Could technology and software tools be effectively incorporated in the learning process of today’s classroom? How can we help our students to learn not only the subject taught but being a digital citizen, a computational thinker and a creative communicator using technology? There are many expectations of teachers in today’s digital age to inspire student learning and creativity, model digital age work and digital citizenship. 

Parents seem to sometimes think that the use of non traditional teaching methods is causing the students to waste valuable time from the actual lesson and that they would engage in using social media and chatting rather than doing the actual work. As an educator that has worked in a classroom with kids that use technology, I disagree since not only they don’t misuse the technology but they expect from us teachers to use it daily and have a high-tech experience throughout their lesson. 

Modern teaching strategies and enrichments in all subjects use technology and incorporate it in the classroom. Incorporating technology enables educators to craft powerful collaborative learning experiences that support problem solving and flexible thinking. With strategic integration of both content-specific and content-neutral technology, students and teachers can construct their learning together in authentic ways that elevate learning. When an educator is planning to integrate technology into a lesson, he should always take into account the technology knowledge the students will need, the subject content knowledge they’ll need, and the best practices for teaching both the technology and the subject. Those practises would attract the students interest for the subject, help them understand the content more effectively and furthermore prepare them for the digital age that they will have to face in their future. 

Educators nowadays have a responsibility to be well informed and trained as far as which software tools are available for their content subject and how technology could be effectively used in the classroom. They also need to be well educated on the software tools available that can prevent students from unwanted web-browsing during the lesson or cheating during an exam. One of the best ways to deal with student misbehaviour is to prevent it from happening in the first place and there are many software tools to help educators towards that direction. 

A 21st century classroom in action needs to support student learning with digital tools and platforms that promote learning and enhance the learning experience. This is the only way we can prepare out kids effectively for their future studies and on becoming digital  citizens of this world.

Teachers should not prioritize traditional literacies above the use of technology and tools in the classroom. Both skills are necessary to develop a whole child that can live, learn, and work in a society where they need to be effective communicators. More importantly, students must understand the limitations and dangers of using technology, while being able to use it responsibly to create, share, and use information in a useful way.

Using technology in the classroom is not a distraction from traditional tools to learn. They both develop important literacy skills such as comprehension, interdependence, social factors, and curation. Students must be able to utilize technology and make sense of digital media they access by making meaningful connections, curate patterns, and analyze information. Secondly, students should be able to use traditional and technology tools to be able to understand the connections to the real world and online world. They are interdependent in creating a whole picture and story for people to fully understand a variety of perspectives, experiences, and events. Traditional and nontraditional forms of media sources should supplement one another. Third, with information easily accessible and publishing being simpler to a larger audience, students must know how to create and source information for sharing, storing, and repackaging. Lastly, students must learn how to curate information to be able to categorize and save for a time when they need to access it, short of long-term. Curation of information helps students to organize meaningful content. This information may be stored until a time when it is needed.

As you can see, literacy and digital literacy goes hand in hand. Digital literacy enhances the 21^st century student to be able to use their literacy skills and take it up a notch by using technology to be ready to live, learn, and work in the 21^st century society. Technology is used as a tool to enhance our life to be effective communicators, understand information for a variety of perspectives and experiences, and knowledge creators. It is important that educators focus on developing literacy and digital literacy to nurture whole citizens that will be prepared for the digital and physical world as they co-exist in society.

Thank you for your time and consideration of my perspective that it is important to develop literate and digital literate students in our classrooms.

Date: 18/6/2021

Part 1

Students would be asked to watch a short part of Harry Potter that include character Hedwig, and leave 5 minutes for students to discuss what they have discovered in this part of the music. Students are able to find out that there’s a special music for Hedwig called Hedwig's Theme. Introduced the term: “Leitmotif”, which describe a period of music that is especially for one character. Let students give some of the examples of leitmotif and give rewards once teacher described the definition. Introduce some historical knowledge about this.

Part 2

Appreciating different short movies with different atmosphere and style, let students use laptop to search different type of shots of movies and find some scenes from the movie, upload it on Padlet in PDF form. 

