August 10th Journal Post

My name is Kiran and outside of school, I love to read, play tennis and watch Netflix shows.  Last year I played tennis for the school team and it was fun getting to travel to other schools and make new friends. Playing on a school team also helped me make tons of friends that were in my classes as well as in upper grades. It was also the first time I played a sport for school and it took me a while to learn how to balance homework and play tennis six days a week. Despite that minor setback, the memories I made from tennis season were some of the best ones from the entire school year.  

My favorite genre of books is Dystopian; some of my favorite books are Divergent and Hunger Games. One of my all-time favorite series since elementary school is Harry Potter. In 2019, I went to Universal Studios to see Harry potter world and it was really fun. Right now, my favorite show is Stranger Things but I also love to rewatch old Disney shows.   

One big part of my life is taekwondo. I have been doing taekwondo for over eight years and love it. I am now a second-degree black belt and spend about 3-5 hours of my week at taekwondo. My favorite part is weapons because we use many different weapons to practice self-defense. Some of them include nunchucks, bo staffs (like a long stick), and commas (like mini axes). I attended both virtual nationals and state championships in the past year and a half. At both places, I placed in all my events and received medals. One of my long-term goals in taekwondo is to become a fourth-degree black belt, which will take me at least 4 years.  I am in this club called masters club which will help me achieve my goal of fourth degree because becoming a fourth-degree black belt means you are a master.  

August 17 Journal Post

My relationship with grades so far has been pretty good. Throughout middle school and freshmen year, I have had good grades. This is probably why I have never felt too stressed about grades. School, in general, has always been pretty easy and I have made great memories. Although the science curriculum this past year was not my favorite, the memories I made with the people from that class were fun. I also made tons of great memories at lunch with friends as well as during tennis season.  

One thing I love about school is getting to see your friends every day and participating in clubs and sports with them. I also love how you can choose extra classes based on what you like to do. For example, I love playing the violin and so I take orchestra. One thing I dislike about school is finals and regents exams. They just add so much stress but after they are done you get two whole months to do whatever you want. 

I first heard about a class similar to EMC where you research a science-based topic for three years but I did not like how you could not switch topics. My counselor told me about this class and what really interested me was the fact that there was so much freedom and no scheduled class time. One thing that she told me is that I need to have a well-organized schedule since there is no scheduled class time to work on EMC.  This year I plan to dedicate my music study hall time to working on the EMC homework.   

August 24 Journal Post

This year I plan to research teens and how certain aspects of a teen's life affect them. I already know that teens are a big topic of study in today's society, but I do not know much about what is being studied. Some of the major questions I would like to answer are how do Extracurriculars affect teens? How does social media affect teens? Does listening to music help teens? In what ways? What genres? These are also pretty big questions so, I could contrast two different types of things such as sports vs. clubs or being on Tiktok vs. Snapchat. I still don't know if I want the whole year to be about just affecting mental health or if I just want mental health to be its own question. I could also compare the different types of schools that teens go to like middle school vs. high school vs. college or even private school vs. public school. Another school-related topic is homework. Does the amount of homework affect teens? 

I do not have one particular study I want to use for my research this year.  I think I want to do both peer surveys and use the ones done by experts. I feel like some questions are pretty easy to ask peers about but some may not relate to my peers and what they have gone through in life.  

September 14th Journal Post

I am looking to investigate how music affects teenagers. Below is what I think I know and what I already know about teenagers and music. 

I think I know that listening to different genres of music has different effects on teenagers' minds. If you listen to classical music you may feel calm but if you listen to rock music you might have an adrenaline rush or feel overwhelmed. I have heard that if you play an instrument, you will do better in school. If you play an instrument, I think you are always practicing and trying to memorize different notes. Memorization is a great skill to have when studying for tests in academic classes. I think that listening to music while doing other tasks will help teenagers focus better on the task. I’ve heard music is a great distraction, and if you are attempting to do homework in a loud place, listening to music could really help you focus better. I have also heard that music is good for mental health and issues like dealing with stress.  I think that music is a good way to help teenagers relieve stress in issues such as peer pressure because you can listen to happy music if you are sad and calming music if you are angry.

