Usually after Winter break, I spend time with my 7th/8th grade advanced students teaching them new music theory concepts, new performance techniques, new rhythms, etc. Along with the usual January lessons, it was time to act upon the performance assessment data I had been collecting and sharing back through Power Bi. In the previous school year I did a practice run of this kind of activity. Students did some analysis and wrote a reflective essay (gotta support that ELA CC!). However, this time around I decided to keep the reflection part, ditch the essay, and integrate more actionable activities for the students. Here is how we started.

Student Reflection on the Data

I created a reflection activity for my students. Basically just asking them a bunch of questions about what they saw in their personal data from the class Power Bi report. The goal was to incorporate math skills (chart/visual analysis, finding averages, comparisons), have them write using music academic vocabulary, citing primary sources, and of course some critical thinking, communication, and metacognition. The assignment was created and distributed in our OneNote Class Notebooks. During the design process for this activity, I used tables and colors to visually organize the areas where students would enter in their answers, and I embedded the Power Bi report right onto the page because that's how awesome OneNote and Office 365 can be. After the page was ready I distributed it out through the Class Notebook tools tab. Students were given a week to complete the assignment before I would start leaving feedback. On the first day I directed them to the assignment, explained it, answered questions, got them started, and then flipped my switch to facilitator mode for the rest of the class. For the rest of the week sometimes I would give them a little time at the end of class after we finished doing our daily music education stuff. Because of the awesomeness of Surface, OneNote, and digital ink, I was able to review and leave feedback late at night before bedtime. Some students got their math wrong, or didn't even understand what kind of math was required to find their average. Yikes(!), but whatever, I'm a teacher and this presented a teachable moment. Some of the questions at the bottom of the assignment that required critical thinking were challenging for the students, but I helped them out in person or with my OneNote feedback. Students were also allowed to revise and improve their work as much as they needed to.

How do I improve?

After I was satisfied with their data analysis and reflection work, we moved onto the next step. Based on the numbers, what was their neediest performance technique? Was it Pitch, Rhythm, Articulations, or Tone? (Posture was excluded)

For this assignment they had to get online and do some research, looking for resources on how they could improve their particular performance technique for their instrument.  Note: Technically they had two separate neediest categories they were aware of, one from their peers and one from me. For this assignment they used their lowest scoring category according to my scores. I asked for a minimum of two sources (one video, one written), and they had to explain their value and cite where they were from. I left room for four sources and a lot of my students filled those up. Want to know another great feature of OneNote? When students posted the link to a YouTube video on their OneNote assignment page, the video automatically embeds itself. I was able to watch their source videos without ever leaving their assignment page 😊. I gave them a week to get this done.
 
Meanwhile...

Now, while they were busy getting their research done, I was doing a little organization on my end for the next phase in this process. In my non-public Power Bi file I created a table that displayed my students, their average performance scores (from me), with a little conditional formatting thrown in. Looking at this table I started jotting down my students names in OneNote, organizing them into groups based on their lowest/neediest performance category. I kept the groups to 4-5 students, and I mixed up the instrumentation as best I could. I kept my percussion kids together in a group, since their performance technique differs from the wind players, and I also tweaked the groups a little bit based on student behavior, separating my chatterboxes.

I ended up with 11 groups; one for Pitch, three for Rhythm, four for Articulations, and three for Tone. As my students were reflecting and researching, I had begun slow cook'n an Iron Chef activity for them, and soon we were about to dig in.

Capturing students' performance skills on their instrument is an important measurement for music teachers. When I observe a student perform, I can hear and see what they're doing well, and what they are struggling with. Their challenges can either be related to reading and interpreting music notation, or the kinesthetic aspect of playing their instrument. Playing with correct articulations, posture, bowings, and the minute details of their finger technique are all important to successfully performing on a musical instrument. As important as this is in music education, it is a time-consuming process to hear every student in an ensemble. This past school year my average class size hovered around 50 students. Unlike a written test, where students take an assessment at the same time, I have to listen to each student individually. Listening to each student perform an assessment during class takes at least 3 to 4 days, and can easily eat up a week of class instruction. It is important though, as it starts teaching my middle school students some practical life skills like responsibility, communication with their parents to schedule practice times in my classroom, how to deal with the anxiety of performing in front of peers, trying your best, and the idea of Practice makes Perfect.

