to a corner of the room, sing their assessment, and click the check mark. It will not upload to their portfolio until you approve it. You have access to their portfolios. Therefore, you can approve and disapprove items, leave comments on items, and share items with parents. If you are in a classroom with one device, then you can record them individually or set up a station where they record themselves. Finally, these portfo- lios follow the students throughout their school years. Therefore, you can share their musical assessments, along with their music creations, compositions, performances, etc, with their next music teacher. Please contact me if you would like to learn more about this as I did a free PD NJMEA webinar on this for elementary music educators in NJ.
SMART Technologies: Using smart devices instead of the previous clicker system Years ago, SMART Technologies had a clicker system where an educator would create assessments in the SMART Notebook software, launch the SMART Response system, and have the students answer the assessment questions using clickers that were devices that looked like remote controls. Currently, those clickers no longer work with their newest SMART Response 2 system (
https://education.smarttech.com/ en/products/smart-learning-suite/smart-response-2/smart-response-2-faqs), unless you run Notebook version 16.1 or earlier. When devices such as iPads, Chromebooks, and tablets became more prominent in the school system, SMART updated this application to the SMART Lab. The lab is accessible through the Notebook software. It includes more features than the clicker system and can support around 100 student devices, depending on the school network. It allows lesson sharing and immediate feedback. If you have a SMART Board in your room and you use the Notebook software, definitely check their website at
education.smarttech.com.
What about using technology with a certain approach? There are excellent approaches and curriculum to teaching elementary general music: Dalcroze, Feierabend, Gameplan, Gordon, In-
teractive Music Powered by Silver-Burdett, Kodály, McGraw Hill Music Studio, MusicPlay, Orff-Schulwerk, Purposeful Pathways, Quaver’s Marvelous World of Music and so many more. Most of these approaches and curriculum lend themselves to technology-assisted instruction as the technology is built into the product. However, if your technology is limited and you are utilizing one or more of these approaches, then technology can be a great assessment tool to enhance your vocal assessments, performance assessments, recorder tests for belts, concert evalu- ations, and more. Technology can also assist your students in finding fingering charts for instruments, chord charts for ukuleles, information for research projects, etc.
Assessments in the elementary general music
classroom are a great way for the educator to make sure that the students comprehend what they are teaching. In many schools, teachers are required to show their assessments to an administrator. How- ever, for many music educators, assessments give us the feedback on what is working in the class- room and what is not. It assists us with improv- ing how and what we teach to our music students. Technology is one way to assist with assessing nu- merous students because when we teach elementa- ry general music, we are usually assessing numbers in the three-digits (100+ students) daily. I hope that some of the ideas listed above will assist you with assessing your elementary music students.
Amy M. Burns (
aburns@fhcds.org) has taught
PreK-grade 4 general music for 20 years at Far Hills Country Day School. She has authored 3 books on how to integrate tech into the elementary music class- room. She has presented many sessions on the topic, including 2 keynote addresses in TX and AU. She is the recipient of the TI:ME Teacher of the Year, NJ Master Music Teacher and Governor’s Leader in Arts Education Awards.
& TEMPO TRADITION AND Innovation Since 1846 BACHELOR OF ARTS WITH
CONCENTRATIONS IN: • Contemporary Composition • Cultural and Critical Studies • Performance
BACHELOR OF MUSIC IN: • Music Education • Vocal Performance
Opportunities for interdisciplinary studies.
Learn about ARTS merit scholarships in music at:
bucknell.edu/ArtsMeritScholarships
BucknellUniversityDepartmentOfMusic 38
@BucknellMusic
bucknell.edu/music MARCH 2017
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