Ellen Fishman-Johnson's Blog

Multimedia critique

efjcomposer — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:26:44 +0000

This has been a very eventful year for me starting last summer with the production of a multimedia show for the Fringe Festival with poet, Michael Heller, to creating animations of paintings by Elizabeth Osborne for Jeanne Ruddy Dance to the production of Mural in Motion, a large scale projection with music. In Philadelphia, we are lucky to still have our music, art and dance critics and a growing number of arts bloggers, but who should you call when your performance combines these disciplines? How many critics feel qualified to assess more than one art form? Many times a critic will be favorable (let’s face it-that’s a good thing) but fail to mention one key component like costume design in dance or music in a video performance. Should multimedia critiques break down the process so readers understand the merging of the arts or simply capture the effect of the moment?

I am not complaining but do feel that I am one of a handful of composers who are also video artists. I think our numbers will grow as composers are introduced to video editing earlier in their lives. This is not a new art form but rather an art form that is growing. I think collaborations are also on the rise. Who will assess this progress? Do we need two or three specialists to assess one performance?

Mining old books

efjcomposer — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 14:08:13 +0000

My sister Esther is a writer, bookseller and has a deep love of books for all their possibilities. We were discussing how old books are being mined for their illustrations since the digital representation of illustrations are shortchanged in the publishing of new books. She also told me that many people are taking old covers of books and creating journals since these old covers never fall apart. Most interesting was her story about how a friend of hers takes old books and creates her journal by crossing out words she doesn’t want to use. She tells me that she often sees this person in the cafe hunched over a bunch of old books with a highlighter pen. What a fantastic idea! I was thinking that if I were to do this with old scores, I would be limited by the composer’s conventions. I could create something out of Bach but Beethoven…? This idea has my mind racing.

Edward Tufte in NY

efjcomposer — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 01:36:05 +0000

The last time I was in the same room with Edward Tufte was in a day long seminar with about 1,000 other people after the publishing of one of his books on graphics and the communication of data. It took me about 15 minutes to get over being awestruck after entering his sculpture gallery in the Chelsea district and being asked if I would like to join a tour with the artist himself. He was already speaking, standing beside a gigantic sculpture of a fish (Magritte’s Smile) and was describing how the sculpture changes given the weather and time of day. This was a reoccurring theme and he also mentioned that there was a “foreverness” to sculpture as opposed to sitting in front of a computer. I thought of Paul Lansky returning to acoustic instruments after building a career in computer music. I found that there were a few sculptures that I could contemplate for a long period of time including “Towers” and “Zerlina’s Smile” which feature clean lines and a sense of artistic purpose. I especially enjoyed the vertical lines he created in his 9/11 memorial “Towers” because the lines together provide a sense of the towers and the finish really does play off the elements and can take on wonderful colors and shadings.

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/sculpture

Towers by Edward Tufte

He has a number of whimsical pieces that are fun (esp. the “Rocket Science” series) although I am not a dog person, so the dog pieces were lost on me.

It was a pleasant surprise to be able to ask questions of someone who has been an inspiration to my work, and it was a rare opportunity to hear him talk about his own artistic process. It took me some time to realize that he is in the process of reinventing himself to the public. While he has done sculpture for some time, he is now living on the other side of his brain and it was a pleasure getting to know his process.

Beyond tools, taking Music Education Global

efjcomposer — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 23:18:46 +0000

I was going to write a post that shared technology tools that William Bauer’s overviewed in his session at ISTE called, “Integrating Technology across Music Curriculum (I will put bullet points below),” however during the session, I found myself thinking about the Keynote address by Jean-François Rischard in which he emphasized the importance of teaching students to be active global citizens and how teachers can encourage student action to solve the world’s problems. Mr. Rischard’s message was lost on me that evening because of a very tired presentation which included the worst PowerPoint slides I have seen in 10 years. However, it was the next day and upon reflection, I began thinking about how a music teacher might encourage active global citizenship….so I asked Mr. Bauer. His suggestion was to include lessons about music from other cultures in my curriculum. I told him of teaching about the importance of the Gulf Coast culture in the creation of many important American musics in my Music of Many Cultures class. But that was not the point. While this unit was cathartic to me during Hurricaine Katrina, it did not DO anything. My question was what can I have students DO to be active global citizens after spending two weeks studying about the culture and musics of the Gulf Coast. My personal apologies to Mr. Bauer for this “left field” question-he was very gracious. I’ve taught about cultures through music and about how music can help bring about social change but I think my teaching could be more effective if were connected to solving world problems. Obviously, this couldn’t happen with every unit but there may be a theme I could weave throughout the class.

