Productivity and Professional Development Through Technology

            The readings in weeks one through six focused on various ways that music teachers can use technology within lessons to enhance or facilitate learning. This week, Bauer’s (2013) work reminds us that technology can be an important part of the administrative facets of the music education world. Productivity and professional development are two of the areas covered in this chapter.

            Productivity includes various jobs that keep teachers organized in the classroom and as professionals. Calendars, to-do lists, communications, and public relations tasks were traditionally completed with pencil and paper. Today, there are several online programs that teachers can use to stay organized. For example, Evernote allows the user to create notes and to-do lists that are available on any device. The benefits to using an online, cloud-based program is that it is available anywhere there is a device with internet connection. No longer do we have to carry papers and files – they can be easily accessed through Google calendars, Evernote, Gmail, and other such applications.

            Attendance, seating charts, and grade books also used to be pencil and paper affairs. I can remember my teachers carrying the big, olive-green gradebook through the school, marking down grades and student absences on the pages. Now there are applications for iPads and programs for computers that can help us organize all of that data. iDoceo is one such application. iDoceo can be downloaded to an iPad for a one-time fee of twelve dollars. With that investment, users can receive updates as they become available, and all of the features are included for that fee.

There are no in-app purchases that teachers would need to buy in order to make full use of the program in their classroom. The most recent update includes the following: planner, diary, grade book with attendance, calculations and statistics, summary view in each class with configurable widgets, schedule, seating plans, handwritten notepads, text notepads, resource manager, and bulletin boards. From my limited investigation of this application, I feel that

it would be a good investment and could help teachers stay organized in the classroom.

            Professional development is another area that Bauer (2013) suggested could be enhanced or even simplified using technology. As we certainly know, there are a multitude of online educational programs available today from many well-known and accredited universities. This allows students to participate in quality programs even when they are not near the actual university. Kent State’s Master’s in Music Education program is just one example of this type of professional development. There are also many less formal professional development options available online. There are Facebook groups created and joined by music teachers. There are also blogs discussing many different music education topics, and NAfME Academy offers online professional development opportunities for music teachers. These formats allow for more informal discussions and provide assistance to teachers from other teachers facing and solving the same issues within their classrooms and schools. As Bauer (2013) stated, “from informal personal learning networks to formalized graduate degree programs, technology can empower music educators with personalized, sustained, flexible, and social professional learning opportunities,” (p. 186).

            Throughout this class, we have learned about the various ways we can incorporate technology into our music classes. This week, Bauer (2013) reflected on the ways that technology can help music teachers to stay productive as well as to continue to develop professionally. Technology can play an important role in all facets of a music teacher’s professional life.  

References:

Bauer, W.I. (2013). Music learning today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and

responding to music. New York, New York: Oxford University Press.

iDoceo. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.idoceo.net/index.php/en/