Year 7: Week 6 - Bringing iPads Into 5th Grade Music

I remember six years ago, finding a projector on a cart and using it to show lyrics and videos in my general music room. It was so old that every single shade and light had to be turned off before you could barely make out the image. It wasn’t that my school couldn’t get the funding for technology in this room, it was that no one had asked.

The reason I started using this overhead was purely pragmatic. Handing out lyrics sheets took time and was distracting. The added bonus of showing videos gave the class more depth and another contact point, which helped students learn songs faster.

The next year, I got a really nice projector installed in the classroom as well as a document camera. This allowed me to seamlessly use this technology. Previous years, I had to wheel the cart out, and wait a couple minutes for the projector to warm-up. Now I could turn on the projector, put on the lyrics I wanted, mute the image when we were doing other work and with a press of a button, lyrics were instantly up.

During this time I also started using my school iPad, for showing videos, keeping student records, playing music and displaying lyrics and music. This device had no boot-up time and was easy to carry, which was a big bonus since I teach in two different classrooms.

These past two weeks I experimented further with technology. Each 5th grade homeroom has ten iPads (about enough for half the class). I created a folder on Google Drive and loaded it up with videos, lyrics and audio recordings of songs we were working on. I shared this folder with all of my 5th grade students.

During class time, half of the students watched videos and listened to songs along with a directed worksheets while the other half of the class were around the piano working on singing with me. Halfway through the class, student switched activities.

I had some trepidation in trying this out. First off, while our iPads are pretty well monitored, kids can still do inappropriate things on them. But students can also do inappropriate things with tambourines. If it happens, fine, we lean into it, but this isn’t a reason to not try. This is the main reasons I used Google Drive as opposed to creating a playlist on Youtube.com. Google Dive gives them a controlled amount of content. If I shared a playlist of youtube.com, suggestions would come up in the side bar that could lead student to places that at the very least would be distracting and at the worst, could be very inappropriate.

There’s always issues with the use of the apps. Google Drive has a very cumbersome way of logging out. I was very lucky to have the support of our technology department and for the first day we worked with iPads, I had one of the tech teachers in with me helping the students with the iPads. After this first class, I used them without the tech teacher and they did fine.

I wanted to use iPads so that the students could control the pace of their learning. This ended up allowing students to go deeper (e.g. student could re-watch a video they were interested in) and get more done since they weren’t waiting for others in the class to move on to the next part of the worksheet.

This set-up allowed me to work with groups of students with singing in a smaller group which was much more efficient. With only 8-10 students standing around me I could hear, diagnose, and correct singing issues much faster.

No, efficiency is not the most paramount goal of my teaching, but when it happens, paired with the ability to teach with more depth and provide students with more independence, teaching becomes more meaningful and more fun.

Parenthood: Week 111 – Screen Time

The first time Ollie had screen time was when he was six days old. We settled down to watch The Expendables.  He slept through the entire film but it was some high quality daddy-son screen time.


There’s a lot of concern about the amount of “screen time” our children are getting. The pervasiveness of smart phone has made access to screen time omnipresent. There’s articles linking screen time to all kinds of disorders and dysfunctions, which have made some parents illogically concerned about screen time while other parents don’t seem to notice at all that letting their kid stare at a screen for most of that kid’s waking hours is a bad idea.

I’m not a psychologist or a sociologist. Nothing I’m saying here is based on any research. Like most things on this blog, my thoughts on screen time and children are based on my experiences.

Screen time has been a very important way for my family to acquire cultural knowledge. Like I discussed in this blog post about Bill Cosby, television helped my parents learn and understand what it meant to be American. Television and film opened the world to me and helped me become a more empathetic and understanding human being while video games helped create some of my favorite memories with my brother.

I agree that we need monitor much screen time our children have, but cutting out screen time or setting time limits doesn’t really address this issue. First off, as we’ve seen in the realm of sex education, abstinence education doesn’t work. Teaching our children to abstain from sex, alcohol, fatty foods, video games, and television and internet creates narrow-minded individuals who don’t have the tools to control life’s pleasures and interact with society.

