Incorporating ISTE - Part 1

A large portion of my graduate work in Ed Tech has been the introduction to and incorporation of the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) Standards, created to help educators to "rethink education and create innovative learning environments" as well as "re-engineer schools and digital classrooms for digital age learning." (https://www.iste.org/standards). These standards have become a helpful guide in my journey to reach my students in this new age of learning. 

ISTE standard #3 references the student's role as a Knowledge Constructor, being able to research, evaluate, and curate information from digital sources to build knowledge. ISTE standard #4 references the student's ability to take this knowledge and then use it identify and solve problems. 

I'm going to put both of these standards to use in my high school Music Appreciation class. This is a nine-week course that meets every day for 80 minutes. In this course, I take a cross-curricular approach to music learning and base my units off of other academic subjects. For example, the first unit in the course is History in Music. We discuss music's growth since its early inception and many of the genres that have evolved since. This year, instead of listening to me lead them through the information, I want the students to determine on their own what qualities make up a musical genre. They will need to research different genres, compare and contrast them, and determine what makes each sound unique as a musical genre and discover what are the identifying qualities to look for when trying to categorize a piece of music.

I think taking this approach to musical genres will allow the students to look more in depth at the concepts and not only draw knowledge from their own experiences, but delve deeper into styles of music they may not be familiar with or dissect some of their favorite songs. Having the students explore on their own will also give them more ownership of the learning process and hopefully help them discover better listening and analyzing skills along the way!