I know I know that playing an instrument or singing (making music) is a good way for teens to express themselves (NAMM).  I know that classical music expresses more emotions than pop music does. Pop tends to express one to two emotions but classical expresses hundreds (His own Hand). 

September 21st Journal Post

1. I don't know if listening to cultural music impacts teens, especially music in other languages.

2. I don't know if playing an instrument is beneficial to teens and in what ways.

3. I don't know, for sure, if listening to different genres of music has different effects on teenagers and how they feel.

4. I don't know if listening to different genres of music while doing work affects how well you are focused on the task.

5. I don't know if teenagers' mental health is affected by listening to music in a positive or negative way.

6. I don't know how music affects teens' brain development and to what extent it could be helping/harming that brain development.

7. I don't know if listening to music while in different classes has different effects on one's ability to focus on that subject (Math, English, Science, Social Studies, etc). 

8.  I don't know if listening to music while sleeping has any effect on teens and their minds.

9. I don't know, to what extent, playing an instrument helps teenagers with expressing themselves. 

10.  I don't know if adolescents' minds work differently while listening to music and in what ways.

From my list, I have determined that I need to know if listening to different genres of music has different effects on teenagers and how they feel. This is important because as of right now, I only really know that music does affect teenagers, but I feel like learning about the different genres having different effects would help lead me to answer other questions. It is also important because if I find out certain genres help with calming and such,  then I could look at many of my other questions like sleep and mental health.  One question I could end up researching later is a mental-health and music-related question. This is because after researching the different genres, we will know what genres have what effects on teens and could lead me to find which genres help in certain conditions.  Another question I could end up researching is sleeping while listening to music. Maybe if I find out that a certain genre can help put the mind to sleep, then researching sleeping would be good. If I do not find anything about genres calming the mind, then I can research more ideas related to playing an instrument or even cultural music. No matter what I find out in this 'need-to-know', I will be able to continue learning this year with great topics!

September 28th Journal Post

What benefits to the teenage brain are seen by listening to classical music? Classical music is a genre that many teens do not listen to very often, but there are great benefits just by listening to classical music. 

Listening to classical music has been proven to help with spatial IQ scores. This was shown in a study, done in 1993 by a psychologist named Francis Rauscher, about the Mozart effect. The idea was that by listening to Mozart, a classical composer, you would become smarter. This experiment was performed on Young Adult students where half of the people listened to 10 minutes of Mozart and the other half did not. After 10 minutes, both groups were asked to do easy tasks such as cutting paper to measure their spatial IQ. The group of people who listened to Mozart scored higher by 8 to 9 points. Rauscher has said that the Mozart effect does not affect general intelligence and this is a short-lived effect meaning after 10-15 minutes, the effect wore off.

Although the Mozart effect does not help with general intelligence, a study was also done showing that listening to classical music can help students pass exams.  This study was done by Chenlu Gao, Paul Fillmore, and Michael K Scullin in 2020.  The study took place during a microeconomics class where students were played 15 minutes of classical music by Beethoven, Vivaldi, and Chopin. Half of the students were replayed the same pieces throughout the night whereas the other half were played white noise. They then took a test and the people who were replayed the classical music did 18% better than the people who listened to white noise. This is because of a process called targeted memory reactivation (TMR) was activated by listening to classical music. TMR prompted the brain to consolidate memories meaning the brain was remembering the information learned.  This means that by listening to classical music while sleeping, you are improving the quality of sleep, and for this exam, the probability of passing with a 70 or higher was increased.

In conclusion, classical music has been shown to help with spatial intelligence and academic intelligence. It has also been shown to stimulate TMR which helps with memorization. You perform better in so many aspects just by listening to classical music! 

SDA Reflection and Future Need to Know

I spent two of my 80-minute study halls as well as about two hours outside of school to work on this project.  I definitely think I planned really well since I finished my first draft over a week before it was due. When I sat down to work on my project, I was dedicated, barely had any distractions, and was completely focused on the project. I chose to do an infographic because it sounded like an easy one to do on Canva, which is something that I have used a lot in the past.  I originally was going to write all my "extra information" in paragraph form next to my infographic, but I decided to do a recording and I am so glad I did that instead. Recording my voice is something that is hard for me to do, so I think this was a good challenge for me.  In the future, I might not want to use a visual as part of my SDA and instead, just make a full podcast episode. 

