I don't post nearly all the pedagogical videos that I make, but since this was a reasonably big project that took a few days of work, I thought I'd share it here. It's sort of a sequel to the "Snowstorm" videos, delivered in the same format, but the content is a bit more mixed: some is a review of the basics from earlier in the semester, while some of it is directly focused on the content of the final exam, summing up the entire semester. There are even one or two "enrichment" videos at the end, for students who want to extend what they've learned this semester just a little bit further.
I recently wrote up another summary on the experience of making videos to help summarize the experience of making after-the-fact videos for Music 2.
Here's the entry on the main Bok Center website: http://bokcenter.harvard.edu/blog/making-snow-days-experiment-responsive-video
Overall, the reception for the videos has been very strong. It seems, judging from the viewing stats, that there was a strong core of about 30 students (out of our 98 or so enrolled) who went through and watched everything we did. Others were more selective, while still more seem to have watched the first few videos and stopped. I'm sure there's an object lesson in there somewhere...
Since the second day of the semester, Cambridge has been hit by record snowfalls -- the snowiest month in the city's history. Last Monday's classes were cancelled by snow, and this coming Monday is Presidents' Day. Since sections for Music 2 meet on Mondays and Fridays, this means that our students are missing literally half of their instruction for our current unit, on the basics of the major/minor system.
Professor Osnat Netzer and I had an idea - we decided to produce a series of short videos that would help students to review some of the content that had to be glossed over in our severely reduced instructional time. With the help of my colleagues at the Derek Bok Center, we managed to produce these in under 48 hours, from brainstorming, to demo, to recording and editing, to finished product.
The videos are all collected on a Vimeo Channel, entitled "Music 2: The Snowstorm Sessions." I think that collectively, they do a nice job of replacing the missed classes. The short format is both by necessity and design: short-form videos are exponentially similar to produce, and no one really wants to watch an entire 50-minute lecture in one sitting at their computer. I wouldn't say that this approach is really "flipping the classroom," but it's something along those lines - students review some information outside of class so that they'll be better prepared for our next sessions. The videos also serve as a resource for them as they complete an extensive homework assignment, due a week from today.
Just a quick one here, throwing up the four concert reviews that I'm asking students to read for this week's sections. We're going to continue our trend of spending part of section time discussing how to write about music, by analyzing four different concert reviews. Three of them are very recent, while I picked the other one in order to give them some variety - a new music review, since that's what they'll be writing at the end of the semester.
Either/Or Spring Festival (New York Times, June 2, 2013)
Blue Heron in Cambridge (One I actually went to! From Oct. 20, 2014)
Emerson String Quartet and Yefin Bronfman (Oct 20, 2014)
Julliard String Quartet at Jordan Hall (Oct 20, 2014)
Hi everyone,
Missed an entry last week, because there wasn't much to report. My students paired up and did presentations on the musical selections of the Messiah. I was really happy, for the most part, with what they came up with: most of them gave really nice overviews of their assigned pieces. It was nice seeing what they gravitated towards: some dug into the text, even looking up the original Bible verses and figuring out what Handel had omitted or altered (which I'd never noticed before, and is in some cases very interesting!) A few presentations went a bit too long, and wandered a bit, but they were mostly very solid. I think the students enjoyed hearing some from their peers, with a minimum of direction from me.
I was happy with the way I set things up for the presentations, as well. I asked any students who wanted to use Powerpoint slides to send them to me the night before, along with the timings of any examples they'd like to play (based on the 'official' class recordings). I compiled the slides into one presentation, and queued up the examples beforehand. This helped transitions go very smoothly, with no worrying about changing between Macs and PCs, setting screen resolutions, etc. I'll definitely do that with student presentations in the future.
I liked how participatory the last class was, but I wasn't quite happy that the presentations ended up taking literally the entire time. There was very little opportunity for questions, checking up on how the class is going, etc.
Today, the plan is a bit more traditional. We're going to start with another 'writing about music' exercise, this one built around editing a paragraph. The TF manual has a great old example called "The Paragraph That Walked in Darkness," a piece of musical writing that has a lot of problems. I'm going to give them some time to read it and mark it up, and then we'll annotate as a class.
Next, I'm planning to play a clip from a production called "The Young Messiah" (check it out in its glorious 80s-ness here) as a way of jump-starting the conversation about authentic performance, vs. modern approaches. Again, the goal is to get them talking and thinking with each other, with less intervention from me.
Finally, I'm using another recorded example: PDQ Bach's "New Horizons in Music Appreciation," his famous recording of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, with a baseball game commentary on the form as it unfolds. They began learning about Beethoven's 9th in lecture today, and this seems like a fun way to continue the conversation about form. I've got a handout to match.