Flipgrid took care of a lot of little issues I had with other technologies. It records video, providing me with both the audio and visual I want. It hosts and organizes the videos seamlessly, which at the time was such a huge feature for me. Teaching students how to record, save, and send a big video file (which is always dependent on their device and the communication service) is no longer a cumbersome task for the students and me, and I don't have to worry about saving and syncing a large amount of video files to the cloud and my computer. With Flipgrid, it's a breeze for my students to submit videos of themselves performing, and it's a breeze for me to access them. That was such a game changer. Flipgrid also makes the process fun for the students, giving them the ability to add graphics, digital ink, and all the buttons my students can click on to like each other’s videos. I'm not fun like that, just ask my students. Most importantly though, the listening-to-students-perform assessment process was moving out of my classroom instructional time. Student could now perform and submit their assessments videos before or after school in my room, or at home. 

As I've written in previous blog posts, I incorporate peer assessment into my student performance assessment activities. I assess my students when they perform, and the students do too. We use a rubric and a form. It started out as a paper/pencil routine, but I've since moved the process to using an Office Form. It's more practical, and I get so much relevant data now from my students! This year had to be a little different though, because I was adopting Flipgrid into the workflow. Now I'm able to assign more assessments, but I can't have students still assessing the rest of the whole class (50 students!) using my assessment form. They would go nuts and hate me. I narrowed it down to three. Every time my students had a new performance assessment to submit though Flipgrid, they would only have to do three peer assessments.

I would drop hints to my students as to what their next assessment exercise would be (usually from our method book) during class, but when the hammer officially dropped, I gave them a full week to submit their Flipgrid recording. Flipgrid can automatically close topic submissions, and I started using that method. I opened submissions again for the students that missed the deadline. Not a problem, they'll just lose a couple points. Speaking of points and grading, these were 10-point assignments. You either submitted your video on time (10 points), late (8 points), didn't submit at all (0 Points). That was it. I was using a point-based rubric to assess and score their performance, but that number never made it into the gradebook because I never intended it to. Those numbers was for something later 😉 Same deal for their peer assessment submissions. Ten points for 3 peer assessments, and then losing some points for each assessment not submitted. This took a lot of the anxiety my students have off of the performance aspect of the assignment. My students just had to submit their video and do 3 peer assessments to get full credit. Easy peasy.

It worked, and it worked really well. I was able to listen, watch, and assess my students more frequently throughout the year, and was able to space the assessments in-between concerts, concert rehearsals, semester projects, and honor ensemble activities. My students were checking out their instruments more to practice, and the couple days before a video recording was due my room was so packed with students practicing/submitting, they overflowed outside the classroom. As a music teacher, it was a incredible sight to see and experience 🙂 The students were engaged with their peers, helping each other with their music, showing lots of encouragement, holding each other accountable for their submissions, and pressing all those like buttons in Flipgrid. I even had a former cello student (now in high school) sneak his way onto the Orchestra grid and submit his own videos. That is just plain awesome. Who wouldn't love that happening.

Transforming this assessment routine with Flipgrid was just one part of the bigger picture. By doing these activities I was now receiving lots of assessment data from my students and myself. Data that could be used to track growth and progress, but also to find more interesting insights by comparing assessment scores between teacher/student, instrument sections, grade levels, before/after interventions, and more. How I was able to organize, manage, analyze, and share that data will in the next part of this series.