I personally thought I did pretty well with the SPECS aspect, but after reading the feedback, I maybe did not think critically enough. I thought SPECS was helpful and the acronym was easy to follow although, I think I misinterpreted how we are supposed to use it since my feedback talked about not doing very well with the SPECS part. I personally think the only benefit of the ‘what you know, think you know, and need to know’ process was to figure out what your essential question would be. I did not find any use after that whole process and it did not really help me in my SDA. The directions and rubric were pretty clear, and I think the only thing I was confused about on the rubric was the whole SPECS thing as I thought I had completed it thoroughly and clearly. In the future, I might try to think more critically about SPECS.      

I just explored how classical music affects teenagers and now I think I would like to explore if playing an instrument affects teenagers. This is connected to my last month's research because most music teenagers play on instruments is classical. I am a little worried about being biased like I was last time, and also because I play an instrument. I think researching this will challenge me to not be biased, which is something I struggled with in this past assignment. I first want to see if studies were done on anything related to teenagers and playing an instrument. If I can find something, then I will most likely stick to websites as my sources. If I can not find any good studies or information, then I might look at other ways to gain knowledge such as a documentary or podcast. 

This is a good essential question because a future essential question could be something like how the effects of playing an instrument as a teenager differ from the effects of playing an instrument as a younger child. This possible future essential question will only work if I do find research that shows an effect on teenagers. If I do not find any good research that will lead me in this direction, then I might want to go back to researching how classical music affects teenagers and do another genre such as rock or pop. I think that researching ‘does playing an instrument affect teenagers’ is a great need to know, right now, because there are so many ways I can answer this.

October 28th Journal Post

My previous SDA talked about how listening to classical music affects teenagers, and now I would like to research how playing music affects teenagers. While researching for my prior "Need to know", I found research regarding playing music and how it affects teenagers. This led to the creation of my new need to know: How does playing an instrument affect teens? 

My three Sub-Questions:

Does playing an instrument affect how well teenagers perform in school?

Does playing an instrument help students focus better in school? 

Does playing an instrument have a long-term positive or negative effect on teenagers?

I chose how playing an instrument affects teenagers as my need to know because researching the effects of listening to classical music did not go very well for me, so I have decided to take my research in a different direction on the effects on teenagers by playing music. A lot of the music that students play, in middle school and high school orchestras, is classical music. However, I do not want to limit my research to a specific instrumental group (such as only orchestra or band) since the instruments in the groups vary from school to school.  My first and second sub-questions were chosen because when I was researching last month, I found a lot of academic-related effects on teenagers, so I would like to mostly investigate academic-related matters once again. My research last time mostly talked about teenagers' performance in school, but I would also like to research if teenagers focus better and comprehend topics better in school if they play an instrument. In my last month’s research, I learned that the effects on teenagers were short-lived effects, so I would like to know if there are any long-term effects. I would also like to further expand my question by also researching to learn if the possible long-term effects are positive or negative for teenagers. 

November 2nd Journal Post

I think that my need-to-know question,  how does playing music affects teenagers, falls under the ANALYSIS category. I think this because some other questions in this category include "What facts can you compile?" and "How would you estimate the results for?". These questions both would require research to be done in order to find the "facts" that will lead to the "results" being produced.  

• My first sub-question is does playing an instrument affect how well teenagers perform in school? I think that this sub-question falls under the COMPREHENSION category. I think this because of the question starters "How would you compare…? Contrast…?" and "How would you classify the type of…?". I will be comparing and contrasting the performance levels of teenagers who play instruments and teenagers who do not play an instrument.  

• My second sub-question is does playing an instrument help students focus better in school? I think this is very similar to my first sub-question and therefore this will also fall under the COMPREHENSION category.  I will also be comparing and contrasting people who play an instrument and people who do not to see if there are any differences in how well they focus in school.  

•  My third sub-question is does playing an instrument have a long-term positive or negative effect on teenagers?  I think that this question falls under the  ANALYSIS category. The question starter "How would you categorize…?" lead to my classification choice. I can categorize my research into whether there is a positive or negative effect left on teenagers.

