Eva Blog 1

Service-Learning Activity Blog 

Eva Reyes-Smith

Who: Fellow teaching artist in the same organization.

Date of activity: 3/25/24

Date of feedback: 3/29/24

Need: I am striving to help my students learn to read treble and bass clefs to become more hands on using our digital audio workstation.

Currently I am teaching a creative aging music technology course that focuses on creating music on the digital audio workstation, Soundtrap. Our course includes students with and without experience in the music world. We focus a lot on sharing our work and collaboration, regardless of experience. The community partners’ need is based on involvement. Our goal is to get people involved and creating, regardless of “skill” or experience. 

In our course thus far, we’ve accomplished basic user knowledge of the digital audio interface, Soundtrap. We’ve had hands-on experience of how to use and organize premade tracks, how to add a melody to the premade tracks, and learning to organize A and B sections of our current mini song project. The students have been really excited about sharing their creations with the class, which I have really enjoyed.

Overall, I think this course I am currently teaching is going well. It is a bit out of my comfort zone though, as I have never taught a music technology course nor a creative aging course. In that regard, I’m really happy to be broadening my skills and I’m certainly learning just as much, if not more, than my current students.

Throughout this course I’ve learned that at some points I need to slow down. There have been times where I realize I’m going to fast for our students that may not have any musical experience before this course. I’ve realized that taking more time for questions and more time for group discussions and review is much more important than I originally thought. I tend to assume the wrong amounts of time it will take for certain activities.

One assumption I made during this activity is everyone needed at least a refresher on how to read treble and/or bass clef. This was not true for everyone, so some of my students just sat there while we were reviewing. In my review, my fellow teaching artist pointed out that I should have another activity for them to do so that they’re not just sitting there. I thought this was really good feedback and got me thinking about what that could have looked like for next time.

I’ve learned throughout Activity 1, there needs to be an alternative to standard headphones. I have many students with hearing aids that have explained the feedback they may hear while trying to use headphones. In the future, I’d like to have the resources to try bone conduction headphones, or even the FM devices that we just learned about in our most recent module.  

According to feedback I received, it seems that the additional materials I supplied for Activity 1 was a good call. The students reacted well to our worksheet and group discussion/lesson. However, it was also noted that I need to be more prepared on the varying skill levels my students have. Some are very familiar with reading music, and some have never seen notation before. If I were to do this lesson again I would have supplemental materials and activities for students to do if they have substantial experience reading music.

Another note I received while getting feedback from my peer is to allow extra time for various activities planned. I figured this would be a point of feedback I would receive, as I have struggled with this before. I need to be prepared for questions as well as time for the lesson. To account for this, next time I would simply plan a bit less in a class session. From the feedback I received, I can improve by making a set time for each activity, restrain from overplanning, and provide further activities in case I have students in different areas, which is always likely. 

Throughout this entire process, I’m finding that there are not a lot of preparations that take place for students with disabilities, as educators. I believe that we, as a whole, need to work on anticipating varying needs of students and have things prepared for them rather than make it an as-need basis because by that time we’ve already lost time with them. 

I think that I connected my interview well to this activity. As stated in the interview, we both wanted a course that pertains to older adults whether they have music experience or not. I think because OLLI has a lack of music focused courses, a more in depth proposed course would go well.

The bibliography I created partially connects with Activity 1. For example, my sources do focus on how music technology benefits older adults during the aging process. This is the idea behind my current course as a whole. However, my lesson did not correlate with welfare technology or barriers in technology. To address this, I would have liked to address how accessible this technology is or is not through my students' views and experience thus far. This is a way I can gain insight through their shared experiences.

Moving forward, I would like to do a brief “redo” of this lesson and then build further upon note reading. This would look like including a review of the note reading we did previously and then learning where these notes are on the piano so we can use the piano roll function on Soundtrap. After that, we will be exploring keys and what that looks like on a piano (triads).  For my third activity, I will be proposing a more in depth music technology course that builds upon this current one.