Category: UVicEd Page 1 of 2

Found Sound Project Overview

On June 23, 2020

In Audio Editing, Collaboration, Complexity, Disciplinary Concepts, Exploring and Enhancing Pedagogy, Found Sound Project, Growth Mindset, Pedagogical Practices, Tech Tools, Understanding Learning, Wordview

Concept Map for FSP 2020

UPDATE: Please see the official Found Sound Project site for an overview of the July 2020 camp process, media, additional resources and links to the learners’ compositions.

This is the overview for the Found Sound Project, a summer camp I am designing and running in July 2020 through the South Island Studio in Victoria, BC. The week-long camp is centered around the creation of soundscapes of the local environment. Students will sample environmental sound and seek found sound in order to enhance compositions written on musical instruments. Students will occupy many roles – sound recordist, audio engineer, musician, composer, editor and storyteller – to produce a unique sound composition that draws on existing musicianship empowered and activated with modern digital tools. The project is designed around core principles of place-based learning, multidisciplinary practice, accessibility and artistic identity.

If you would like to learn more, I would recommend you check out specific resources related to the four main categories in the Concept Map above:

Meaning-Making: Why do this?

Core Skills/Learning Outcomes: What will we learn?

Tools & Techniques: Practices that enable success.

Sample Activity Plans from Project: What will learners do?

Thanks for checking out the Found Sound Project,

Sasha

***

NB: I wholeheartedly encourage others to use any or all of these resources for educational, artistic or creative purposes. However, I would appreciate attribution (Sasha Ilnyckyj, sasha.ilnyckyj@gmail.com)

Visuality & Collage

by sashailnyckyj

On June 7, 2020

In Growth Mindset, Musings, Personal and Professional Preparation, Understanding Learning, Wordview

Yesterday in my Visuality and Education class I was given an opportunity to experiment with collage. I haven’t done this in years and really enjoyed this opportunity to work with visual art. Working through collages got the wheels turning for me in terms of my future Biology, Chemistry or Physics classes. How could I find space for these activities which promote self-expression, creativity and are really fun?

I like the idea of using collage as a mode of pre-assessment. Before beginning a unit, it is useful to establish your student’s baseline knowledge and to get a sense of what misconceptions and questions may exist among your learners. By having students complete collages based on the unit theme (e.g. land use, ocean ecosystems, optics), you activate their imagination and interest in a way that no lecture or demo could. These collages could provide a jumping-off point for a class-wide discussion and mind-mapping exercise used to identify driving questions to be examined. The use of collages, vision boards, diagramming, etc. dovetails well with the paths to engagement discussed in the Ferlazzo article. Specifically, they serve the goals of relevance by allowing students to show which aspects of a topic fascinate them personally. Furthermore, there is a high level of autonomy promoted by these tasks as students select their own media, arrange it and tell their story. I personally believe that there is a place for story-telling and meaning-making within STEM.

Finally, I think one interesting habit that collage introduces which is valuable to the aspiring scientist is the notion of synergy. Valuable contributions to science often involve combining content from multiple disciplines. Technology & art work hand-in-hand, enabling each other. For instance, modern print art is enabled by the chemists’ lengthy efforts to refine pigments and dyes. Modern electronic music is deeply-rooted in electromagnetism and the physics of waves. What I like about collage is that it challenges you to think across strict boundaries and imagine creations/combinations that have never existed before. This aspect of ingenuity and creativity is as important to science as retention and analytical thinking.

Here are my two collages made yesterday:

Who Am I?

by sashailnyckyj

On June 3, 2020

In Change Agent, Exploring and Enhancing Pedagogy, Growth Mindset, Musings, Personal and Professional Preparation, Professional Learning Networks, Respect For All Learners, Wordview

This June, I am taking part in an institute on co-creating educational environments for diverse learners. As part of the institute, I was asked to produce an introductory video about myself. In the spirit of taking a risk and thinking multi-modally, I tried to formulate my expression of self through the symbol of a musical chord. I chose this metaphor because, like a chord, the self is an interaction of a constellation of factors. My chord is unique to me, but informed by a theoretical, cultural, aesthetic and social position.

Solid State Batteries & the incredible John B. Goodenough

by sashailnyckyj

On November 25, 2019

In EdTech Inquiry, Growth Mindset, Musings, Tech Tools, Technology Competencies, Wordview

During some late-night YouTube watching, I was introduced to the incredible scientific legacy of John B. Goodenough. His work has earned him an incredible array of awards (see his Wikipedia page), including the 2019 Nobel Prize for his work in inventing the ubiquitous lithium-ion rechargeable battery. It appears that, at 97, this pioneering chemist continues to push the bounds of his discipline! I encourage anyone with an interest in STEM to enjoy this video. It’s both informative and good for a laugh.