My main question did not change because it is an open-ended question, and I still believe that it is the most important question in my research. Similarly, my third sub-question is open-ended and therefore has remained the same. My first and second sub-questions are more closed-ended type questions, so after consulting with the HOTQ document, I decided to change them. I changed my first sub-question to what are the similarities and differences in school performance level between a teenager who plays an instrument and a teenager who does not play an instrument? This will allow my sub-question to still be a COMPREHENSION question, and I am still able to compare and contrast the performance levels of teenagers who play instruments and teenagers who do not. My second sub-question is similar to my first sub-question, format-wise, so I changed it to what are the similarities and differences in the focus ability in school between a teenager who plays an instrument and a teenager who does not play an instrument? This will also fall under the COMPREHENSION category. 

I think the best sub-question to help drive my need-to-know is my first sub-question which is "what are the similarities and differences in school performance level between a teenager who plays an instrument and a teenager who does not play an instrument?". I think this will help me figure out how to answer my second sub-question since they are so closely related. Just by researching this first sub-question, I have already done about 50% of my research for my need-to-know.   

SDA #2 Reflection

My thoughts about this SDA are mostly positive. I think that I did way better on this SDA than I did on my previous SDA. I spent a lot more time planning out everything and started recording my podcast. I think I did specify my intent for sharing this information; to inform teenagers about the possible benefits they can receive from playing an instrument.  When I was thinking of SDA ideas, I knew that no matter what, my project had to be about informing teenagers.  

Before fall break, I did not dedicate much time to working on this project, but my attention management was very good. I wrote and perfected my entire script in one of my 80-minute study halls and then spent another 30 minutes figuring out how to use we video.  During the break, my attention management was not very good and all I was able to accomplish was finding my visuals. After the break, my attention management was better and it only took me about two hours to put the whole project together. I would say that I work better when I have school and my attention management is better when I have other homework to do. I think that my time management was also really good. 

When it comes to the 5 Cs, I think that I am hitting creativity, communication, and maybe curiosity. I think that I did not hit critical thinking, but I still am having trouble understanding what critical thinking actually means. If someone were to tell me to think critically I would not know what to do. I do understand that SPECS somehow falls into this but critical thinking is still something I still struggle with. I think I might have gotten collaboration but this is another one I find hard to show in my SDA. To me, collaboration means working with others. With this SDA, I had a lot of peers as well as my parents look over my video and give me suggestions. I do not know how I can display this, so I think that collaboration might not have been shown IN my work.  

The most important thing I learned was that I do not work well over breaks and I actually work better under pressure. This was shown through my terrible attention management over fall break. I also learned how to use We Video which is a great resource I hope to use in future SDAs. I am proud of myself for finding a source of information that was not an article. Finding a video and using it as one of my sources was like stepping out of my comfort zone. I am really glad I did though because I gained so much knowledge from that video. 

I think that I still need to try and gain knowledge in other ways besides articles and short videos. In the future, I would like to try and watch a documentary or maybe read a book although it would probably be hard to find a book.  One of my "vital sources" was an article comparing high schoolers who played an instrument to high schoolers who were JROTC members. I used this source because all of the students were enrolled in either band or JROTC and this means that money was not a factor.  I think that I can use this information gained in the future because I think that I want to compare teenagers to younger children or teenagers to older people. If I do decide to do this, I will already have some of my research done. 

 I really liked the HOTQs because they helped me establish how I was going to go about answering my essential questions and sub-questions. I would like to use the HOTQs again as I found this resource to be very helpful. I also like the HOTQs ten times more than the SPECs and would not be mad if we had to do HOTQs for another SDA.

 Since my topic is the effects on TEENAGERS, I plan on collaborating by conducting peer research. In the future, I also might collaborate by interviewing peers.

December 13th Journal Post

Problems with teenagers and their willingness to practice/play their instrument. 

• I have noticed that in our school, many Teenagers who play an instrument do not take home their instrument to practice, so I will keep track of how many people practice their instrument and for how long. 

• I have also noticed that most of the instrumental players in our school quit their instrument after two years at the Highschool. In our school, that means that you have gotten the art and music credit needed to graduate. Taking this into account I will keep track of how much time 11th and 12th graders spend practicing their instrument. I will also ask 9th and 10th graders if their plan is to quit their instrument after receiving the credit needed for graduating. 

