A (Partial) Timeline of Music Education Blogging Music Education by Joel Wagner - November 24, 2008July 1, 201019 In Dr. Pisano's effort to get 100 Music Education (ME) Bloggers by the end of this year, I thought it would be interesting to go through those blogs he has listed and see if I could determine when they all started. 2002 August 30 Frogstory Records' Player Journal starts out with Warming Up 2004 May 12 Educación Musical by Oscar starts out with Aquí comienza la bitácora de Educación Musical 2005 May 13 Catalysts & Connections by Evan Tobias starts out with Mamapalooza August 29 About.com: Music Education by Espie Estrella starts out with Music and Kids - How to Instill the Love of Music in Your Child September 1 Music Matters Blog by Natalie
Back To Basics Classroom Management by Joel Wagner - November 24, 2008July 1, 20103 Reader Appreciation Month didn't quite turn out the way I had envisioned it would. That is primarily my fault. As I sit here, I realize there are some things that I used to do with blogging that I don't do any longer. I have decided it's time for me to change some things. You may or may not notice the changes as I begin implementing them. If you do, great. If not, then perhaps it is simply a change to the way I approach blogging. Whatever the case, it'll be good. How can I apply this to my classroom? How many times do we get into the habit of being so familiar with the subject matter that it no longer
November Edition of the Music Education Blog Carnival General by Joel Wagner - November 2, 2008July 1, 20100 The 5th edition of the Music Education Blog Carnival is up over at Composing Like Mad. Be sure to check out the wonderful music education resources and also submit your own article for the December Edition. Also, if you are a music educator and you blog, let Joseph know and join us in our effort to have 100 ME bloggers signed up by the end of December. Only 13 more to go!
Overhaul Your Clarinet Section Music Education by Joel Wagner - October 10, 2008July 1, 201011 I hear a lot of bands with good clarinet sections. I have a few bands with bad clarinet sections. I hear a few bands with great clarinet sections. What I will tell you in these next few paragraphs will definitely transform any bad clarinet section into a good one. They could even make a good section a great one. It's all about tone I have recently become convinced that one of the best indicators in the quality of a band is the overall band sound. By that, I mean the way that the band balances between sections, the way that the instrumentalists blend into their section sound, and the way that each person sounds individually. Technique is the easy part.
Positive Steps To Fix A Problematic Band Music Education by Joel Wagner - October 9, 2008June 25, 20161 My band sounds good. My band behaves very very well. My band is going to be great this year. This comes as the result of 6 years of learning from my mistakes. It wasn't always that way. When I got them in August, I didn't know how it was going to work out. They didn't listen. They didn't watch. They talked a lot. They were more interested in being social than in sounding good. They didn't sit in "Ready Position" much of the time. Their posture when they played was bad. Too many of them were on the back of their chair and not sitting up straight. Here is a realistic look at some things I have done this year to fix
5 Guilty Pleasures On My iPod Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - October 1, 2008July 1, 20106 The 4th edition of the Music Education Blog Carnival is up over at Teacher in a Strange Land. Our beloved host Nancy asks the question, "What five songs on your iPod do you consider guilty pleasures?" It's difficult to boil it down here with over 11,000 tracks (somewhere around 5,000 songs and 6,000 sermons) on my iPod, but I'll see what I can come up with. Here they are: The Devil Went Down To Georgia performed by Mariachi Sol De Mexico The song itself is not too off target for a Texas boy, but the fact that I recorded this off of a live performce video on YouTube makes it all the more funny. Mariachi Sol De Mexico's trumpets
Speedlinking 9/5/08 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 5, 2008July 1, 20104 I have done a poor job lately of pointing out some of the great blogs out there that have included So You Want To Teach? in their posting. Thank you so much for considering SYWTT to be a great resource! If you have linked to me and asked me to do something, I'll get to it. It is on my back-logged list of things to do. I expect a series of responses to some recent emails coming soon, and I would also expect me to be returning some of the link favors soon. As you may have noticed that So You Want To Teach? has slowed down quite a bit lately. This is to give me and you a break
The End of Summer Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - August 1, 2008July 1, 20106 Well, my summer has come and gone. I want to first of all extend my appreciation to all of the bloggers who posted while I was out. I am interested in hearing some impressions of the little experiment from the community here. If you posted something (and even if you didn't), let me know if you enjoyed reading the other perspectives and the whole experience. I had an incredible trip. It was nice to get away for almost 10 days. But alas, high school summer band has started up now. With that goes my summer vacation. I am simply wrapping everything up now and getting things under control as the new school year rolls in. I will do a sort