I am pretty blown away with Dr. Goodenough & plan to reserve a place of honour for a framed image of him in my future science classroom.

https://d2cbg94ubxgsnp.cloudfront.net/Pictures/480xany/6/3/5/87635_cw0115_feature_goodenough_f1_630m.jpg

Dr. John B. Goodenough

At present, I am designing a unit on Electromagnetism for my Sciences methodology class. This has involved me getting re-acquainted with battery technologies. Prior to this video, I did not know that solid state batteries (SSB) with a solid electrolyte even existed! The implications and potential for world-changing technologies is very exciting. While I could go either way on longer-lasting cell phone & laptop batteries, I am particularly intrigued by this technology for its ability to complement emerging renewable energy technology by enhancing battery storage systems. Breakthroughs like a SSB are needed more than ever as we face the environmental dangers of this uncertain century.

-S

Group Lesson Scheduling Systems

by sashailnyckyj

On November 17, 2019

In EdTech, Free Inquiry, Pedagogical Practices, Personal and Professional Preparation, Professionalism, Respect For All Learners

One of the new challenges that has arisen with group lessons is scheduling. In my traditional 1:1 piano teaching practice, managing student attendance is fairly simple: students have a set time each & every week. Should they need to miss a lesson, we could organize a make-up if sufficient notice is provided. This makes for a simple, predictable and concrete schedule.

However, group lessons complicate this. With my current cohort of group students, I have found that attendance is not as stable as with my 1:1 students. For instance, it is more often the case that students opt to miss a lesson or to change a lesson time last-minute. This may have something to do with a sense of diffused responsibility in a group-learning format. Without the 1:1 contact, students may seem themselves as less integral to the learning environment, resulting in a lowered level of commitment.

I actually do not mind this. I believe that people who are learning music should have ultimate control over the extent to which they engage and am always a proponent of balance in my students lives. Piano should enhance, not diminish, a student’s life. There have been times in my own life (now included) when I simply could not find time to practice as much as I wished. I support students taking time to address their needs as whole people. In order to be consistent with a mindset that values student autonomy, but also continue to encourage a healthy and thriving community in my group lessons, I believe I need to begin exploring alternative scheduling options.

The main idea that has come into my mind is the concept of leaving lesson sign-up to students themselves. I could perhaps use Google Docs/Calendar or a dedicated website to post a real-time schedule of student appointments and vacancies. If a student must miss a lesson and gives me 5-days notice, I can vacate their time slot. This would allow other students to access the schedule and claim the spot. There are three clear benefits to this in my mind: 1) it will help ensure more students are present at each group lesson, 2) it creates a mechanism through which casual students can opt-in on a lesson from time to time as convenient, and 3) it reduces the amount of time I spend managing the schedule. This system appears to be in use (see screenshot below) by the teacher on the Grow Your Music Studio blog.

Google Calendar Music Schedule, Grow Your Music Studio blog

With the new year around the corner, I will likely take some time in December to explore this with the director of my studio. Now that I am feeling more and more comfortable with the rhythm and pedagogy of the format, it is time to improve some of the ‘under-the-hood’ features.

-S

Integrating Minecraft into a Unit Plan

by sashailnyckyj

On November 17, 2019

In EdTech Inquiry, Gaming, Learning Design, Musings, Pedagogical Practices, Tech Tools, Virtual Reality, Wordview

On Tuesday, November 5th, we were fortunate to have a group from Colquitz Middle School come and share their perspectives on Minecraft. The learners were hilarious, self-actualized and engaged, which piqued my interest about the potential educational value of this ubiquitous sandbox game.

My first Minecraft creation.

Shortly after our workshop, an opportunity to integrate Minecraft into my own lesson planning revealed itself. I am currently writing a mini, 5-lesson unit for my Social Studies methodologies class on intentional community and utopia. Here is an excerpt from the project outline:

As a class, you will spend the next three classes collaboratively designing a utopian community.

Imagine that you have been given five acres of pristine land in Victoria, BC upon which to build a community where you will live with a community of others. Every student will belong to a sub-committee that is responsible for designing the systems and policies that relate to their domain. Although each sub-committee has a special mandate, it is important to consider the function of the community as a whole.

One of the sub-committees in the unit is tasked with Home Design and has a mandate to develop the physical space, including interior structures and exterior land-use, to meet the utopia’s needs. An immediate thought of mine was to encourage this group to use Minecraft’s creative mode to do this. They could consult with members from the other sub-committees (e.g. Food Production & Consumption) to determine the community’s needs and then realize these using Minecraft. Other students could explore the utopia virtually, experiencing a highly-immersive avenue into their peers’ work.