**I plan to create a google form to send out to the Band and Orchestra students at the high school in order to answer these questions**

This matters because, in my last month, I talked about the benefits you could receive from playing an instrument as a teenager. I never talked about how much practice and dedication are needed to get those benefits, so this month I am going to research that. This does matter because you can say you play an instrument, but if you never practice you never get good at it and you might not get the benefits. This problem affects teenagers because if they choose to start playing an instrument then they should know how much they need to practice to hopefully receive the benefits.  This problem could also affect people in this field of study because the research I plan to conduct is new.  I know that this is a problem because studies have been done to show that practice is needed in order to excel in instrumental playing. Katie Zhukov wrote a paper titled 'Effective practising: A research perspective' that reviews new research to convince musical instructors to approach different ways of teaching music. I used this article to look at the examples she uses when it comes to professionals and the time they spend practicing. The article talks about how musicians practice long hours and have been increasing their practice time ever since they started this shows that they had to practice in order to get to the level they are at today. If students do not practice their instrument, they will not get better, so they may not get the benefits of playing an instrument.   

My biggest weakness right now is that I am continuously getting sick and because of that, whenever I try to complete work for EMC, my time and attention management are not good. I also feel like the quality of my work is decreasing. I think this is also because of my bad attention management. My biggest strength right now is that I do not have a lot of work in other classes, so any and all free time I have is used for EMC.

January 12th Post

My first article is by Ruth Price‑Mohr and Colin Price and the publication is the "International Journal of Early Childhood".

This study done in the article is about a group of 7-year-olds who come from equivalent socioeconomic backgrounds and ethnicity. The study aimed to prove that learning to read music (one of the first lessons when learning to play an instrument through school) can help to improve memory, literacy, and reading skills. Children were taught piano on a digital keyboard using a color coding method to learn the notes instead of the conventional letter names. This color-coding method allowed them to learn chords by associating a number of colors with a certain chord. Later, they transitioned to conventional letter naming. This helped them to read notes in two different clefs (music notation styles) after the fourth fifteen-minute lesson (Price and Price-Mohr).

  The result of this experiment showed improvements in areas such as digit span and word reading abilities. This remained stable over time which means that they were long-lasting effects. This experiment left a positive impact on children with reading difficulty because they were taught to read music.  The experiment also showed that learning to read music notation can reduce the risk or even prevent the risk of declining in necessary skills. A casual relationship was shown between music learning and improved verbal skills. 

The database I used to find this information was ProQuest eLibrary, and the keywords I used were "Learning to play an instrument, "Child" or "Kid", and Benefits. When I was searching, I was attempting to find a scholarly article proving that there are benefits to playing an instrument at a young age NOT an article that proves learning an instrument is better at a younger age. This article is relevant to the field of study (Musicology-the study of music) because this article is studying music along with its effects. This is relevant because it talks about a specific age group and the effects they recieve from playing music, so it can be beneficial to others, including me when trying to find information about a certain age.  

Source

Price-Mohr, Ruth, and Colin Price. "Learning to Play the Piano Whilst Reading Music: Short-Term School-Based Piano Instruction Improves Memory and Word Recognition in Children." International Journal of Early Childhood, vol. 53, no. 3, 2021, pp. 333- 344. ProQuest; eLibrary, https://explore.proquest.com/elibrary/document/2612226672?accountid=51266, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13158-021-00297-5.

January 19th Post

This week, I decided to do indirect research unlike last week which was more "direct". My purpose of this article is to show what is going on in teens' lives so, I decided to research how sleep is affecting teenagers. I used Gale PowerSearch and my search terms were teen' and "brain development" to find an article. The publication of the article is Jobson Medical Information LLC. The goal of the author is to "bring awareness" to parents about how little sleep teenagers get and how this is affecting them.   The problem presented in the article is that teenagers do not get enough sleep and this is affecting their daily lives.  This is leading to irritability, grades dropping, depression, anxiety, obesity, oppositionality, fatigue, and substance use. A solution to this could be later school start times which will allow students to get more sleep. Part of my problem is most 11th and 12th graders are not continuing to play their instrument and this article states that 3 out 4 12th graders are not getting enough sleep which is stressing them out. This could be a factor as to why they are quitting musical instruments(Howard). Last week's article talked more about finding benefits in children playing instruments (which will help my solution) whereas this week's article talked about a factor as to why teenagers are quitting their instruments (which will help my problem). The author is Dr. Barbara J. Howard and she is the assistant professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University. This impacts the field because she specializes in teenagers and children which means she has a lot of information and spends a lot of time gathering information about a certain age group. 