For a few years now I've been messing around with Power Bi, using it more and more with my students and myself as I learned how to use the program.  This year I integrated it even more into my pedagogy with my two advanced classes, made up of 7th and 8th grade students, to track their performance skills and more as it turned out. This past school year I've travelled to several Educational Technology conferences presenting on this recent work, and I get a lot of questions like "how I created and made everything work" and "how I came up with the idea." It's a long story, and is based on the edtech I use and more importantly music education pedagogy. It can't be explained in a single blog post, so my plan is to write a series of blog posts that covers what I've done.

Now, if you're looking at the graphic you're probably thinking this is nothing new, I do this workflow all the time in my classroom. Probably using some form of Formative Assessment. Good! You should be! My story will cover how I integrated the above set of technology tools to create activities that incorporate the 4Cs, student centered learning, a little bit of metacognition, data, and probably some more Edu buzz words.

The activities I'll be writing about spanned the course of this past school year. In fact, in my opinion I didn't even really finish the whole process. However, I feel it was a pretty good first run that can be expanded upon next school year. The cool thing is some of this data will carry over to next year, since I'll be seeing my 7th graders return as 8th grade members of my ensembles.

Stick around for Part 1

It's been a week since CUE 2018. The conference was a nice break from the classroom. It's not that I don't enjoy teaching my students ( I do), but getting away allows me to reflect on the current state of #edtech and brainstorm on how to use up & coming useful technologies. Usually this time is reserved for late at night, but lately I find myself choosing sleep more often than not. Anyways, the point is I get some distraction-free thinking time. Here are some thoughts:

#OneNoteEdu - Tammy Dunbar and I gave a 3 hour Office 365 workshop, and I put together the section on OneNote. I've come to the conclusion that there is never enough time to discuss OneNote. There is just too much to talk about. Attendees need to understand the organizational structure of a OneNote notebook and the power of the page. Immersive Reader, embeds, math, tables, ink, researcher, printing and sharing, and then there are all the basics too. And if that wasn't enough, Classroom Notebooks take it all to a new level of pedagogical thinking, planning, and designing. I showed off a lot of examples of how I'm using Class Notebooks to share content, organize everything digital in my classroom, and implement learning activities with my students. It's pretty crazy how one software program can be used in so many various ways, be it for independent or collaborative student learning. At the same time, since OneNote is my classroom hub for practically everything, I don't have to teach new routines for other apps or online services. When my students come into the classroom and see that they're using iPads, they don't ask "what do we do?", they just automatically open OneNote, log in, and open our Class Notebook. I like this. It saves me time.

I digress though. Explaining all the ins and outs of a Class Notebook is also a big challenge. There is distributing and reviewing work, LMS integration, creating collaborative sections, creating groups for differentiated page distribution, the process of setting up a Class Notebook, and the permission levels associated with the three main sections. It's a lot to digest in such a short amount of time, and it's a lot to try to explain in such a short time too.

Power Bi - I gave my Power Bi session again. This was my third time, and I still haven't figured out a cool catchy name for my session title yet. I had a bigger audience this time. My session resource link (available at the session) was pinged 91 times that day (yay!). Maybe this whole what-are-we-going-to-do-with-all-this-student-data-and-how-are-we-going-to-manage-it idea is starting to catch on. It also helped to have a good location for the session as well 😉 Lots of people were interested, and there was a collective "wow" when I demonstrated manipulating a chart on students' success rate with multiple ELA anchor standards to show me the data based by grade level, class section, and both. I received some complements for my session at the end, before everyone was rudely kicked out by the convention staff.

FONBME - This is a take on FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). I call this Fear of Not Branding Myself Enough. There is just so much of it going on, and I don't know how to react to it. Should I do it too? I imagine it's time consuming, having to create a fancy acronym, write blog posts for every little thought, and having to attach myself to Twitter more than ever. I'd rather spend time this time with my family and on my students' learning. I like to create, innovate, and problem solve. This takes time. Time away from branding I guess. Oh well.