Yes, it’s easier to simply cut things out of your children’s lives but that doesn’t mean that it’s better. I hate it when Ollie has meltdowns when we turn off the television, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up helping him learn how to watch television in appropriate doses. It is essential that we help our children learn to moderate the pleasures in their lives.

Not all screen time is created equal. Watching Sesame Street with your child and encouraging your kid to answer the questions asked by the characters is very different than sitting you kid in front of a show, not meant for their age and leaving them alone. I would rather watch an hour of an appropriate show with Ollie than let him zone out for 15 minutes watching a show like South Park (I love South Park btw, I just don’t think it’s right for Ollie).

As a parent, I am so grateful for the pervasiveness of screen time. Have you ever had to go to the bathroom when you are alone with a child and needed to use a grocery store bathroom? If it wasn’t for Elmo on youtube, I have no idea how I would have got Ollie to stand in that bathroom while I did my business.  Plane rides without iPhones would make a difficult experience with Ollie, excruciating. Besides these more difficult situations, I’ve had a lot of joyous moments watching television with Ollie.

I can’t describe how wonderful it feels to watch reruns of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood and have him hear the same message of emotional acceptance and the importance of loving yourself that I did as a child. Hearing him giggle uncontrollably when watching monkeys on Planet Earth was adorable (they don’t want to get their paws wet, sooo cute).



Also, there's Peter, Paul and Mary concert footage with Ollie that I remember watching with my brother. There’s also seeing pictures of his family on the iPad and regular FaceTime conversations with his Popo (my mom), which are highlights of our day whenever they occur. Screen time has not only relieved stress as a parent but has helped Ollie connect with the world around him and his family.

Don’t get me wrong, Diana and I are very conscientious about the amount of screen time and we are not going to let Ollie become a zombie. However, it’s important that acknowledge screen time and all the technology that it includes for how it can enrich our children’s lives.

The screen time thing is really tough to manage.  Right now, Ollie is off of anything that has Elmo.  For some reason when Elmo gets turned off, he melts down worse than when he's watching something else.  I know I will battle Ollie with screen time, and I'm not looking forward to those fights but they are going to be worth it in the long run.

We as a society will continue to struggle manage the way screen time impacts our lives.  The negative consequences of our failure, allowing screen time to cut us off from each other is looming but the way technology can bring us together and make our face to face interactions more meaningful is a possibility that our children deserve.

The End Of The Internet?

Yesterday the Federal Communications Commision meeting on Net Neutrality broke down.
Earlier, The New York Times reported that Google and Verizon were working on a deal to end Net neutrality. Google and Verizon are denying this.  These two news items may be specters of doom for the Internet.

Net neutrality is a principal that states that there are no restrictions by anyone, internet service providers or government on the content of the internet. This means that over my Comcast broadband it’s just as easy for me to reach a enormous site like amazon.com as it is to reach my favorite comic book message boards on comicgeekspeak.com. If what people are speculating is true, this could all quickly end.

The idea that is that internet service provider (ISP) can offer a premium fee and get better access to websites. For example, you pay $10 more a month and cnn.com, amazon.com and apple.com are now faster websites to use on your computer. What’s bad about that?

By offering a tiered system ISPs are indirectly controlling content. Why would you use an up and coming search engine when bing.com loads faster with your premium Internet package?

The Internet has been called the greatest expression of democracy. It’s a place where a couple people with a great idea can change the world. I still remember going on youtube.com the week was launched and there were only 30 videos uploaded, facebook.com when it was limited college students and google.com back when search engines like metacrawler.com and altavista.com were still around. If an ISP gives us a faster premium for sites that are backed by large business that can afford to pay the ISP fees than what happens to the little guy?

