There's another me in Waterloo? In the Department of Psychology? O.o

So I had just googled myself to see my "Digital Footprint" for my class, and I haven't been able to locate myself at all, thankfully, which is a very good sign. I think it is important to keep a good watch on what you do upon the internet if you are a teacher. Especially when it comes to facebook. You never know when one little photo can cost you a job.

I was very nervous about my first name catching wind when I was out student teaching. For all I know, the students could have been looking me up on Facebook within hours and if they saw something even the most innocent that they could twist into perverse if they wanted to, my placement would be over in an instant. However, seeing as I have not touched a drop of alcohol or any form of drug in my life, it's a little less likely for me to get into any trouble.


To be honest, there isn't that many people on google with my first and last name within my city, that cannot be located. I was able to find my name in a program for a performance with the clarinet choir, but that was pretty much it. It seems that within the realm of fame, my name is rather uncommon. (Does that mean I'll get points for uniqueness if I become famous? Heh!) When generally looking up my first and last name however, there were a little more options. But one seemed to be the most prominent:

There is a university student with the same first name, middle initial and last name as mine. Only she attends the University of Waterloo, and is in the Department of Psychology, as a graduate student. In fact, she had actually written a scholarly article that was published about those who publicly complain on facebook and publicly show off their low self esteem, are much less likable to their friends than before. It seems to have gotten her really famous, as even just the University of Waterloo site pops up when I enter my name. She and the co-author of the article predicted originally that those with low self-esteem would reap the benefits of being able to express themselves, however it seems that even those who are close friends respond negatively to the status updates people put up fron th experiment they conducted... Which is something I sort of agree with. Sometimes I think about the way my status update looks before I post it, because I'm worried that people will react to it negatively.

Soooo, so far, it seems like the only way people will want to know about me, is through looking me up via facebook I have no twitter or Youtube account, so I'm close to solid.. Otherwise, I'll get mistaken for a girl in the Department of pyschology There's nothing too shocking on that within my photos to get me fired, so I think I'll be fine...

My digital footprint is (almost) untraceable! Muahahaha!

BUT ONLY HANDS SMALL!!

During the summer, on the 4th of July, which I had off due to working for an American company,  I started by morning by looking at my emails. Having been subscribed to the WSO for the season it was in Brandon, I received one from them, advertising for their latest season in Winnipeg. One of the acts, was this delightful musical comedy duo composed of Alexey Igudesman on violin and Richard Hyung-ki Joo performing a programme with the orchestra called BIG Nightmare Music. With the advertisement provided, were numerous links to their YouTube videoes from previous concerts. After just watching one, I was instantly hooked and kicked myself for not finding them sooner.

Here's three of my favorites:

 

Aside from practicing the Brahms Sonata, watching their YouTube videos kept me from going completely insane from working at a call center. What I love about these gentlemen, is that their comedy, does not interfere with their musicianship, and that their goal is expose younger audiences to classical music. Aside from their own music channel, these two have their own separate channels. Igudesman has quite the hilarious project set up in a video called "The Cyber Conductor" and Joo has a video of himself, I beleive, performing a composition by Billy Joel.

 

Their video of We Will Survive can almost even be used for music educational purposes even. As the peice plays the same chord progressions, you can actually find a bunch of different well-known tunes use that same chord progression, which your students would be surprised to figure out. Sort of like the Pachebel's Canon in D rant video. I highly recommend you check them out if you want a good laugh! Or maybe even showing them to your students on a day where there's not much to do!

 

Or, if you have money, you can go see them in Winnipeg at the Centennial Concert Hall on November 2nd, 3rd, and 4th!

 

Just don't blame me if you're hooked! :P

Plantin' Pearltrees, and thoughts on Internet Filtering.

So, this week, we had started off by looking at apps of sorts that would be able to keep us organized, including Pintrest, Symbaloo, Diigo, and, the one I found the most intriguing at the time, Pearltrees. So, as encouraged, by the prof. of the class, I had just spent an hour in the music library, starting one off. Erm... Occasionally distracted by the sites I was trying to add to it.

Pearltrees sort of grabbed me at the beginning, with its visual appeal, and it seemed all of the sites you could add to them were easy to access as soon as possible. I figured it would be best to at least attemptsto try and use it. My organizational skills, are... erm... ALMOST next to nonexistant, which can really result in a huge obstacle in becoming a successful teacher. Every year, I've TRIED to improve them the slightest bit, but it always seems to be a struggle against time. It's kind of embarassing when your cooperating teacher even says "I'd hate to see what your bedroom looks like!"

So, finding pearltrees to be the one that looked the most interesting, I started off with a few sites of main interest that I will be visiting within the year, such as many of the university links for either studying, or listening to musical recordings of solo clarinet/orchestral repertoire, as well as websites for sheet music. And of course... I couldn't resist putting in the website of my favorite living composer, just to personalize it even more... (Stop judging me!!)

...Hmmm... This is neat... I've just looked up Music Education on the site, and I've already found a few links in a pearltree involving "Music Teaching with an iPad". I may wanna look at these later... I might really start liking this...

Near the end of the week, one of the topics that came up rather frequently was the filtering of Internet within schools. For a while, I was actually quite for it.... But it seems that my views have kind of been challenged a bit.

My original views on the internet being filtered, were positive, beleiving that the filtering of sites for social media purposes (Facebook, Twitter, Etc.) would keep kids focused on their assignments, forcing them to only use school computers for work purposes only, and also keeping any incidents regarding pornography from occuring.

However, after watching the video "The Myths and Opportunities of Technology in the Classroom" featuring Alan November, as well as in class discussions, I began to think back to all of the times I would actually be doing some sort of research for school, and even the most innocent of sites would wind up blocked, hindering my research even more. Also, the thought of allowing children to collaborate with students all over the world, would certain open many doors to educational opportunities, especially in the musical stream. Think about Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir, but instead of just one person, various ensembles from different schools. It would be HUGE. Maybe even be the start of a whole new type of music festival! So, I'm a little less strict about the whole idea now... But I'm not completely for unfiltered internet.

You can look at the video here, if you're curious!

That's all I have to say for now... Maybe tomorrow, I'll post some musical things I find to make this a little more fun for me...

Well... Here Goes...

I'm guessing this is my first post of this blog here... As you can see from the title, I could not come up with anything unique whatsoever. Anyways, this is a post to reflect on this week's adventures in the Using ICT in Education course. Looking at the different kind of blogs that were created by Alumni of this course certainly made me think it was rather cool. I'm still a little bit confused as to what kind of things I'm supposed to talk about in this...thingy here... However, since it seems we have only just begun within this course, it isn't surprising that it is like that. Wordle was definitely a fun website to use, and it seems like something that I could definitely use for decoration within the music classroom. I'll probably have to make sure the word "Practice" is quite huge!" Hahaha!

 Despite the fact that my courseload for this semester is a heavy one, I do think that there will be a part of me that will really enjoy this class, and I'm hoping that I can eventually find blogging a useful hobby of sorts whenever I feel the need to say something...  I just hope in the future, I can create one without a title that sounds like a flavour of potato chips... >.>