AR & VR - CUE has a nice little virtual reality playground for attendees to play around the latest devices (except for Microsoft's mixed reality headsets 😕). I'm still trying to put my finger on this for the music classroom. Yes, there are use cases for the historical part of music education, but I'm still trying to figure out how AR/VR could be used to help students understand and grasp the basic music concepts I teach in middle school. I already accomplish this without AR/VR, but does it have something to offer that makes it pedagogically worthwhile? I still don't know. Honestly I don't have a device to play around with and test, but that's not the real issue. I know what works in my classroom. I know how to design my resources and activities so that my students learn in my classroom. I want to (try to) do the same with VR. I want to be able to create a VR experience tailored exactly the way I want it for my students (TPK and TCK), except I don't know how to design for VR yet. During a discussion I had with one of the VR experts, I did learn about WebVR though, which I'm told is where everything is headed. Imagine if teachers had easy tools to create worthwhile VR/AR experiences for their students that could incorporate permission levels from the cloud, like a VR/AR classroom that adapts for every student. That would be cool. Make it happen Microsoft.

Recently I guest blogged on a couple of websites. I wrote one on how the StaffPad app has been changing my pedagogy in the music classroom. You can find it over at the Daily Adventures blog.

​I also wrote one on how using a Surface in my classroom has transformed my instructional practices, and is a seriously awesome machine for the classroom. It's actually over on the Surface Blog, and....there's a video :-)

​So my classroom was filmed for a couple days to make the video. My students really enjoyed it, and it was a great opportunity for me to explain some of the ins and outs of the film industry to them. They were pretty psyched too when they saw the final product months after the initial filming. 

​Check it out

In my last blog post I presented how I was able to create new resources to transform a regular music class routine (chair test) into a more meaningful activity for my students. Besides performing the required music excerpt for their test, they were also engaged in the analysis and evaluation of their peers as well. Not only does this support our school wide tier 2 academic vocabulary words, but also requires my students to listen and evaluate using musical tier 3 academic vocabulary concepts such as Tone, Pitch, Rhythm, etc.

Academic vocabulary (AV) is the vehicle for our school wide project. We measure its usage within our assignments to compare and hopefully find instances of positive deviance within our instructional practices. This has required me to get creative and develop new forms of assessment to measure my students use of AV in their academic writing. Whereas this kind of activity is common in the core subjects, it's not quite the typical activity found within the instrumental music class. My students have already completed one writing assessment this year, and I recently had to come up with a new assessment, different from the first, to measure my students' AV use.

My students recently completed another chair test, and I found myself looking at two sets of data points. The scores from their first chair test, and the scores from the recent chair test. The scores are based on a rubric I previously created, which accounts for the correct Pitch, Rhythm, Tone, Bowings, and Posture of their performance. The data is great for me to analyze, but what would my students think after seeing it too? I decided to find out. 

Within the Excel file containing all my score data, I exported the numbers from both chair tests into two separate pivot tables. Using the pivot tables, I was able to average the rubric's category scores and show how my students' performed as a class and also as a section. 

After my pivot tables were set up, I turned the data into charts with a couple of mouse clicks. I formatted the chart to make it look nice and simple for my students. After the charts were done, I exported (copy/paste) them to a Word doc, typed up the assignment directions, and Voilà! A new writing assignment. My students had to compare both sets of scores and look for changes among the rubric categories. Then they had to analyze both chair test exercises and use them to explain the changes that occurred in their score averages. 

Seeing the differences in their scores was a pretty easy task, but explaining the changes by analyzing and citing specific challenges that each song presented…that was going to be a challenge for them >:-)

I gave them two days, and overall was pleased with the results of my students first attempt at this. Citing the data was not an issue, and most of them were able to dig a little deeper into the music and specifically identify and compare the technical challenges from both songs. Pretty cool. I love making my students think :-)

Below are some examples of what I received in their essays. Some are exactly what I'm looking for, and some are just fun to read :-) 

Scroll to the right --->

I've been collecting this data for years, and by using Excel's pivot tables I was able to create a meaningful writing assignment for my students. An assignment requiring the analysis of music and data, plus synthesizing and justifying their findings into a written essay.