My source:

Howard, Barbara J. "Sleepless in adolescence." Pediatric News, vol. 52, no. 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 8+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A526116439/GPS?u=nysl_ca_guild&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=d28bb1bf. Accessed 19 Jan. 2023.

January 26th Post

The solution to my problem is to start implementing music/playing instruments at a younger age. The article that I used this week was more of a peer-reviewed article that referenced many experiments that showed implementing music in a young child's life had many benefits. The purpose of this article was to gather a bunch of information on the effect of music intervention on child development. There was no single problem/solution presented in the article as this article is using other articles with problems as references. The methods section of this article talks about how they found all these resources and what they used to eliminate duplicate articles.  When they did the search, they had many steps, including a manual search, as well as ways to make sure the article fit certain criteria. One of the criteria they had when researching was focusing on looking at preschool to 13-year-old children. This means that more than half of the age range is what I need (anything below 10).  One of the only flaws that could be there is the databases that are used. The three databases they used could have been out of preference.  The results of this paper showed how the different age groups "reacted with" music intervention. The results showed how different age groups responded to things like Motor Skill Development, Social and Emotional Development, Academic Self-Concept, Phonological Awareness and Auditory Processing,  Reading, Cognitive Development, Memory, academic performance, and so much more. 

Dr. Elena Syurina is an assistant professor at a university in the Netherlands. She deals with child and youth healthcare so she has an impact on the field. Not much is known about Frans J. M. Feron, but most of the work that he is linked to relates to Children and health. Susan Van Hooren is also a professor at a university in the Netherlands. Unlike the other two people, she is not as associated with children-related matters. She is, however, more related to articles surrounding mental and psychological issues. This means that she is probably more credited when it comes to the results involving physiological meanings/backgrounds.  There is not much known about the fourth author. 

I decided to not use one of the databases but rather google Scholar. In the future, I think I will stick to using the school databases as they are much easier to navigate.  Using infants or children did not work very well, so instead, I used young-age along with music and benefits. In the future, I think I will stick to using the school databases as they are much easier to navigate.  Although this article was not the best, it will allow me to review other articles and use their research in my final projects!

Citation: 

Dumont, Elisabeth, et al. “Music Interventions and Child Development: A Critical Review and Further Directions.” Frontiers, Frontiers, 14 Sept. 2017, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01694/full#h4.

March 2nd Journal Post

My first person is Jessica Dillon who is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and therapist. She has a Master's degree from the University at Albany School of Social Welfare and she has been practicing for 15 years. I think that she will be good because she focuses on Teen and Adult therapy and she does music therapy for mental health. I found her by googling  'Music Psychologists near me' which took me to the website that I found her on psychologytoday.com. On the website, I checked to see whether she offers music therapy for mental health for teenagers. I will be calling her because the website gives her own phone number.  

My second person is Sharon L. Wheeler who is a Music therapist that has been board certified. She is also a creative arts therapist and she attended Penn State University. I think she will be good because she runs music therapy classes for young adults and she has experience with mental health patients. I found her on musicspeaks.com which is a music therapy location in the Capital District. I will be calling them because I could not find their personal email. Ms. Wheeler has gotten back to me and is open to doing an interview.

My third person is Dr. Michael Viega who is an Associate Professor at the Cali School of Music. He is a music therapy clinician who specializes in working with kids and adolescents who have experienced childhood adversity and trauma. He is also an assistant professor of music in Music therapy at Montclair State University. I think he will be good because he has tons of experience with music therapy, especially with my age group. I found them I was looking at an article and this was the only musicologist whose contact information was easy to find. I will be emailing him because I can not find his phone number. Dr. Viega has gotten back to me and is open to doing an interview. 

March 9th Journal Post

My essential question is how does music therapy help teenagers?

