Learning Creatively

This is a question I have found myself wrestling with lately. Can we teach someone to be creative? Part of me has difficulty processing this question because I think creativity, in part, needs to be defined before answering the question. It is even more challenging, however, because I am not sure how to define creativity nor have I found a complete definition that I personally love. I think that if I had to offer a synonym, on the other hand, it may be curiosity.

My son has taken piano lessons using 2 different approaches. Neither approach is the traditional, classically based lessons that emphasize note reading and finger dexterity. His current teacher’s philosophy is based on using songs and teaching them using rote as well as kinaesthetic approaches to get him to internalize rhythms or the notes. Many of the songs are basic, at first, and throughout the lessons they are modified to become more challenging.

One skill he learned was to change a song’s tonality from major to minor using parallel keys. If you are somewhat of a music buff, he would learn a song in C major, then learn how to convert it to C minor. I do really like that approach because it encourages them to internalize key signatures subconsciously. It really develops the musical ear.

Just yesterday, my 7 year old decided to play Für Elise on the piano - this song is a staple to every piano student’s repertoire! He proceeded to convert it to a Major key. This was the first time I was aware that he could even go from minor to major. The astounding point was that not only did he convert it, he transposed it down a key - i.e. he went from A minor to G major. The video below was his 3rd try. He does need to fix the middle section but he did this at first sitting without much hesitation.

What really struck me about this was the connection to my classroom environment. Do I provide my students with a culture that allows them to take these risks? I think I do. Could I do better? I think so too!

How about you? What kind of classroom do you lead? Are you telling students what they should learn from you or are you allowing them to glean what they need to?

Can I teach my students to be creative? No, but I may be able to teach them to be curious. Maybe I just answered my own question!

Fur Elise - Transposing from Eric Moccio on Vimeo.

As a teacher, I care about the success of all my students. I try my best to ensure they have frequent encounters with success. Often, I find myself drawn to the students who seem to be those self-starters, the self-learners. Is it because I too am a self-learner?

I am intrigued by students who sometimes are not enthralled by school but still like to learn. Sadly, there is no correlation between the two. You can dislike school, dislike the institution or the system but still be fascinated by learning new skills, new things. On the plus side, if school has not been a positive experience for a student, it does not mean they need to stop learning.

More and more frequently, we are finding examples of students who are those self-learners. With YouTube available to all people with Internet access, students can learn about practically any topic under the sun and learn. This means that the barriers between the knowledge holder and the learner are far less pronounced than they were historically. While YouTube did not begin this transformation in learning, it is a big proponent of this change.

Students are able to learn for themselves how to play a piano, how to draw, how to learn a new application or in my own children’s case, how to fold different types of paper airplanes. This powerful medium is helping transform education day by day as teachers become guides rather the gatekeepers of knowledge.

Cherie, a Grade 12 graduating student, is a student that I often see in the halls drawing or creating something. To me, she just seems to ooze creativity. I finally saw her with her own large drawing tablet attached to her laptop and told her, “I’m going to make a documentary about you”. Finally, this goal became a reality as we sat down and planned the shoot.

What you will find is that Cherie is a wise person. She has figured out for herself how she best learns, what motivates her and how she will be able to acquire new skills in the field of creative arts. I don’t think anybody told her how to do this. It’s too bad that this is the case. It helps point out what I need to change about my “teaching” to help students like Cherie find the true self-learning in themselves.

I hope you enjoy her story. I understand that she is creating her own blog/website. I hope to be able to post the link here someday soon.

RockBand, Karaoke & Vocal Music

I don’t know if this will upset people or make them smile… but today in vocal music class, we played Rock Band. This was a fun experience and a learning point for me. At the beginning of each semester, I tell my students that there is this “vicious cycle” in their learning process. (See and click on picture below)

The more they perform, the more they gain confidence. The more they gain confidence, the more they take risks. The more they take risks, the more they learn. And on and on it goes…

I have always wanted to play Rock Band with a vocal music class. I personally believe that it is more difficult to get a vocal music student to take a risk than an instrumental student. There is something about singing that opens up our inner most being with the world. When a student is self-conscious about their singing, they are less likely to open up. Rock Band, in a completely fun and entertaining way, will take away those inhibitions. This way, the students sing and perform with more risks.

When they realize that they can do this in front of their peers, they will hopefully go for it during their vocal performances. It is much like golf - the more they can do this in a relaxed manner, the better the results. Relaxed doesn’t mean careless - it just means free of tension (for these purposes).