You can argue, “well, whatever, we live in a capitalistic society, this is how business works, big companies who have more capital have an advantage because of that.” My response is “so what?” Go ahead, call me a communist or whatever, God forbid that we have something in culture, something in our society that isn’t dictated by the almighty dollar.  The paradigm that makes the internet so great explains why it's been so difficult to make money for traditional business to figure out how to make money online.  

I love how the internet puts everyone on the same playing field. I love how the access we have to information is really access to people around the world and I love how even the smallest website can bring people together.

Maybe everything will change and when my kids are using the Internet they will only be going to the “premium sites” and scoff at the idea of going to a site created by a fan. I hope not.

If that does happen I will fondly reminisce about the time when a blog written just some guy who loved music could be reached just as easily as the New York Times.

Stupid iphone Commercials!!!

I thought I was done with crying in front of the television.

It took time to accept the fact that a television commercial could make me tear up but I put a box of kleenix by the television and worked through it. Then I saw this commercial:



Really Apple?!?   I can't take it any more. It’s just a simple phone conversation. When she says “you know that things we’ve been working on a while,” we know something special is coming and we experience their emotion through the woman’s look as she speaks and she responds to the man’s reaction. As the commercial goes to the Apple logo we find out that they are going to be parents.

Making us feel the emotions before knowing the situations that is behind it draws us in to the world, and when we find out the news we rejoice as well and Kingsley starts to cry.

I love a good commercial and most of the time commercials that are really awesome more are humorous like the now classic Betty White Snickers commercial.



The focus on humor in commercials is so prevalent that I was caught off guard by Apple’s Facetime ad campaign.

Now most of the time I watch television shows played back on my DVR and I fast forward through the commercials. So it was only by chance that I heard the unmistakable voice of Louis Armstrong and watched one of the beautiful studies on the power of human interaction.



This commercials shows a variety on contexts which Facetime would be nice. The first uses the commercial shows aren’t extraordinary situations, a dad saying goodnight or two girls trying to chose what to wear.

Then we see a woman having a sonogram sharing that experience with the father who is in the military and we instantly feel the sacrifice this family making and how hard this must be for this couple to be apart. Their expressions as they are able to connect with each other are amazing.

If that doesn’t get to you, the next scene when they speak to each other in sign language will.  Near tears, they sign to each other, “I love you” and oh my god . . . I’m tearing up right now just thinking about the commercial.

If Apple keeps making these ads I'm going to be a mess every time I watch television.  These commercials are beautiful, touching and poignant contemplation on what it means to share life with the people you love.  This is the most noble goal of technology and I'm thankful to apple for reminding all of us how powerful a smile can be.

NO!! I just saw this new one:



. . . Diana, I'm out of kleenix. . .

10 Reasons To Get Excited About Music: #7-5

[to see the first part of this list #10-8 click on this link]

7. Teen Music Doesn’t Suck
Every generation has their corporate manufactured teen idols. There were The Monkees, The Partridge Family, Tiffany, 98 Degrees and the list goes on and on. Most of the music from these artists is mediocre at best.

Now I know you love “Party In The U.S.A.” by Miley Cyrus, don’t try to deny it.



It's not just infectious pop songs. Taylor Swift has composed and recorded some of the best music about teenage love since the Beach Boys. Justin Bieber has a fun stage presence and impressive vocal prowess and the Jonas Brothers not only play their own instruments but also compose their own songs (which are pretty good).

If you don’t like this stuff, chances are you’re not suppose to, but it’s undeniable that this music is age appropriate, culturally relevant and a whole lot of fun.

6. Rolling Stone Is A Great Magazine
Time, Newsweek, US News & World Report, Entertainment Weekly, Q and Spin are all magazines, which I’ve tried to regularly read and have given up on. Through all of my explorations with other magazines Rolling Stone has preserved.

Rolling Stone magazine has had its ups and downs. After the redesign to a smaller format it was a little rough and that section which was designed to look like a Star was a big mistake. However, they have figured it out since then and it’s as good a magazine and its ever been.

