On Friday night (27/09/18) I decided to attend the About Music Education lecture/workshop on the Maker Movement. This concept is the centre of my TME Major Project, so it was good to get a head start of some of the ideas before James gives this lecture to our class in a few weeks.
Hearing from Phil (a specialist 'maker' teacher, not a music specialist) was interesting since he was able to show us examples of the maker movement and delve into the benefits of this as an educational movement. There are strong ties to PBL, with both approaches being student-centred and revolve around the idea of students learning information as a means to achieve something concrete, thereby making the learning meaningful (instead of learning for the sake of learning). I really like this idea as it encourages creativity, problem solving and results in deep learning - not only are these characteristics essential to thrive in the entrepreneurial world of the digital age, it would make sense for there to be higher numbers of student engagement (and really, it just sounds fun).
After a few words from James and Phil, the evening was centred around two tables - one for woodworking and one for tech. Since I spent all of SPW last semester chiselling marimba bars, I decided to take the opportunity to look at all the tech instead.
The classic LittleBits Synth Kit was a great way to see the different components that make up a synth, and adding or subtracting units to create different effects was super easy - definitely see the educational potential in this.
I spent a lot of time at the bare conductive and makey-makey station, where we drew angry faces with electric paint to trigger the sounds that were loaded onto the board. It's cool to also note that you can record/download your own sounds and put them onto the board (would definitely be fun in a classroom).
Check out the video below for awesome 'musical paintings' people have made with makey-makey!
The PicoBoard looks like a fun and easy way to get students to program and play with different sounds - something I'll keep in mind for my TME major project!
I've had some experience with Arduino before (my brothers are nerds too), so the idea of using this to program into something like a MIDI controller seems super cool! I'm not sure how difficult this will be, but with Arduino being free to download and heaps of code being open source, it's something I want to explore for our project.
For the experienced people there was a DIY Theremin Kit from JayCar which looked really cool, but way too complicated for my current experience level (maybe by the end of the course!). EDIT: after building the MIDI controller, I think I'm ready to have a go at this Theremin Kit over the holidays.
This workshop gave me heaps to think about and some good starting places for our project, I'm excited to explore these more!