Iron Cue - It's All About The Jazz..

Post date: Feb 14, 2015 10:13:45 AM

When I saw that my "mystery" item was an IWB my first thought was 'I know I saw one in a storage room somewhere on campus but where? So the great hunt was on. This lead to a four day search for the IWB driving our new office manager crazy wanting keys to every storage room on campus. Finding lots of dust bunnies along the way. In one closet I found a dismantled Smartboard with no cables and thought well if that was my only hope I could fake it with that if need be. But the last place I checked behind some filing cabinets there it was the Smartboard I remembered seeing last summer when the techs were working on replacing some switches in that same room. With the help of a few students we moved it into the band room dusted it off and then I went in search of a second projector because my ceiling mounted projector would not work. But this was easier to find as I knew there was a spare one in the computer lab. A quick download of the Smart software (30 day trial) and I had the board up and running.

Friday morning at 6:45 am as the jazz band started rolling in students were curious as to why we had a SMART Board where my conductors podium for concert band in normally located. I said they would find out after warm-ups. So class started as usual, then listened to St. Thomas by Sonny Rollins. When it came time to look at the solo changes we talked about common notes in all the changes and how you can synthesize the changes into these common notes to make playing a solo easier when you first start soloing in jazz. The IWB was used to write out the common notes for each different range of instrument (B flat, E flat, C). Then students read these from the IWB when they tried a course of solo on St. Thomas. The level of success was much higher due to the limiting to a few notes instead of reading all the changes. We saved the students work and printed out at the end of class so they can work on refining their solos.

One of the benefits of using the IWB is we have a sheet created in a short amount of time in class for everyone all on one page that everyone can take home and continue working on. It has been a long time since I have used an IWB and we did have some learning curve issues of students putting their arm on the board and that leaving a mark and having to erase that before continuing on but once student got the hang of using the markers it went pretty well. If I decide I want to keep the IWB and use it more I do think I would like to have it mounted on the wall as free standing it takes to much room. I have several very large classes and space is at a premium in my classroom.

As evidence by my trombone player that you will see dancing in the video my students had a good time with this and they learned something new so the three days it took me to find the IWB was worth the hunt.