From a logistical perspective, I would need to find a way to host the server or find an external host which would meet the students’ needs. Were I to proceed with this, I would definitely take time to reach out to other educators like the educator from Colquitz for suggestions.

-S

Note Recognition: Improving Fluency with Game-ification

by sashailnyckyj

On November 4, 2019

In Free Inquiry, Pedagogical Practices, Tech Tools, Understanding Learning, UVicEd

One of the first major challenges that students encounter when they first begin to learn piano is note recognition. Standard musical notation involves translating symbols on the musical staves into letters which correspond to physical keys on the piano. This integrates many skills simultaneously and can be slow-going for new learners. Many of you who took lessons in the past probably remembers using acrostics to remember note names like “Every good boy deserves fudge.” (or my new, modern take “Every girl band deserves funding.”). Note recognition is traditionally scaffolded with memory aids and polished through completing pencil & paper exercises like this:

Traditional note recognition exercise (https://notebusters.net/note-reading-sample-content/)

However, I have recently been experimenting with a new way to help students develop fluency with note recognition: game-ification. Specifically, I have been integrating an iPad app, Staff Wars, into my group and individual lessons. This program challenges students to blast notes with lasers from an X-wing by naming each note as it scrolls from right to left. I like it because it has an element of urgency. When sight-reading music, it is not uncommon to feel stress as you read ahead through a passage, anticipating notes and chords to come. The game is designed in such a way that you experience a similar crunch, which I believe enhances its applicability and validity to real piano play. With Staff Wars, you capture a feeling that cannot be emulated in a pencil & paper exercise. The goal is that students develop an automaticity with naming in which they intuitively ‘know’ a note’s identity without having to use acrostics or memory aids. So far, I’ve been seeing good results in students who have been incorporating this app into their practice regime.

Screen capture from Staff Wars on iPad

I will say that Staff Wars is not perfect. There are a few features that I wish would be integrated. First, the app only allows you to enter responses using the note names (“A”, “D”, etc.). I wish that students could also enter their responses using a diagram of a keyboard, to further reinforce the connection between the staff and a physical position on a keyboard. Also, this app is excellent for training single-note recognition. However, a trouble area for many pianists (myself included) comes with reading clusters of notes in chords. I would love to see a setting where students name all the component notes in a chord as it scrolls from right to left. Still, for $0.99, it is a worthwhile investment for any piano teacher or new learner.

-S

Ten Years of Piano

by sashailnyckyj

On October 29, 2019

In Free Inquiry, Growth Mindset, Musings

Perhaps my favourite age-group to teach piano is adults. Currently, my group lessons are completely composed of adult learners and it’s made for a really wonderful learning environment. While mature learners don’t typically pick up the muscle memory or sight-reading with the ease of younger students, they almost always demonstrate a greater appreciation for the music itself. Having spent an entire life being moved by music and accruing meaningful associations between songs and moments, adults tend to be more adept at infusing thought and expression into their play.

One thing I often tell my adult students to motivate them is that I, myself, am an adult learner. I always tell them that it’s never too late to learn. In terms of piano players and teachers, I started unusually late in life. After being rejected for an a cappella group in second-year university because I couldn’t read music, I decided to formally commit. I took my first lesson at the age of 19, on October 28th, 2009. This means that today is the tenth anniversary of the day I began my journey in piano. Since then, not a day has passed where I have not felt immense gratitude for music. It is both a brilliant art & a shrewd science and I can’t help but feel that each hour of practice is another stone in a personal cathedral that I am constructing in my mind. Furthermore, I feel so honoured to be able to teach others and guide them along the path that has made my life so much more full.

Thank you so much to all my teachers, collaborators, friends, students, band-mates, jam-partners and every brother & sister who has joined me in song.

-S

TikTok in The Times

by sashailnyckyj

On October 21, 2019

In Change Agent, Complexity, EdTech, EdTech Inquiry, Growth Mindset, Multimedia Learning Theory, Wordview

Although I’ve been trying to get out of the relentless cycle of so-called “breaking news” this fall, I was perusing the NY Times this weekend and saw an article that caught my eye: High Schools to TikTok: We’re Catching Feelings by Taylor Lorenz. The article describes how students at high schools are finding unique ways of creating community using the TikTok platform. Although I’d heard the name before, the article explained that TikTok is a social media app for making and sharing short, often comical videos. The app is surging in popularity, having been downloaded 1.4 billion times to date.