The political reporting is vicious and unapologetic. You may think that it’s biased but it never fails to inspire discussion, encouraging readers to participate in some of the most important political discussions of our time.

The features exemplify the best in long form journalism. Including a wide range of topics including Osama Bin Laden’s favorite son and yoga cults. This wide range of relevant and important stories are thought-provoking and help us better understand human condition.

Oh yeah, then there’s the music news and reviews. Yes, they play to the mainstream but they never forget their roots constantly discussing up and coming artists and trends.

Rolling Stone proves every issue that the pen is mightier than the sword, Rock isn’t dead and that we can make the world a better place.

5. Music Is Everywhere
Once upon a time if you liked a song you heard performed live you had to wait for another performance. Later you could catch it on the radio and then you could buy a record. Now youtube.com, satellite radio and the internet has made music more accessible than ever before.

If you want to find a song you like it takes less than a minute to find it and chances are it will be free for you to listen to it. The only thing better than the access to music we have now would be it I could make Bruce Springsteen show up in my living room whenever I paged him.

Space Oddity by David Bowie

“Why I grow up, I want to an astronaut.”

That was my line to the ever present “what do you want to be when you grow up?” questions during the first ten years of my life. I don’t know if it was Star Wars, Star Trek or just something else but space fascinated me when I was a kid. I have clear memories of playing my mom’s car pretending it was a space ship with my brother and loving the fantasy.

There was one problem. I almost always got air sick when I got on planes. I’ve since outgrown this but it was definitely an issue growing up and eventually I realized that this would be a problem as traveling to space is far more stressful on the body then a commercial airplane flight. So the dream diminished.

The in 1995, I saw Apollo 13 and for a moment I was drawn back into the fantasy of space travel, the heroics, the ingenuity and that dangerous frontier that continued the American tradition of exploration.



During the MTV Movie Awards that year, Apollo 13 was nominated for best picture and when they announced the nominees the music they played behind the image of Tom Hanks looking out into space was “Space Oddity.”

“Though I’ve crossed one hundred thousand miles, I’m feeling very scared and I think my spaceship knows which way to go.”

That was all of “Space Oddity” I heard. I searched through the internet and eventually figured out that it was David Bowie, went out and got a greatest hits collection and was simply memorized by what I heard.

Y’know that whole Madonna reinvention thing, yeah David Bowie did it first. Portraying different characters in his albums and shows, Bowie was as much a modern performance artist as a pop musician. Well, maybe pop musician isn’t quite the right fit, because this man experimented with music sounding not all that different then modern music artist of his time but something about “Space Oddity” connects in a meaningful accessible way.

In “Space Oddity,” Bowie tells the story through the exchanges heard on the communications between ground control and major Tom. The song combines the sounds of a acoustic guitar with ghost-like synthesizers that describe the sounds of the space shipping launching as well as the solitude and mystery of space.

The story starts with the lift-off and develops into a tragedy. For some reason Major Tom panics asks ground control to tell his wife that he loves her. Ground control sees that Major Tom’s “circuits are dead” and lose communication with Major Tom.

Like the situation in Apollo 13, “Space Oddity” captures the panic, the mystery and tragedy that is sometimes involved in space travel. Bowie’s voice can be both detached when he is ground control setting up the launch and also filled with passion and desperation when he is speaking as Major Tom.

“Space Oddity” uniquely tells a story in a way that few pop songs attempt. As weird as it may have sounded at the time with its synthesized transitions and unique subject matter, it captures the wonder and mystery of space travel, which inspired generations.

Kids now don’t seem too interested in space travel. I once took a group of high school students to Kennedy Space Center and while I was fascinated by the tours, other people there who were in my parents generations were almost brought to tears. However, my students didn’t really care.