I was happy to talk to Marilyn Bernard after the session. She is a New Orleans native and told me that she organized a fund raiser called “Measure for Measure” after Katrina and raised money for every measure played. She also suggested I go on the “Taking it Global” website at http://www.tigweb.org/ for ideas and there is a wealth of ideas there including specific projects students can join.

As you can probably tell, I will be thinking of this for a while and will post my progress.

_________________________________

Here are some new tools Mr. Bauer presented:

A new web 2.0 notation program with lots of possibilities: http://www.noteflight.com/login

A music tuner:http://www.mymusictuner.com/

An excellent site for string pedagogy with lots of instruction videos: http://www.uvm.edu/~mhopkins/string/

Free notated music-choralwiki:http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Pagegutenberg:the sheet music project: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_Sheet_Music_Project Blank sheet music, http://www.bandmusicpdf.org/

Lots of ideas of what to use with smart boards:http://mustech.pbworks.com/

Rock and roll hall of fame – lessons connected to history

Library of congress: music and the brain podcasts

musictheory.net

Rethinking Arts Education at ISTE

efjcomposer — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:07:23 +0000

For an outline of the session that I presented with Karen Kolkka at ISTE 2010, see Jamie’s Blog at:

http://artsinpa.blogspot.com/2010/06/sessions-from-iste2010.html

The Differentiator at ISTE

efjcomposer — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 17:22:01 +0000

Challenging the Gifted Student using Google Apps and Web 2.0

Chris Atkinson

This was a resource sharing session and Chris went through how he uses a lot of cool tools. List and his comments can be found here:

http://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1GnisZI3Dj-VZR6_jD1bgr3E4Uz4EM_0KCdpcb-wXIcY

(Note: please don’t use Glogster-it is an a poster making tool that is an assault to a student’s sense of good design)

My favorite new tool is “The Differentiator” which is a web 2.0 tool that incorporates Bloom’s Taxonomy to create lessons. I tried it out with a music lesson in mind and it did not work since the content listed was limited, but I do think it will work for other disciplines.

Try it out here:

http://www.byrdseed.com/the-differentiator

Supporting Innovation in Education

efjcomposer — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:25:23 +0000

At a poster session at ISTE 2010, I was introduced to the Goldie Anna awards given out by the New York City Department of Education. These awards are designed to identify innovative practices in the classroom that are then shared with a partner school. The awards are between $10,000 and $30,000 and the program is supported by 4 major companies.

Look at the website below for information but also look through the award winners for great ideas.

http://www.nycempowerment.org./goldieanna

PD for Arts Educators

efjcomposer — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:18:26 +0000

At ISTE I had the good fortune to speak with Jamie Kasper, the Fine Arts and Humanities Advisor at the PA Department of Education. She and Mara Linaberger co-chair the Arts SIG and they are co-developers of a incredibly effective model for PD for the Arts called “Arts Educator 2.0.”

I have always felt that PD administered by schools do not address the needs of Arts Educators. Digital media is hard to master and educators in the Arts are given precious little time to do so. Arts Educators should be allowed to “play” with the technology so they can understand the range of possibilities from which to teach their students. The literature for “Arts Educator 2.0” begins with a philosophy list from which the program was created. Most important (to me) on this list is the belief that all PD should be differentiated and that collaborative arts-based inquiry is an effective method for “meaningful teacher learning.” (yea!!!)

Jamie described how she gathered the teachers in workshops and the day would begin with a performance or art demonstration. The example she gave me was of a group from Pittsburgh called “Cello Fuery,” a group of cellists who play rock music. Behind the ensemble she ran a live feed so audience members could read each others reaction to the music (not sure if she used Twitter or another technology for this). What a fantastic idea!!! The teachers would then create collaborative lesson plans and were introduced to new technologies that they could use in their practice. Teachers also developed a “Personal Professional Development Plan” and were supported with this plan with the help of a project faculty mentor. The technologies needed were provided through a grant from the US Department of Education and the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation.

What is amazing about this model is that Jamie and Mara united a community of artists through collaborative projects AND gave them time to explore what they needed to add to their practice in order to be better teachers.

School Reform with Chris Lehmann at ISTE 2010

efjcomposer — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:53:51 +0000

Beyond Tools: Thoughtful 21st-Century School Reform

Chris Lehmann, Science Leadership Academy

They built Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia from the ground up and at first glance, they were tremendously successful in delivering a thoughtful, project based curriculum. Chris was a very passionate speaker and he laid out a great roadmap for other educators who are reforming their schools. He also modeled project based learning by having the audience interact with specific questions centered on defining the essentials that make up a school. This was a masterful presentation and I was truly inspired after leaving. I put my notes below for those who are interested but also know that the Chris is very generous with his materials and the lecture can be found at:

http://www.slideshare.net/chrislehmann/beyond-tools-thoughtful-21st-c-school-reform

and more information on the Science Leadership Academy website at

http://www.scienceleadership.org/drupaled/

www.practicaltheory.org

Know the difference between change and innovation

• Kids are interacting on line but not at school
• doing stuff different vs. doing stuff better