Literacy and Power Music Education by Susan Biggs - July 24, 2008July 1, 20104 This is a guest post by Susan Biggs I’ve been meaning to take some time to reflect in writing about the conversation I’ve been engaged in recently with a cohort of National Writing Project colleagues concerning Content Area Literacy. I’m a former H.S. English teacher who now works in professional development with my local writing project, the Western Massachusetts Writing Project, working with teachers to improve learning in our schools. The opportunity to guest post here on Joel's blog seemed like the right time. Power. I can’t stop thinking that it is all about power. This thought surfaced after reading the article, “Why Content Literacy is Difficult to Infuse into the Secondary School: Complexities of Curriculum, Pedagogy, and School
The Art of Teaching Beginning Band Music Education by Joel Wagner - July 5, 2008August 4, 201625 Greg recently commented on an article my site. As I typically do, I went to look at his blog Total Music Education and see what he's all about. His blog intrigues me. I didn't have time to read through his entire site, but what I can gather is that he is a music education student in Minnesota. He's still in school but is getting an opportunity to teach a local summer band camp. With the exception of his observation of the horn section in the camp, I haven't found anything on his blog that is offensive. Haha. Nevertheless, reading some of his experiences helped remind me how differently I see teaching beginning band now than I did when I was first starting
The First Ever Music Education Blog Carnival Music Education by Joel Wagner - July 1, 2008July 1, 201012 Welcome to the very first edition of the Music Education Blog Carnival! I have sorted through the submissions, weeded through them some, and now present to you some absolutely terrific articles here! We'll start out by sorting things out a little bit. The articles came in basically three categories: Practice, Practice, and more Practice, Teaching Tips, 21st Century Music Resources, and The Life of a Music Educator. Practice, Practice, and more Practice Without a doubt, the common denominator between all musicians is the practice experience. Love it or hate it, we all must do it if we are to get better. We need to do it even if we simply want to stay where we are. The two most entertaining
The Music Education Blog Carnival Music Education by Joel Wagner - June 17, 2008July 1, 20104 On July 1st, 2008 the very first Music Education Blog Carnival was featured on So You Want To Teach? This is something that Joseph Pisano over at MusTech.Net and I had been discussing for a couple of months, and we finally got around to starting it up. What is it? Much like the Carnival of Education, the Music Education Blog Carnival features blog articles from around the blogosphere. These articles all focus on music education and topics that might remotely be interesting to music educators. What do I do? I want to encourage anyone who has an article somewhere in their blog's archives that might relate to submit it. It doesn't have to be a recent article even.
Reflections on December and January Personal by Joel Wagner - February 2, 2008July 2, 20103 My life has changed quite a bit since December 1st. Today, I want to look back on some of the things that have happened in the life of this blog, as well as some things that have happened in the life of Joel. Blogging changes The number of readers continues to climb (164 as of Friday). It seems that the number is doubling every three to four months. If this growth continues, I'll be looking at a readership of somewhere around 300 by the end of the school year, and 600 by the end of 2008. I hosted the 148th Carnival of Education on December 5th, and the 152nd Carnival of Education on January 2nd. I launched my redesigned
Clinicians Music Education by Joel Wagner - January 31, 2008July 2, 20102 In the band world, we have a whole concept of bringing in a clinician. This is basically a chance for us to get another, more experienced teacher to come in and tell our kids all the same stuff we've been telling them in a different way. Until this morning, I hadn't realized how easily this kind of thing benefits me as a teacher and how something similar might help pretty much every teacher out there. I am fortunate in that my current situation has forced me to spend at least a couple of months by myself working with two bands and a mariachi. Our district has put in and found some money to bring in a retired band director for
100 MusEduBloggers by 2009 Music Education by Joel Wagner - January 29, 2008July 2, 20102 I have been blogging about teaching for a while. I came across a post by Joseph Pisano (the original post is here) where he is trying to get at least 100 Music Education Bloggers blogging about music education or music technology. Part of me has been wanting to jump into the MusEduBlogging world, but it wasn’t until this morning that I decided to take the plunge. I have learned a whole lot about blogging over the last year and so I hope to be able to use the knowledge I have gained to try to make this site one of the premier sites in the MusEduBlogging world. Yes, I just created that term. A Google search for both MusEduBlog returns