The world is different now, our country has different priorities. But every once in a while it’s nice to think of the idea of space travel. No so much the reality of it but that feeling I had when I was a kid, the wonder and the adventure. And nothing brings that back like the amazing journey David Bowie takes us on with Major Tom’s unforgettable adventure.

Online by Brad Paisley

Have you ever pretended to be someone that you are not online ir slightly stretched the truth, to convince someone of something that isn’t necessarily 100% true? While most of you are may be thinking “Oh Gosh I would never do that,” I'm sure most of you have thought about the possibility.

The Internet is a beautiful thing. It’s a pivotal technological advances like electricity and the telephone that has changed society. Like every major advance in technology there are things that develop that we are not so proud of. The innovation of industrialization led to kids working in factories in unsafe working conditions, advances in medicine have inadvertently helped create illegal drugs. And the sense of anonymity on the internet has enabled people to misrepresent themselves that have led to heinous crimes (have you ever watched those pedophiles trying to lure kids in on “To Catch A Predator” it doesn’t get more disgusting than that).



But it’s all not that bad.

Brad Paisley’s “Online” celebrates this feeling freedom that the internet provides. Is it a little sad and pathetic to spend time in your parents’ basement having a “three-way chat with two girls at the same time”? But if everyone involved in enjoying the interaction and living out a fantasy through each other, is it really all that bad?

Country music isn’t all about cowboys, drinking booze and being on a farm. Brad Paisley continues to lead country music into the 21st century commenting on the realities on modern life, sometimes with a serious tone but more often than note with his quick wit and a mischievous smile.

Paisley’s lyrics tell the story of a guy who lives a fantasy life online that is a stark contrast to his own reality living in his parents basement. His rhyme are smooth and clever, “I drive a Maserati, I’m a black-belt in karate.” Like the great lyrics of Motown, the rhymes don’t draw attention to themselves but rather add to the cohesiveness of the song.

Paisley’s sing with a unpretentious everyman voice while his other voice, his guitar is just out of this world. The solo after the bridge in which he trades off with the violin, oh good lord, it’s just wrong how effortless that sounds.

The music video for “Online” is a hilarious as the song featuring Jason Alexander and William Shatner. Itadds an ending that’s not in the song. The protagonist realizes that the girl across the street is better than any fantasy that he could have online encouraging us to get out of our basements.

We all have fantasy worlds we escape into whether its in books, sports, films or playing online games. These fantasies allow us to live a different life, experience drama in a more immediate and safe way but they are just fantasies. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that even though in life it can be more difficult reach out and connect with others, it its that face to face human connection that is the most meaningful connections of all.

Believe by Cher

"Believe" music video

Why are people afraid of technology in music? Audiophiles continue to argue whether the record or the compact disc creates the best sound. People wonder if live music will become less pervasive in our culture as the majority of music that people listen is recorded and produced in a studio and people morn the loss of live musicians in studios that producers replace with synthesizers.

Relax people.

Yes, music is changing, but not it’s all bad. New media like compact discs and digital formats have made music more accessible then ever before. Live music is still alive and disc jockeys have created a new musical language manipulating recording music to create unique live musical experiences. In addition, synthesized sounds have not only made music more accessible to musicians but also created tools that have widened the expressive palettes of artists. Yes, people have created some awful music by utilizing synthesizers, but people have also created horrible music using acoustic instruments. Great artist have created incredible works of art before the use of synthesizers and there have been many great pieces of art that have utilized technology to create interesting, expressing and meaningful music like Cher’s 1999 hit “Believe.”

Yes, Cher I fully acknowledge that there is something just not right about listening to Cher and well . . . analyzing her music. This was brilliantly demonstrated in the television show Buffy The Vampire Slayer, season 4, episode 2 titled “Living Conditions.” When Buffy goes to college, she has a stereotypical annoying passive aggressive roommate and one of her first signs that something is wrong with her is that she is listening to “Believe” over and over while ironing (the roommate does end up being a soul-sucking demon, but that’s beside the point). Cher is a strange and sometimes mystifying popular icon, but she has made a lasting impact on our culture. Like “Since U Been Gone,” “Believe” is just one of those songs that almost everyone seems to like, regardless of the feelings we have about the Diva named Cher.