Neil Postman – “Certain technologies are not additive but transformative”

About technology-Ubiquitous, Necessary and Invisible then lets stop talking about it

Guiding principles of SLC-Creation, research, collaboration, presentation, networking

Reform involves – Evolution of things we have done

In order to have thoughtful change -

• WE MUST HAVE VISION…
• Caring institutions we teach kids not subject-not “I teach math” rather “I teach kids math”
• Inquiry driven-What are the questions we ask
• Student centered
• Teacher-mentored-kids need adults
• Community based -we can learn from many
• Collaborative-synthesis works
• Teachers have to be passionate-it has to matter
• Integrated-the day has to make sense (students-why are we doing this?) example-printmaking using different elements while looking at elements in science
• Teach meta-cognitive-think about thinking (reflective prompts)

Overarching goal-to produce thoughtful, passionate, wise, kind adults

if we shoot for creating a workforce, we won’t get the qualities we need

At Science Learning Center- commonalities

• Common Language of teaching and learning
• Common Inputs – inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation, reflection
• Common Process-every one uses ___ by design (assessment tool)
• Common Outputs – common rubric (can find all of this on their website)

Project based learning

If you do project based learning ask what do you do at the end of a unit?

If at the end of each unit, student are doing a project-that is project based learning. If they are doing tests and quizzes-it is not! He see use of tests and quizzes as a way to gauge whether students are progressing within the unit (LOVE THIS!!)

Final project in Physic-kids had to make musical instruments

ILPs and Capstones-individualized learning platforms (meet every week with student)

The schedule 1 hour 5 minute periods, wed end at 12:50 and do ilp

hiring is done by consensus

(for project based assessment (this from Mike Muir)project foundry.com)

Workshop questions for audience

What is your vision for your school? How do we innovate? How do you get there?

Advise-Be humbled by the task
Ideas must live in Practice (my italics) -build systems and structures that reflect your vision. Also, you cannot build something that you don’t practice!

2) Examine one System in your school. How can you change it to better reflect your values/mission?(mine change departmental goals to reflect shared curricular goals)

Art rooms are open studios at SLC
When doing reform – Keep asking questions-don’t settle for easy answers
each answer has a dark side that must be explored
At SLC – goal is empowerment, side affect is entitlement

3) What is the worst consequence of your best idea?How can you mitigate them?What are the obstacles to this change?

Empower the kids-it is their education
make sure kids involved with reform
Continue the conversation
Dream big in every community

4) Who are the stakeholders?How can they be brought into this vision?What fears do you need to address?How will the student voice be part of the discussion?don’t patronize them, listen

Don’t forget to slow down-be intentional in the use of tools and time
This will require the best of you-be intentional about the tools you use all choices take their toll

5) How are the lives of teachers different in this model?How are the students lives different?How will you deal with the change?

Be willing to be transformed-we have so much left to learn
teachers will be transformed

Karen Cator at ISTE on Innovation and Excellence

efjcomposer — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:38:20 +0000

OK, I’ll admit it-I am a big Karen Cator fan. She is a 21st century learning pioneer and is now the Director of Educational Technology for the US Department of Education. She was on a keynote panel discussing, “Innovation and Excellence: Buzzwords or Global Imperative.” A number of times she emphasized understanding the systems that are in place and how the system dictates learning (example: standardized testing). She suggested that the only way to change some systems was for a grass roots effort for reform. She suggested maybe keeping the idea of standardized testing but making it a much better test. While she was on a panel for this keynote session, I’ve collected a few of her key comments below.

“We need to get better at knowing where learning happens.”

“There are different types of innovation-those that we identify and want to sustain and disruptive innovations that come out of left field.”

Referenced Tony Wagner’s (Co-Director of the Change Leadership Group (CLG) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education) research about staying in the question.

“Answering questions is inherently cross disciplinary but we also need the knowledge from specific disciplines.”

“Standardized tests are training students for obsolescence.” However, since we have these systems in place, we could design a test that was so good that it would be a good measure of student progress.

How do you learn? Stay in the question longer. What do you do? How do you go about it? Reach out to your social network. Stay in the question longer.

“One way learning is powered by technology is the possibility to individualize learning.” We need to find what it is that sparks student interest and let students follow their own path (passion).

Emphasized that the National Ed Technology plan is rooted in research and has ideas for changing education.

http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/plan/2004/site/edlite-default.html

View this session (start 23 minutes in to avoid chatter):http://www.istevision.org/viewsession.php?id=114