Music Teaching Via Polycom Demonstration

Here is a short demonstration of video conferencing assisted distance learning I did at Memorial University on Nov. 29th. The audience is made up of intermediate and high school
student teachers in their final year of study. This demonstration is one part of a large presentation on the work of the Centre for Distance Learning and Innovations (CDLI).

Feel free to sing along :)



Andrew

Teaching Guitar Class Via the Internet

In Sept, 2007 CDLI began offering Applied Music (guitar) to students throughout NL. This is a new course for CDLI and as far as I know, this is the first k-12 course of its kind.

To deliver this course we use several pieces of communication technology: Elluminate Live, Desire2Learn, and Polycom video conferencing. The combination of these technologies allow me to create a learning experience for my students that built on each student's own unique learning style.

In today's class I was working with an individual guitar student in Labrador using the Polycom video conferencing system. He is an intermediate level player with a couple of years experience. Through our discussions he has identified scales and picking as an area in which he would like to focus. Today I played him a blues scale in E and showed him how to play it himself. I asked him to explore the scale by improvising around on it. He realized that no matter what order he played the notes, it all sounded great. I then played a 12-bar blues chord progression and asked him to jam along with me using the blues scale. He rocked.

I asked him what he thought of the process. "Wicked" was all he could say.

I then sent him the tab for the blues scale and asked him to continue practicing it. I then recorded myself playing the 12-bar blues with Audacity and sent him the MP3. His assignment is to use Audacity to record himself improvising on the blues scale along with me on the 12-bar blues. He then needs to send me back the new MP3 for my files.

Andrew