The article talks about how, across the US, students are forming TikTok clubs where they meet to share videos and create their own content, be it songs, skits, dances, etc. I see this as a very interesting and laudable application of the software. Although my current life doesn’t afford me too much time for social media and games, I fondly recall how my years as an adolescent were enhanced by interactions in cyberspace. I spent many evening talking with friends on MSN Messenger. My amateur rap group had a MySpace. I remember the earliest days of Reddit. It seems that these TikTok clubs blend the best of both worlds: giving students a social space to meet and create with peers as well as a digital space to share their creations broadly. I believe that adolescents have enormous potential when they are given agency and are capable of creating things that are very powerful and, often, hilarious. An adviser from West Orange high praised the app for bringing students from diverse backgrounds together, saying: “You see a lot more teamwork and camaraderie and less – I don’t want to say bullying – but focus on individuals.”

I was reflecting on how the EdTech class has been operating on my biases. Prior to this class, I would say that I had a fairly negative perception of the amount of time and energy young people appeared to be spending on tech. Like many teacher candidates, I held a nostalgia for the simple, ‘authentic’ and un-networked past. However, through the resources, speakers and my own investigation, I am starting to change my perspective. I am beginning to understand that it is patronizing to expect students to share my values about tech and their lives. If I doubt the value of the connections they may be making through digital tools, I am minimizing them and their experience. Adolescents are people and, therefore, deserving of their autonomy and self-determination. I would never chastise the social media habits of another member of my PDPP cohort. So, what makes it appropriate to criticize young adults?

So, that’s my $0.02 on my changing perspectives. I am going to continue to interrogate my biases regarding technology and education. Heck, maybe I’ll download TikTok and try it…

Teoria: a web-based theory & ear-training platform

by sashailnyckyj

On October 8, 2019

In Distributed Learning, Exploring and Enhancing Pedagogy, Free Inquiry, Growth Mindset, Learning Design, Open Pedagogy, Personal and Professional Preparation, Personal Learning Networks, Tech Tools

As a teacher, I am always on the hunt for high-quality learning tools to share with my music students. Today, I’d like to write about the excellent, free website Teoria.com.

Teoria home page

Teoria is a platform for learning music theory & improving your ear. The website provides well-designed and thoughtful tutorials on concepts like reading scores, chord construction and harmonic analysis. These tutorials are accompanied by exercises which enable students to gain fluency with each concept. These exercises are highly-dynamic, allowing students to tweak the parameters of an activity to match their particular skill-level, goals and interests.

Though theory has a reputation for being stale and mathematical, I believe that all musicians should make efforts to develop their understanding of this domain. Theory lays bare the fact that music is both a shrewd science and a brilliant art. It elucidates the underlying structures of sound in a way that does not diminish, but rather, augments the art form’s beauty. The idea that music theory ‘limits’ your creativity is something I do not agree with. As the amazing musician Adam Neely reminds us, “Music theory is not prescriptive [i.e. a series of rules that must be followed]… but is a descriptive discipline which is one that describes or seeks to describe music on its own terms as it’s made in the real world, free of aesthetic or artistic judgment.” Theory is a tool for understanding musical phenomena, and, understanding these phenomena means we can emulate, utilize or modify them as we see fit during performance, composition or improvisation.

An example of a lesson

Now, theory aside, I believe that the greatest asset on Teoria is the ear-training exercises. Training your ear without a structured class or study buddy can be very difficult. It is hard to test yourself and rely solely on your ears when you are playing the instrument because you know precisely what notes are being played. Therefore, Teoria is an incredible tool for solo practice. The platform generates essentially endless ear-training exercises to aid you in becoming fluent with identifying intervals and chords as well as taking rhythmic and melodic dictation. The fact that it is browser-based makes it very easy to practice on-the-go or on a public or private computer. For students of mine who are serious about aural skill development, I cannot stress how useful this site is. As educational psychologists have noted, engaging in distributed practice (i.e. 5-10 minutes a day) can have remarkable benefits for learning. This is how I recommend using Teoria, for a few minutes a day while eating breakfast, waiting for the bus or taking a break from the hustle-bustle of life. I have been sharing this tool with students for years and will continue to do so, both in my 1:1 and group piano lessons.

Settings for 7th chord ear exercise

If you’re reading this & wish to try Teoria, please do so and let me know what you think in the comments!

-S

Category: UVicEd Page 1 of 2

*UPDATE: Please see the official Found Sound Project site for an overview of the July 2020 camp process, media, additional resources and links to the learners’ compositions.*

UPDATE: Please see the official Found Sound Project site for an overview of the July 2020 camp process, media, additional resources and links to the learners’ compositions.