Disqus - Latest Comments for buffy

Re: Music Performance and Music Education - Can I perform and teach?

buffy — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 09:25:08 -0000

After I moved to a new community and switched to teaching elementary band a year and a half ago I found myself really depressed at times because I so missed being able to work with higher level music. In the midst of this funk, I was invited to play trumpet (not my major instrument) in a local wind band called the Central Iowa Wind Ensemble. It was made up of other music educators and community members and directed by a band director at a local private college. Playing in that group made a world of difference for me. It cheered me up immensely even with just the short two hour rehearsal each week. It also had the side benefit of giving me more "prestige" with my students. I put up our concert posters in the band room to let them realize that their old teacher really did practice what he preached.

I highly suggest that every music teacher find a way to participate and refresh their memories on just how fulfilling it can be to play in a professional caliber ensemble.

Re: RSS Scraping, Scavenging, Stealing, And Content Theft…Get Thee Behind Me!

buffy — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:33:19 -0000

Joe,

I feel your pain. I ran into this a couple of months ago (http://www.musicedmagic.com/tales-from-the-podi...) and did my best to stamp it out. I really didn't get very far but my complaints did get heard by at least one of the plagiarist's ISP's resulting in his account being cancelled. These days I use Copyscape once in a while to check on things.

There is also an article at Blogherald (http://www.blogherald.com/2007/05/28/how-to-sto...) on how to help stop it as well.

Re: Why not distance learning at community colleges?

buffy — Sat, 31 May 2008 23:38:24 -0000

Distance education is great for some people, but lousy for others. I took roughly half of my M.A. degree via online classes using a program called WebCT and while I got a lot out of the class I honestly don't think I learned as much as I would have if I had been physically in the classroom. However, you make a very good point that with economic changes (fuel costs, etc.) going crazy it may soon be more economically feasible for a person to stay at home and cyber-commute to class every day.

If I was going to take an online class again though I would probably prefer to do something like what Harvard and a few other schools are doing teaching classes in Second Life:
http://www.musicedmagic.com/tales-from-the-podi...

At least then a person has some sense of community. Hmm, maybe I should try to teach a class in World of Warcraft. :)

Re: A (Partial) Timeline of Music Education Blogging

buffy — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:40:22 -0000

Joel,

Thanks for putting in the work to put together this list!

Since you have my site down as Unknown I will clarify things a bit. MusicEdMagic actually started on July 26th of 2005 but with a different domain name. My first article (Group Discipline While Traveling) is still up there at the address: http://www.musicedmagic.com/educational-travel/...

I didn't start calling my blog Tales From The Podium until much later. Sorry for the confusion. :)