Thursday, May 30, 2013

Dropbox for the Music Teacher



I have fallen in love with Dropbox!

I was first introduced to Dropbox by a colleague. She recorded herself singing some songs for our district honor choir for the students to use when practicing. She shared the audio files with me via Dropbox.

I have also used Dropbox to store sheet music. I scanned the music for the All-State Children's Chorus and uploaded it to my Dropbox so that I would be able to study the scores at home on my iPad, even if I forgot the sheet music on the piano stand at school. Likewise, it prevented me from leaving the sheet music at home and not being able to rehearse with it at school. In fact, at All-State Children's Chorus, my student forgot her music in the car, which was parked 4 blocks away in a parking garage. I gave her my iPad and she was able to view the sheet music via Dropbox!

The biggest use for Dropbox has been with my preparation of my National Board Portfolio. When I began the analysis of my videos, I first set up two laptops on the kitchen table. One would be used to play video footage while I typed on the other. At some point, I had an epiphany and uploaded my videos to Dropbox. I was able to view them on the iPad and type on my laptop. I also uploaded all the instruction manuals (which were organized in a 2.5 inch binder). With Dropbox, my iPad replaced a laptop and a huge binder. It was much easer to move my things upstairs and downstairs when needed.

I was also able to share files with my sister so she could proofread them. When you open Dropbox on your computer, you can drag and drop files into the folder as you would into any other folder. It is very easy!

If you have not tried Dropbox, you should check it out!

Hello, again

Hello again! I apologize for the absence of my posts. Here is an update on what I have been doing the last five months:

In January, I began working on my National Boards Portfolio and had very little time to plan my lessons and capture them on video. Not only was the portfolio deadline quickly approaching, my belly was growing as well! On March 29th, I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy!
My maternity leave allowed me to take off the rest of the year. I worried little about my students because I had a retired music teacher filling in for me. I knew they were in great hands. It took me about a month to get out of the newborn coma and for the entire month of May, I've been using every spare moment to complete my portfolio entries. Today, I finally submitted my portfolio to be scored! I still have to take a computer-based test toward the end of June, but the biggest work is behind me! The results will be announced in December. I will keep you posted.

Now, I plan to get back into the swing of things and share some more posts. Here are some ideas for my first posts. Leave a comment to let me know what you would like to read about first.

1) Designing Interactive Flipcharts for Interactive Whiteboards
2) Click Clack Moo
3) Crazy Eights
4) Rap a Tap Tap
5) Farkle McBride
6) Arts & Humanities Program Reviews (Kentucky Accountability System)