I have heard back from two out of the three people and I have set up interviews with both of them.  I have heard back from Dr. Viega and Ms. Sharon Wheeler. Dr. Viega's interview will be over zoom and Ms. Wheeler's interview will be over the phone. 

I am going to use the WeVideo podcast feature to edit and make my podcast.  My mentor podcast is going to be Music therapy and Beyond. It is a podcast by music therapists and they talk about all the things related to music therapy. Not only did I choose this podcast because of the topic, but I like the way it is set up.  The podcast starts and ends with music and there is no music while she is talking which makes it easy to understand her.  

SDA Reflection

I found the rubrics to be very helpful when making my questions for the interview and making my podcast. When planning my podcast, I would go through the rubric and make sure everything one it was in my podcast. I think that the timeline was reasonable for this assignment. I thought we had a little too much time, but that might just be because my interview was done 3 weeks in advance. I used this to my advantage and crafted a couple of new questions to ask my second interviewee to help make my podcast better. 

This assignment was really useful to help gather new information. I feel like this would have been a good assignment for the beginning of the year because I now have more unanswered questions that I would like to research. The most difficult part of the assignment was recording the interviews. One of my interviews was done over Zoom on a home computer and the other was done over the phone and recorded on another device. My Zoom interview was stuck on a computer and I had no way of transferring it, so I had to do all my editing on that computer. My over-the-phone interview was recorded on an iPad and refused to send through Gmail, so I had to find a new way to send it to my computer. The most rewarding part was having almost all of my podcasts done 1 week in advance. If I were to interview another professional in the field, I would try to ask more questions that relate to my previous months' research. The only topic I discussed from the previous month's research was the Mozart Effect.

Podcasting worked great for me for this assignment because when I interview people, I find it easiest to be done in audio/video form rather than note-taking or email. Therefore using a recorded interview made podcasting really easy for me. My limitations included not having the ability to send my interview from device to device as well as not being able to record an over-the-phone call. In the future, I would do another podcast because it was really fun and you can include their actual voice into your work which would help with making sure your work is 100% accurate. 

Over April Break I will be going to Michigan and Celebrating my Birthday!!

April 18th Journal Post

Tonight I would like to talk about the effect of music on teenagers and more specifically music education. Throughout the year, I researched classical music’s effect, instrumental music’s effect, and music therapy’s effect. I initially decided on this topic because I play the violin and over the years, I have heard things like “Aren’t violinists good at math” and “Does playing an instrument make you better at focusing?”. In January, some of my friends told me they were quitting their instrument next year because they have completed the minimum requirement to receive the credit needed to graduate. This made me wonder if something could be changed in elementary school to stop teenagers from quitting their instrument. I think that we should change the age at which musical instruments are introduced and the way these instruments are taught. 

May 2nd Journal Post

Hello. My Name is Kiran and this year I researched the Effect of Music on Teenagers. First I would like to say thanks to all of you for coming to watch me and everyone else present. I hope that you will learn something new tonight. Have you ever heard that listening to Mozart as a baby will make your kid smarter? Now I am sure that sounds stupid and you're probably like there is no way that is true. Well Yes, technically that is not true, however, listening to music and playing music has the potential to help you in so many ways. Tonight I would like to talk about the effect of music on teenagers, specifically music education. Throughout the year, I researched topics such as classical music, instrumental music, and music therapy. I initially decided on this topic because I play the violin and over the years, I have heard things like “Aren’t violinists good at math” and “Does playing an instrument make you better at focusing?”. In January, some of my friends told me they were quitting their instrument next year because they had completed the minimum requirement to receive the credit needed to graduate. This made me wonder if something could be changed in elementary school to stop teenagers from quitting their instrument. I think that we should change the age at which musical instruments are introduced and the way these instruments are taught. I also think that schools should use music in therapy like music therapy and make it more accessible. 