At my school site I'm involved with a group of teachers that are currently  looking for instructional positive deviances in our classrooms through research and data. We decided as a group to focus on building our students' use of academic vocabulary. Currently we're  analyzing the student use of vocab within our content areas, as well as focusing campus wide on 10 specific words. This has been a challenge for me. In the past my curriculum focused on building my students' reading skills of western music notation, not the English language. For me to participate effectively in the project, I was going to have to modify the activities of my music classroom. 

Thanks to our meetings, where I get to listen to my colleagues (ELA!) discuss their processes for teaching and assessing academic vocabulary, I've been able to brainstorm and implement some new activities into my curriculum. However, to implement I would need new materials and resources that I didn't have. Instead of spending hours scouring the internet for the right tool/resource for my ideas, I've been able to easily create what I need thanks to the power of Microsoft Office and my Surface Pro 3.

I had a conversation with my meeting facilitator the other day. She told me that even though it looks like I'm not paying attention and participating in the discussions sometimes, she can tell the wheels are turning inside my head. She's right. As I listen to my colleagues, I'm writing down my mental musings into OneNote. These notes, which are readily available on any device I'm using thanks to the cloud, is where the creative process starts. The best part! No paper is required! As a teacher, paper is EVERYWHERE. Flyers, handouts, meeting agendas, new instructional materials, student work, advertisements. Using OneNote, my notes NEVER get lost ;-)

Now that I have a plan, I need the materials to support that plan. Maybe it because I'm just particular, but if I'm going to use materials/resources to aid my new ideas, I'm going to make them myself. Using MS Office its Cake and Pie (piece of cake, easy as pie) ;-)

Chair tests are just plain fun….for the music teacher :-) For those unaware, in the music class we designate an exercise or musical passage to be used as an assessment test for the students. The students play the exercise/section one at a time in class. Based on the results of each students performance, they'll be seated in a particular order ie. first chair, second chair, third chair,…….last chair(!) within their instrument section. Its nerve-racking for the students, but great for me to experience (it also leads to great conversations about presentation skills, nerves, and overcoming them).  Anyways, I digress. Usually during a chair test, the other students just listen and wait for their turn. Well not anymore! Now, just like me, I want my students to listen, analyze, and give their own score for each student that plays. To do this, they would need a score sheet AND a rubric to score them with, which means I have to create one. Ready, Set, Office!

This one's pretty easy.

• Download an Excel copy of the class roster from the LMS to get a list of names. 
  
• Delete the extraneous stuff and tweak the file to include the score categories and a total score section.
  
• Copy and paste into MS Publisher (included with Office)
  
• Re-size if necessary and add some color.

That's it! I save the file as a PDF so it's shareable and can easily print off of a thumb drive.

My students use the form now whenever they have chair tests. I use the original Excel file I created to enter their scores. Using the formula functionality within Excel, their scores are automatically added up to give me a final score. When the testing process is done, I can easily sort the data by Score and Instrument to see the new chair rankings. I also copy/paste the results onto my mega OneNote classroom whiteboard, so the students can visually see the rankings themselves. 

Chair tests can take a while for all the students to complete, especially when there are 40+ nervous children in one class. Having them complete the score sheet helps with classroom management, fulfills the listening, evaluating, and analysis standards of music education, using school-wide and classroom vocab words in context, and also sets my students up for the next activity associated with their chair tests.

Stay tuned for part 2 which describes the next step of measuring my students' use of academic vocabulary! In the meantime, leave a comment :-)


Disclaimer: I am the proud owner of a Surface Pro 1, however the fine folks at the Cerritos Microsoft Store have been kind enough to loan me a Pro 3 to use. It has been wonderful using it, and I thank them greatly!