This was a great way to break some ice. Unfortunately, I have one regret. I should have done this at the beginning of the semester. Next time.

FILM SCORING IN THE MUSIC CLASSROOM

In order to beginning the discussion about film scoring, I do the following activities with my students.

1) Play them an excerpt of music that is ambiguous in nature. I ask the students to think about what kind of movie this music could represent? Is it a horror film? A comedy?

2) Play them another piece of music they do not already know - I love Stravinsky’s finale to the Firebird suite. Ask them to describe the scene or film they imagine as they listen to the song.

3) Play them 2 movie clips with their original music. Ask them to describe the music they hear.

Stop right here. This process is done both orally and anonymously through a service called www.polleverywhere.com. Students use their cell phones to vote for step 1. During step 2, they are asked to text in their responses. This level of engagement brings about many more responses than simply polling the class. One of the great about this service is that it is free!

4) Next, I play the same clips from step 3 with ridiculously contrasting pieces of music as the backdrop. This inevitably makes everyone laugh because the music obviously does not fit well with the visuals.

5) In Garageband (or other music creation software), I have students score a pre-made film (created by students in the class or by other students in the school). They use the supplied loops that come with the program. This opens up many doors to discussing how music is written to film.

Here is a sample piece of audio from one student’s work. The point was to explore this type of composing and they got creative!

In my experience, this approach to the scoring process is very engaging for the students. They are engaged because they are using technology that is near and dear to their hearts (their cell phone) but also because they have instant success due to the transparent user interface of Garageband. Lastly, they are were warmed up to the topic by starting light and getting deeper. The process follows Blooms’ Taxonomy by ending with the HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills) of creating. Try it in your music classroom!

Soundcloud is a wonderful program. At first, I used to think it was only good in a music classroom. It is true that it is an important tool to use in the music classroom, but it can be a powerful tool to be used in most classrooms.

Soundcloud has become a tool for musicians and songwriters to promote themselves. It is a great place to discover new artists. However, with the iOS app for iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, Soundcloud connects the inner going-ons of the classroom with the world at large.

Having known of Soundcloud for a long time, I only recently added it to my tool belt and am I ever glad I did! It allows the user to quickly and painlessly record sound bytes on their mobile device and upload that recording to the web.

This is not the only power behind it. I was looking for a way for people to listen to performances or samples of our learning right within the browser without having to download an MP3 file and use yet another app just to play it. Soundcloud will host your recording on their servers and they will provide you with an embed code to include in a blog post or on your class website.

If you visit my class blog (www.mrmoccio.info/blog), you will find many examples of this embedding. It is the way things should be. It will even tally the number of plays. The best part is that Soundcloud offers this for free! If you want to be able to host more minutes, you can upgrade the service.

Soundcloud, as far as a tool goes, is just one of those tools that makes me want to pay for the service just to support them.

In my music classroom, I use it to record things that we do as a class. If we are learning a song, I will record it in the beginning stage in order to allow parents into the classroom walls.

Regardless of your subject matter, there are probably many different ways you can use this tool. Once you do, you will love its simplicity and power. It is a true testament to the app developers at soundcloud.com that they have harnessed the power of the service but made it transparent to use!

I was inspired to try the Marshmallow Challenge when a friend posted his experience with this challenge on his blog. What is the marshmallow challenge anyway? That’s what got me first intrigued.

If you read through the Marshmallow Challenge and watch the TED video, you’ll soon discover its potential as a team building activity, a problem solving activity and a good learning opportunity for students across a variety of grades.

What is it?

Students are given 18 minutes to build the tallest, freestanding structure that can support a marshmallow using 20 sticks of spaghetti, 1 meter of tape and 1 meter of string. They can not break the marshmallow and it must be at the top of their structure. They can break any of the other supplies in order to achieve this feat.

Is it really that hard?

Well, no group in my class was able to have a successfully standing structure at the end of the 18 minutes. Students did tell me that the dollar store tape I purchased did not help. Hint: Buy better tape!

The speaker in the TED video, Tom Wujec, says that the key to success was primarily discovered through kindergarten students. These students, believe it or not, tend to be one of the most successful groups of people to do this. Why? Because they prototype their solutions. They create several versions and test new techniques as they are building. Some of the other groups of people, take business graduates as an example, fair poorly because they draw out their plan and discuss it first without prototyping anything.

Why did I do this?

Why did I do this activity with no apparent connection to my Media Arts curriculum? I do have a few reasons. Here they are:

Team building: This is a course heavily rooted in collaboration and group work. This is strictly because of a classroom resource problem. I do not teach in a 1:1 setting with one computer per student. At the beginning of the semester, it is good to do an activity that helps break some of this ice of working closely together on projects, especially when there are a lot of creative decisions to be made during the making of film.

