the learning objectives!
How was it shared and communicated?
In lessons -
The iPad was utilised in lessons both as a presentation tool and for formative and summative assessment. It was connected to a projector via an adaptor. I found that a clip to attach it to a microphone stand in this configuration was useful, both for health and safety reasons, and also to avoid the lead pulling out and losing connectivity with the projector. This offered certain advantages over an interactive white board - namely that it was simpler to set up in multi purpose rooms such as music studios (dance studios and gyms spring to mind) and the fundamental communication point that you can make changes whilst facing the class. The fundamental problem with interactive boards is that you have to turn your back to the people that you are communicating with in order to do anything more involved than clicking a remote to change a slide (which is not interactive). Students were able to come up and manipulate interactively from this position also.
I found this arrangement particularly effective in bringing music theory lessons alive with an interactive score that played the notes as the examples were written on the touch screen and dragged into harmonies.
Pictures were taken of students setting up for performances and alterations communicated in formative/interim assessment using Skitch to annotate the images. Observation Notes on rehearsals, audio clips and images were all tagged on the fly in various practice rooms to build up a body of evidence that could be referenced easily. This meant that rehearsals were given focus and students understood how observations were important to their assessments as the notes from the previous week were easy to show to them. Little videos could be taken for this purpose, although I would stress that if video is a regular form of assessment - regular back ups to a computer and hard-drive, and cleaning off the ipad, is needed periodically as it is very easy to fill up an ipad with video files.
During Final performances, detailed notes were kept and referenced on the ipad for referring back to marking later. Paper notes and marks could easily be scanned and added into the referenced notebooks on Evernote to make everything easy to find and searchable. It was also easy to show back to students in multiple locations - as all the marks would be accessible later on any other device or computer.
During lessons, with various individuals who struggled with literacy and personal organisation, I scanned their work into the learning project file rather than risk them losing their class notes or research. Later, I could refer back to this work and assist them with developing essays and reports from it. This method would perhaps be particularly valuable as some sort of integrated learning support.
Sharing
Professional conversations with staff have led to a few users giving it a try, although I feel that people like to have a feeling of ownership over the personal methods that suit them. I look forward to to building personal coaching relationships with interested individuals within other teams during my AST role next year. As well as sharing with my immediate team, Alistair Pirrie sought me out for a session on Evernote and he seemed interested in giving it a try. A member of staff was impressed with my use of the ipad stand and this has been borrowed a few times - simple but practical! I suggest we get a couple of iPad presentation stands for AV as they are not too expensive.
I conducted two demonstration session about Evernote and professional applications for different disciplines on development day earlier this year. These went well, I feel, and were well attended. I could have demonstrated a lot more and made them more interactive but they were just very short sessions.
I participated in a JISC RSC learning forum at Weston college. This was a brilliant opportunity to share practice and to find new techniques from other practitioners. It was also attended by Angela Leavens. I would like to attend some more of these free events in the future as they are very valuable and also to extend informal sharing sessions at Strode next year.
I have participated both in the curriculum ILT group and shared at a session of the ILT steering group. I have been asked to share techniques with some of the administration staff at some point at the end of the year.
I plan to share my findings here and make an edited account public.
What were the results of the data I collected?
The students that I have worked with this year represent a very small sample and only act as a very crude indication (a total of 34 responded to the online survey they were invited to complete).
I have included both years of both the music and Music Tech level three extended diploma courses.
One of the main drawbacks with the survey is that the responses, due to the demographic of those courses, resulted in only 20% female response, skewed with the majority (80%) being male. 50% of the response was from music yr. 1. This was for practical reasons: access to computers during tutorials. This is the largest and most diverse group and so it is useful that we had the best response from them.
There are a high proportion of students in those groups with mild difficulties such as dyslexia or undiagnosed but referred and supported literacy issues (Based upon promonitor records, 42% of the students I teach have an amber alert).
Out of all the responses, only one student did not own a mobile device.
Surprisingly, 51% owned an iphone. This may reflect the extra value that musicians and technicians place upon a device with high audio quality and something which can provide extra functionality in musical circles. It would be interesting to see if this correlates to the rest of the college.
20% owned Android systems, with the rest being generic or blackberries. New HTML5 protocols mean that more of these new phones should be able to access the same content and the platform of choice is becoming less and less critical.
Only one phone out of those surveyed was deemed by the respondent as not up to the task of accessing anything useful online. Only one person did not regularly bring this device to college.
The overwhelming majority of students have access to their own powerful portable computing devices that should be able to access most of the applications I investigated. This is higher than national surveys (which were high at 70% http://www.bristol.ac.uk/education/research/networks/mobile/publications/emergereport.pdf) but are predicted to only increase, as will the cross-compatibility of the market.
42% regularly use these devices to access learning aims at college. 33% never do and 24% rarely. This seems like a 'marmite' type of thing, about half of people like to use mobile devices as part of their learning.
40% have used Evernote with my encouragement. 33% plan to use it in the future (you can lead a horse to water...) but only 6% (2 people) really did not get on with it. Aps tend to either stick and fit people right away or the complete opposite. Occasionally aps grow upon people if they make themselves use it - but they are more likely to discover their 'own way of tying their laces'.
Only 15% are really using Evernote a lot currently, over half plan to use it more in the future (they may need more overt tutor examples). About half don't feel it will be useful to them.
The way in which Evernote's use was perceived by most was for taking notes, collecting research, accessing files on multiple devices and for students who have trouble organising their work.
Evidence shows that students are already using a range of cloud storage systems (iCloud, Moodle, Dropbox, Googledocs, iNotes and One drive) and the diversity may continue. It will be good to find ways in which to share information and objects across many systems to account for this. Students will not like (or should not have) to move from a system that already works for them but can be integrated into our study system. With students who are struggling, the systems they use could be analysed and they can be coached to use them more effectively.
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