If we lower the age at which we teach musical notation (with simple keyboard lessons), we could help children when it comes time to learn a band/orchestra instrument. It can also be beneficial to children in many aspects.Right now in the Guilderland district, the first time students are introduced to music notation and a band or orchestra instrument is in fourth grade, so age of 9 or 10. However, studies have shown that music lessons and learning music notation at a younger age than 9 or 10 is beneficial. A study was conducted by Ruth Price-Mohr and Colin Price on 7-year-olds  who come from equivalent backgrounds with the intent to prove that learning to read music can help improve memory, literacy, and reading skills. The results showed improvement in the experimental group's literacy and memories. Both skills are necessary for other parts of a child's educational experience. Now in the study, children were taught piano on a digital keyboard using a color coding method to learn the notes instead of the conventional letter names. For example, the note name "F" would have been called "green". On the musical staff, they were still using the conventional letter spots. So "F" was still the first space from the bottom but colored in green. This method allowed the children to also learn chords by associating certain groups of colors with a certain chord. Also, instead of having conventional chord names like A major, they used descriptive chord names like "the stretched little finger chord". Later, they transitioned to conventional letter naming. This helped them to know where the notes were on the keyboard and the musical staff in two different clefs or music notation styles. So, if we start note reading sooner, we can help younger children, and this could potentially make instrument learning easier and overall a better experience for kids and teenagers. This could lead to fewer people quitting their instruments. I propose simple keyboard lessons like this to first graders or maybe even kindergarteners. They could also use a similar teaching style to the one in the experiment as it is very kid-friendlu. This would be a significant shift from the current age students are introduced to music notation but it will be a lot more beneficial for the future. 

 Now, why am I all about playing an instrument? Well, that is because playing an instrument could be beneficial to teenagers. Dr. Anita Collins says that "playing an instrument is like a full body workout for the brain" because when playing an instrument, many parts of the brain are active at once, especially the visual, auditory, and motor cortices. This makes sense because when playing an instrument, you are looking at the music (visual), listening to the sound you are making (auditory), and moving your hands (motor). The way things are processed in the brain is also very complex, which is why musicians are better at problem-solving. They also have higher levels of executive functioning, which involves planning, strategizing, and attention to detail. Musicians also have enhanced memory functions, which means they create, store, and retrieve memories more quickly and efficiently. We know that these benefits are specific to musicians because neuroscientists have stated that the aesthetic and artistic aspect of playing an instrument is different from any other activity. According to doctors at Penn Medicine, every part of the central nervous system is used when playing an instrument, which is true because when playing the violin, for example, you are doing different things with your left and right hand. Various studies have shown that with just a couple of months of musical training, there can be an enhancement in different parts of the brain. If you play an instrument in an orchestra, chances are most of the music you play is classical. Classical music is also great for teenagers, not just playing it but also listening to it. Classical music has been proven to help with spatial IQ. Listening to classical music while studying has the potential to help your memory through a process known as Targeted Memory Reactivation or TMR. TMR is when a memory is "reactivated" while sleeping using a stimulus, and in this case, the stimulus was classical music. TMR has the potential to help your memory.

Now going back to my thesis, it is the school's job to introduce music and provide music exposure to children and teens in various ways. Yes, instruments and chorus are great ways to provide that exposure, but music therapy is also a good way to provide music exposure to children and teenagers who may not have access to it at home. Music therapy is beneficial to teens in so many ways. I think that music therapy can be introduced in schools. I Interviewed two professionals in this field who helped me with all of my research on music therapy. They were Dr. Michael Viega and Ms. Sharon Wheeler.  Part of the reason music therapy is beneficial to teenagers is because music therapy is so diverse. Music therapy is the use of music intervention to accomplish medical or psychological goals. It is diverse because music therapy can be singing, songwriting, listening to music and so much more. Music therapy is a great resource for people who are unable to communicate with words. It has the potential to help teenagers open up and let professionals see how they are feeling. Music therapy can help a student with identity formation by learning new instruments, it can help with individualization, group belonging, and emotional regulation.  Music therapy also has “secondary benefits”. An example is if a nonverbal kid is receiving music therapy and they end up vocalizing, This is a secondary benefit of music therapy because it is helping that child’s speech.   

Schools should add more music education options for students. Not just in high school, but in elementary and middle school as well. They should offer a variety of different experiences from playing an instrument to music therapy. Once again, musical instruments at a younger age could help children in so many ways. Listening and playing music as a teenager can also be beneficial. Music therapy can help teenagers and even younger children developmentally in so many different ways.