My String Orchestra class didn't go exactly as planned this week, and it's all OneNote's fault. On Tuesday we were supposed to continue in our method book, working on playing in the key of F Major. We were going to get to the next page and play one of my favorite songs, Waltzing Matilda! Alas, it did not happen thanks to that cape-wearing purple program called OneNote, and her little sidekick Office Lens.

It started when a couple of my violins came into class, talking about their new roles in the school play. They play the "music kids" and have to perform a song on stage during the performance. They handed me a copy of the song, and a conversation started. "The song is way too easy" was heard, as well as "what are those letters on top of the notes?" 

Boom! That was it. That was all I needed. "Lesson's over kids, it's time for a teachable moment!"   <-- I didn't actually say that ;-)

My 8th graders received a heavy dose of music theory instruction last year from me, and what a better way to start off this year's new theory season than with:

1) A review of last year's theory instruction.
2) Opportunities for critical thinking and application.
3) The creation of a new assignment/project for my students.

It took me less than 60 seconds to set it up. I pulled out my Lumia phone and snapped a picture of the song my violin student had in her hand using the Office Lens app. Two things then automatically happened behind the scenes. Office Lens saved that picture straight to my OneNote notebook on my Surface Pro 3, and it saved the picture as a PDF file into a designated folder in my OneDrive. Within 60 seconds of snapping the picture, I have the song plus some music staff paper up on my whiteboard-wall using OneNote. Then the magic started. 

I tackled the letters first, explaining how they represented Major and minor chords that went with the melody. I could tell some of my 8th graders were a little rusty, so we reviewed intervals and triads, which was fine since it helped with explaining the A7 chord. After that we tore up the song, analyzing every bit that the class time allowed. By the end of class, my OneNote page looked like this:

By the end of class, my two violin actors & the rest of the class received a new challenge from me. "If the original melody is to easy and boring for you to play, then write a harmony line to accompany it! Every bit of information needed to write one is already listed on the page." I offered extra credit for trying, and the coveted "Student of the Month" award for the best arrangement. My challenge was accepted :-)

The teachable moment was great. My 8th graders applied knowledge they had previously learned, I was able to introduce some new concepts, and my 7th graders were involved. This couldn't have happened without the help of my daily tech tools:

Surface Pro 3 - I love this machine! I project my screen onto my classroom wall by wirelessly connecting my Surface to the projector with its built-in Miracast functionality. This enables all my students to see my "whiteboard" aka computer screen. It also allows me to freely walk around my room with my Surface, enabling me to use my proximity for classroom management purposes, engagement with particular students, and to use my classroom piano for reference, all without losing immediate access to my whiteboard. Using the pen and OneNote as my classroom whiteboard, I have unlimited whiteboard space and can annotate on PDF documents and pictures. The best part is when I hand my Surface and its pen to students and give them tasks to complete. The "Wow!" factor sets in and my students are completely engaged. 

OneNote - ….is awesome because of how adaptable it is to various educational situations and settings.    In my classroom, it's my whiteboard, my overhead projector, my document camera, and my lesson planner, all nicely packed into one sleek program. I'm not limited by space constraints, I don’t need messy markers that always get lost, and I don't need to worry about poorly lit documents. OneNote has become the visual canvas of my classroom instruction. 

Office Lens - OneNote's little sidekick is a must for OneNote users. It's ability to capture images and save immediately into OneNote is simple, easy, and quick. For example, I use it to capture and display student's classwork for reference, analysis, and immediate formative assessment. The process is fast and seamless, and is great for those "teachable moments." Office Lens' continued development has introduced some great features lately. Not only can I quickly save an image of something to OneNote, but Office Lens will also translate the image and save as a Word doc, PowerPoint slide, or PDF file. This is great if I want to save, edit and use a document I receive at a meeting or conference. 

This trio of software and hardware has changed my daily pedagogical routines. I'm able to present more material to my students quickly in an effortless manner. As a teacher, I experience the "teachable moments" every day I go to work. Now, using OneNote, Office Lens, and my Surface Pro 3, I can easily turn a teachable moment into a visual interactive lesson for my students.