Risk Taking: In filmmaking, sometimes you have to take risks and try something new. You may fail but you may succeed. Either way, in the learning stages, it is about the process. I want my students to be willing to prototype their films. Try testing a version out. Before getting to the final product, I want them to try a new technique out. Go film something, come back and try editing that sequence and learn from your mistakes. The fact that there is a time limit in the marshmallow challenge (18 mins) is realistic to our filmmaking projects. There is a time limit to our projects. The lesson learned here is that even with an 18 minute deadline, it is suggested that people prototype their structures. Perhaps testing or versioning is a good use of your time.

Did it work?

For my first try at this, I was pleased with the outcome. Most, if not all, students were engaged in the activity. I know where and how I can improve. I don’t think I was focused enough in my questions after ward. I think if I put more thought into those follow up questions and delivered them with more speed, I could get even more critical thinking out of the students. I will try this again in the future.

In his post, Jared Nichol provides some of his follow-up questions and his approach to this activity. It is very much worth a read.

Try the activity for yourself with your students. I highly recommend it!

Collective Inspiration - that is what I think I will call it. In my Twitter-verse, Ben Grey has been inspired by Wim Wender’s The Beauty of a Second challenge (Mont Blanc). Ben Grey has issued the challenge to this community of followers to do similar challenges here. Before any of this though, I was initially inspired years ago by this film: Moments. In case you haven’t found the time to view those, the challenge is to capture literally one second clips that when strung together, produce a story.

My problem is that when I first viewed Moments years ago, I thought it was brilliant. However, I saw it too literally. Could I produce my own “moments” video? But I never thought of it out of context. Then comes Ben Grey. He issued the challenge to his Twitter community for people to submit to the Mont Blanc challenge and to create their own. He then posted his own family sample. That was what I needed!

Bingo! That was it! My conundrum of having all of these hours of family video to edit could be drastically reduced to key moments. Sometimes that is all that you need to remember the essence of that experience - my sons skating, swimming, our Disney vacation, etc…

Then, my mind started thinking: What if students were to create their own seconds, moments or whatever you would like to call these on their own? What if they summarize a unit of study - a project - a body of learning through snippets of time. Could this be a powerful tool for learning? I don’t have the answer but my wheels are turning. There may be appropriate uses of this in a school setting. Until then, I have now decided that editing my family videos will be much quicker and simpler from now on.

I love the collective inspiration that took place.

Just learned a lot from students yesterday. We had a fantastic class where we were learning a choral song in class. The students got totally behind it and really started going for it in class.

At one point in the song, there is an opportunity for some soloing. One girl volunteered to try her hand at that. Eventually, I challenged the guys and said that it would be really neat to have one guy go for it as well. One male student did just that and then some!

We then proceeded to flash mob 5 different classrooms as well as the principal’s office. It was a learning experience. How many times do I squash students’ energy and creativity because it doesn’t always fall into my interests? As an example, I am not really into flash mobs much as they have reached a point of overdone. But for the students, this was and continues to be (even today) a huge motivator!

I hope I don’t ever get in their way.

This was such a fun activity to try with students in my class. Instead of a traditional jam session, 2 students and myself made up this tune. Watch the video to quickly find out how!

Word of Warning: I am sorry that I am the subject of this but it’s easiest to include myself rather than get someone else’s permission. :(

Want to provide students with a project that gives them more insight to higher level editing skills but also, perhaps, a more creative expression of themselves? Try out this project. I have made a video tutorial (sorry, it’s 7 or 8 mins) and posted it here: Photo Portrait

1 year ago Short URL

Will Richardson, a well respected educational leader, posts in his Twitter feed: “How do you help teachers teach with technology? You help them becomes learners with technology.”

I agree wholeheartedly with this statement. We need to encourage teachers not to wait for training on how to use technology. They should use the technology to become learners themselves and contribute to the educational community (globally). Let’s get the conversations started.

I do have some questions: How do we best do this? What does this look like in reality? Do you have any thoughts / feedback concerning this statement?

What I think Mr Richardson is getting at is that teachers just need to be contributing to the feed. Join Twitter. Start a blog. Create Videos. Write. Read. Talk online. By doing so, the learning of “technology” will occur transparently. What is more important is that they will be learning. Rather than focusing our PD on learning how to use technology, focus it on learning… about learning… about something. The end goal has changed, and so it should.

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