Part 3

Giving free time to students that they can record their own video and find BGM for that. The videos can be chown in class if  they want. Students will be asked to give a  speech about  the reason they choose the BGM. 

Murong He

Teachers have a huge demand for work daily and I know that it sounds tiring to include technology in the classroom. But we cannot forget that our work has a social function: we need to educate our students for real life, not just for the school environment.

The real world is multisemiotic - besides the letters, we have colors, sounds, images – and with multiple literacies – digital, media, informational. This is the reason why traditional literacy is not enough anymore. The advent of technology has changed the way we communicate, demanding more than words on paper. Students need to be able to understand the complexity of this communication, and the school is the ideal place to help them experiment, interpret, question and criticize the information and tools we use for it. These skills are extremely important to our students to be successful in all instances of their lives.

Starting is the most complex part, so looking for professional development is the best decision. Besides that, we can always look for a tuned colleague and ask for help. The best thing about introducing technology to our classes is that we can assume a learner position, making the shift between “teacher as the knowledge owner” to “teacher as a facilitator”. And believe me, they need our facilitation. Despite being known as digital natives, our students are very much “innocent digitals”. According to the PISA 2018 report, only 9% of the 15-year-old students could successfully distinguish a fact from an opinion. Technology will never replace our position, it is at our service. Technology is a way to build cross-cultural connections and take your students outside of the classroom walls. It gives them the opportunity to work collaboratively and communicate with a variety of audiences.

This is why I believe that besides bringing technology to our classroom, we should advocate for the right of access to all, because every student deserves to have the same opportunities to grow, speak and learn.

Instructor: Murong He

Electronic devises requirement: Laptop, tablet.

Digital tools requirement: Notability or Goodnote (for note taking), musictheory.com, Kahoot!, seesaw.com, Musescore3.

Text book: No requirement.

Curriculum Goal: Students will be able to learn 4 units of Music Theory classes and they will be allowed to compose music pieces depending on their personal ability and skills. 

1st Monday:

Checking if every students have their electronic devises ready. Introducing all digital tools for them and let them start to try the website or the app, see if any one has problem with the using of digital tools. Let students do self-introduction so they get know each other a little bit. Providing the syllabus about what we are going to learn for next 2 weeks.

1st Tuesday:

Starting the class with a Kahoot game, prepare several fundamental music questions to get to know how much they already know about music theory. Introducing the concept of pitch, articulation, and interval. Put the main focus on the interval since it is more theoretical and will be used a lot as a basic notion in the later study of scales. At the end of the class, the assessment of students’ learning will be some pop up questions about the concept. Students who get the correct answer will have some awards like snacks. Students will be asked to review today’s class as a homework. 

1st Wednesday

Starting the class with a Kahoot game, questions are about the concept we talked yesterday in order to assess the student’s revision. Then introducing the concept of scales. Giving some examples about Major and minor scale in different keys and explain the different format of each scales. After students get to know about different types of scales, we will start to learn the interval, that is, the relationship between each notes. During the class After the introduction of intervals, students are able to recognize different intervals between two notes. At the end of the class, students will get a quiz on musictheory.com. Students will be asked to review today’s class as a homework. 

1st Thursday

Starting the class with a Kahoot game, questions are about the concept we talked yesterday in order to assess the student’s revision.  Then introducing the concept of chords. Starting with the Major Triad, and then minor, and then diminished and augmented triad. Various examples of triad in different keys and different format are provided. After that, student will be tested on the musictheory.com. Students will be asked to review today’s class as a homework. 

1st Friday

Prepare small gifts for every students and tell them that they are doing really well for this whole week, and then start the class with a Kahoot game. Then, Introducing the concept of voice leading, that enable them to create melody and make the accompaniment of the main melody smooth and stable. Left sometime for students that they can do self-learning about how to create their own preferred. The homework for the weekend for them will be record a 60 seconds video talking about what they have learned for the past 5 days on the seesaw.com and what’s important is not just the plot of the video, but also student’s discussion in the comments. This is a way for students to share their idea and communicate with each other.

