in the beginning

7/23/2023

Let's learn to play the.... ukulele!!! 

I am very excited about this endeavor! Learning an instrument is hard work, so I plan to take this journey step by step. Throughout this process, I will be documenting my progress and relating my learning to the course concepts present in CEP 810. As discussed in my unit 3 blog post, TPACK is used by teachers to incorporate technology into the learning space (Mishra, 2006). I will be putting technology’s teaching ability to the test during this process as I am only going to use online resources to learn the ukulele. I will also consider Bransford, Brown, and Cocking's findings on learning and understanding (please visit their article How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school  (2000) or my unit 2 blog post for more information). I do not simply want to learn a song, but my goal is to understand the ukulele fully, chords and all. 

To begin, I needed to pick out the ukulele that was best for me. I used the Ukulele Tricks website to research different ukuleles. I discovered that smaller ones are better for beginners (McQueen, 2023). I was still having trouble deciding between the soprano and concert style, so I watched this video by Terry Carter for assistance. It helped me determine that I liked the concert style more, so I purchased a ukulele from Amazon.  

Now that my ukulele has arrived, I begun learning the chords using the Kala mobile app. Their chord system is very simple to follow because I can learn 1 at a time. However, I did not like the tuner on their app so I have also downloaded the GuitarTuna app. With those two apps, and everything available on Youtube, I am ready to begin my journey! The song I am attempting to learn is from the Pixar short Lava (Murphy, 2014). I found a video by Andy Ramos (found below) that has been immensely helpful because it displays the chords as the music plays. Thinking back to my goal above, this helps me understand exactly what I am doing so I may replicate it in the future.