Reflection 1.
Twitter Graphic
This week was a big one for me. I made a twitter account, and I had to wonder what kept me from making one all these years. It had to be fear. I wonder where it came from because I recognized it when I had to introduce myself to the #eme6414 course. How different everyone’s experiences where from mine, quickly recognizing that many of my classmates are older professionals seeking degrees in the Instructional Systems and Learning Technology program? What might a musicologist have to offer in this learning community? I signed up for this course with some imagination of how what I am to learn in this setting will forever change me-igniting some spark within me to be more confident in my intellect, more productive in online scholarly pursuits and networks, more disciplined in writing out my thoughts.
Interestingly, the week prior I committed myself to turning a paper presentation I wrote for an online final assignment into a video essay. I couldn’t get the audio and video to play properly for my examples and it vexed me. Normally I would have let it go, but I couldn’t. I hated that my intention couldn’t be experienced as I designed it to be. Like a lesson plan falling apart in execution, I was forced back to the drawing board resolving to use iMovie to re-record my ideas. Then I signed on to the canvas site #eme6414, feeling overwhelmed with the details of introducing myself. Again poised with the question of how to make my work seem interesting, appealing, enticing to those unfamiliar music or sonic worlds of Pharrell Williams. I shared some videos and pictures of what I missed the most since the start of the pandemic. I wrote up a description of what I liked to do, what I plan to do in the future. Click save and Submit.
Then came that nagging feeling. Did someone like and comment? Would anyone be impressed? Would I seem like an outsider, rambling on and on about the “lesser” sciences, musical humanities? Take two hours. Rest. Then check for a response. Radio silence. I noticed the looming disappointment I felt knowing others in the class didn’t see my post. Maybe they just weren’t interested in what I had to say. Where were these emotions flooding from? I often do a similar exercise with my students asking them to write a musical autobiography where they reveal a bit of their selves and experiences to me and the graders. This is all worth points of course, I find that some students work hard at performing their musical intellect, their love for certain artists and genres for me. While others shy away at the overwhelming nature of considering sound and music as more than entertainment for the first time. Building community is important for class instruction, as is managing the emotions of students and instructors. My goal is to use Web 2.0 based course material to affect the human dimension, with its all powerful potential in the learning process to “transform the world at large”. And with all my lofty pursuits not once did I think about the emotional dynamics of revealing oneself to a web space of strangers, the performance in creating online communities.
One of the course objectives is to “Discuss how Web 2.0 technologies change the role of the instructional designer and performance technologist.” I like the sound of the words “performance technologist” and imagine how they might fit on me and the work I do. Technically, as a musician-historian I analyze performances of musicians and their musicality in various historical contexts. Considering how often online spaces provides media for me to explain socio-musical phenomena in the classroom, to act as a performance technologist takes on a whole new meaning for me. As an instructor of record designing my own course, I didn’t think much of adding Music Videos, reviews music tech, and pop culture podcasts to the weekly readings.
Billie Eilish “Ocean Eyes” Music video: An example of the music videos we analyze in my courses.
Youtuber iJustine unboxes and reviews a 2005 iPod Shuffle: A Case study into modern music and technology
It was instinctual. And those forms of online media did change the way students reflected on the thematic concepts of genre and location, identity and music, and sound and technology. But does being a both an instructional designer and performance technologist mean simply including media from Web 2.0 in course schedule? I think the options are limitless and I know I want to explore them, but I’ve been afraid to do more than repost links. My goal for this course is for my work as a researcher to collapse into the forms of media and technology which transform learning experiences beyond the four walls of a classroom. I hope in the coming weeks I can catalogue the experience of getting my feet wet in the world inter webs as a professional musicologist, an educator, and performance technologist.