2nd Monday

Starting the class with a Kahoot game in order to help students to review the last week’s content. Then let them analysis a small piece of music by defining different keys and chords and find how an official music piece goes like. Then, they can start to compose their own melody or song on Musescore by using the different keys and chord and voice leading. There will be a standard for the music’s repetition and format. The rest of the class will be used for the free composition, students are allow to communicate with each other, and whenever they have any questions or they want some suggestion, they can come to me.

2nd Tuesday - 2nd Thursday

Students will start on compose a free music. No requirements are needed. Students are allowed to compose their own music depending on the instruments they are good at, and they can also get into group with students who can play the instrument they need and compose one music together. Tuesday and Wednesday will be used to finish an overall music, and Thursday will be used to revise detail and ask for suggestion, and also try to play their music piece with their instrument. (Including singing)

2nd Friday

Students are required to play their music with their own or with their group in front of the classes, and the audience students are required to pick one of their favorite group and write about their opinion toward the performance and music. These will be graded as a final project of the curriculum.

Digital Literacy in classrooms will also provide more opportunities of collaboration, creativity, and communication. Especially with the advancement of technology today, there are numerous platforms that can be used across the curriculum and all grade levels. For example, platforms such as Newsela provide instructional content of diverse topics including high-interest news articles. These articles can also be differentiated based on the grade or reading level by the teachers, which allows more personalized instruction. There are also creative methods for students to share their opinions and ideas. Platforms such as, twitter, padlet, and google classroom provide ways for students to showcase their learning and also interact with others. By connecting with each other through these platforms, students will be able to strengthen their teamwork and collaboration skills. 

Although there may be imminent risks and uncertainty to the online world, with the right education and guidance of digital citizenship embedded in a digital literacy curriculum, students will be able to safely use the internet and engage in the art of digital learning.

Content Knowledge (CK) 

Teachers' in-depth understanding of the processes, practices, or strategies of teaching and learning. They include, among other things, overarching educational goals, values, and objectives. Understanding how kids learn, basic classroom management abilities, lesson preparation, and student evaluation are all examples of generic knowledge.

Teachers' extensive understanding of the processes, practices, or strategies of teaching and learning. They include, among other things, overarching educational purposes, values, and goals. This basic type of knowledge pertains to understanding how kids learn, general classroom management abilities, lesson design, and student evaluation.

Knowledge about certain ways of thinking about, and working with technology, tools, and resources. and working with technology can apply to all technology tools and resources. This includes understanding information technology broadly enough to apply it productively at work and in everyday life, being able to recognize when information technology can assist or impede the achievement of a goal, and being able continually to adapt to changes in information technology.

Consistent with and comparable to Shulman's concept of pedagogical knowledge applied to the teaching of specific material. The concept of subject matter transformation for teaching is central to Shulman's understanding of PCK. According to Shulman (1986), this transition takes place when the instructor evaluates the subject matter, discovers numerous ways to depict it, and adjusts and tailors the teaching materials to alternative conceptions and students' prior knowledge. PCK addresses the essential business of teaching, learning, curriculum, assessment, and reporting, such as learning environments and the connections between curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy.

Technological Content Knowledge (TCK) 

An awareness of how technology and content impact and inhibit each other. Teachers must master more than just the subject matter they teach; they must also have a thorough awareness of how the subject matter (or the types of representations that may be generated) can be altered by the use of specific technologies. Teachers must grasp which technologies are most suited for addressing subject-matter learning in particular domains, as well as how the content dictates or even affects the technology—or vice versa.

An insight into how specific technologies, when applied in specific ways, may alter teaching and learning. This entails understanding the educational affordances and restrictions of a variety of technology instruments in relation to discipline and developmentally appropriate pedagogical designs and tactics.

TPACK is distinct from understanding all three principles separately, and it lies at the heart of highly effective and thoroughly competent teaching using technology. TPACK, on the other hand, is the foundation of effective teaching with technology, necessitating an understanding of the representation of concepts using technologies; pedagogical techniques that use technologies in constructive ways to teach content; knowledge of what makes concepts difficult or easy to learn and how technology can help redress some of the problems that students face; knowledge of students' prior knowledge and epistemological theories; and knowledge of how technologies can help redress some of the problems that students face.