One of the reasons this song is well known is because for the electronic effect heard in the verses and in the end of the song. This effect is first appears in the song on the word "can't" in the first verse. Artists have used similar effects before but it was heard in main-stream popular music. The producer Mark Taylor used the computer program called auto tune to create this effect. This program can adjust the pitch of a recorded sound so that it is in tune. For example, if someone sings a flat note, it will raise the pitch without any distortion to the sound. Producer Mark Taylor put the settings of auto-tune to an extreme forcing the note Cher was singing to beyond correcting pitch to a different note, which created the ornaments that are heard. Auto-tune usually will compensate for the tone but because the settings were so extreme, Cher's voice comes across as distorted and robotic. Producers continue to use auto-tune continues to be used to help raise the quality of recordings as well as to create interesting vocal effects like in Kanye West's newest album 808s & Heartbreak.

The electronic processing of Cher's voice creates two different Cher's in the song.: a reflective Cher in the verse and an in your face “I Believe” Cher in the choruses.
The first Cher during the verses that is thinner and features the auto-tune ornaments. In the first verse she concludes that he’s going to be the lonely one when he leaves and in the second verse, she concludes that she is in fact too good for him. Cher is singing to someone who wants to leave her and she concludes that she is in control and does not need him.

The second Cher is during the chorus when she is singing with a full and bright sound. This creates contrast between the verses and chorus and a sense of release when the chorus come. She is figuring out how she feels in the verses and in the chorus she comes to a conclusion

Do you believe in life after love?
I can feel something inside me say
I really don't think you're strong enough now.

Cher is stating that she knows that there is love left inside of her and she doesn't believe that he is strong enough to truly have much of a life after he leaves her. The bridge continues this sentiment with the second Cher

Well, I know that I'll get through this
'Cause I know that I am strong
And I don't need you anymore.

Cher repeats "I don't need you anymore" each time with more conviction and more heart.
The next section builds to the last time we hear the chorus in which we here the chorus for the first time in the first Cher voice utilizing the auto-tune ornaments. Like in the verses, there is a feeling that Cher is reflecting back and the auto-tune effect makes the chorus seem like it is in the distance, in the past. This is something she has come to terms with and now truly is moving on with her live.

Throughout the song there is world of electronic sounds that flow organically through out the song. Long tones ebb and flow like waves in the ocean over a variety of colors with kinetic and unrelenting energy. The emphasis on every beat makes this song easy to dance to because and the constant changes in the texture maintain the listeners interest throughout the song. If you listen carefully, every different section is marked with different sounds dropping out and being added without interrupting the flow of the song.

It doesn’t matter what tools the artists uses, what matters it the feeling we get from the music. This song is fun. It’s joyous. “Believe” captures a feeling of elation and wonder that only synthesized sounds can express.

If you only read the lyrics this song would seem vengeful. Cher is basically saying that everything bad that he thinks he is doing to her will only hurt himself. She is not saying that after the breakup he’ll land on his feet, but instead that he will fail to find love. However, after listening to this song with it’s upbeat and confident feeling it becomes clear that Cher is insulting this man but merely stating facts about what will happen.

There is a sense that this is a relationship that has lasted a long period of time and that tried to have power over her, but now she realizes that this has only corrupted his own heart and left him incapable of loving again. When she says "I really don't think you're strong enough" it's not about being insulting, but more about sympathy.

In working on this post, this song has been playing in my head for a couple days and yesterday I told this to my wife (who by the way thinks Cher sounds like a man). That may seem annoying to you but it was an awesome feeling. It’s not about the technology but the artists and meaning in the music. Even if there is something that is just not right about Cher, I got to admit that there’s something indescribably awesome about “Believe.”