Presentation at ATMI Conference in Richmond, VA on October 20

I gave an hour-long presentation at the 2011 National Conference of the Association for Technology in Music Instruction (ATMI) yesterday in Richmond, Virginia. The title of my presentation was Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Interaction and Teaching Music Online. I spoke of ways to maximize the ways we use software tools such as Sibelius, Logic, Quicktime, iChat, Adobe Acrobat Pro and Screenflow to both assess student performance and provide instructor feedback. I spoke about Web 2.0 fatigue on both sides of the pedagogical equation and criteria I adopted to make decisions about which tools to choose for my own teaching.

I then spoke about the Web 2.0 tools I use specifically (Diigo, Soundcloud, Spotify, Issuu) and how I integrate them both visually and practically into assignments and tests. One particularly interesting way to take advantage of the portability (via widgets and embed codes) of these various tools is to use them in tests created using Google Forms.

It is possible to to tie these tools together by accessing the source code of a test you create using Google Forms and bringing that into an HTML editor. Once there you can insert embedded videos, images, PDFs, or any other media you like, and have the questions you ask in your test refer to the embedded items. Finally, I spoke about the importance of keeping in mind the visual impact of the way we deliver content online and how critical it is to student focus to keep that information clear and organized.