Revolution comes in many forms. In case you hadn’t noticed, we are in the middle of a technological revolution. Like it, dislike it, ignore it, embrace it… it doesn’t matter.  Technology’s march will take its own paths, and the new movers and shakers are those who manage it best. …And they know it, don’t they? The rest of us develop a variety of techniques for managing the constant parade of technological strata, often deciding that it is in our interest to learn, adapt, and change. We have no choice. It has become part of the fundamental fabric of the world we live in today – especially the educational world.

I was an encyclopedia salesman when I was 18 – door to door. I was pretty good at it, too. The job paid my way through my sophomore year in college. I often wonder about those who remained with the encyclopedia company. Are they WIKI programmers today? Are they unemployed? What was it like to be a participant in the decline of a cultural icon such as the encyclopedia? (Jiminy Cricket always comes to mind when I type e-n-c-y-c-l-o-p-e-d-i-a. Yet more evidence for the power of early childhood music.)  (:

Today’s Question…

No more dragging my feet. Here’s the question… Can online teacher preparation methods produce a fully competent early childhood music and movement teacher? Actually?... I have been teaching teachers to teach for over 15 years, now, and I know of no curricular model that can receive the credit for producing a competent teacher. But I am taking issue with the word produce, and not with any particular type of teacher education. I believe that our colleges and universities are doing a better job than ever in their teacher preparation efforts, with more improvements sure to come during the current decade. ... and online education is increasing as a part of the landscape every year.

Still, if we have learned anything in the past 30 years, it is that Gilbert Highet was right. (Nicholas Stix recently wrote a nice commentary about this.) Teaching is an art, and great music/movement teachers not only have mastery of the music and movement parts, but also, they have mastery of the separate art of teaching. As an art, teaching can be caught best – not taught best, and a personal aptitude for the art of teaching is the most important component in the entire music teacher education process.

Making Music Teachers?

This semester, I am teaching four different methods courses: Instrumental Foundations, Brass Methods, Early Childhood Music and Movement, and Middle Childhood Music and Movement. The students in three of these courses had already read the textbooks in each course's online sister course before the semester began, so the classes become daily labs in which the pre-service teachers can practice their teaching skills on one another. (They also practice on real people at our college's Kiddie Kampus twice each week. Many continue for an additional year, and receive ECMMA Level 1 Certification for their efforts.)

The Aptitude Component

One aspect of this that has always amazed me is the same thing that amazed me when I first saw each of our three children at their births. Their basic personalities were already in place at birth – personalities that my wife and I now know well after 30+ years. Such is also the case with the students in my methods classes. While I feel that I have much to teach them – specific methods, content, developmental concepts – the most important component that each pre-service teacher brings to class every day is themselves.

And I don’t merely mean you have to be present to learn. I mean that every time a teacher takes his/her turn in front of the class, natural teacher juices are either present or they are not. For those lacking natural teaching aptitudes, I try to focus on fundamentals that will help them to succeed when they land in the classroom. But for those who we as teacher educators recognize as having it, the it that they have cannot be taught, bought, or effectively copied – although we all keep trying. These gifted teachers often become the clinicians, professors, and/or curriculum developers.

The Technological Revolution Meets Teacher Education

Few would disagree that a host of technological innovations are helping us as teacher educators. I spend a great amount of time developing blended classrooms – meaning that I offer what I feel I can do best in person in the classroom, but that other important aspects of student learning (testing, advanced forums, research) can more efficiently take place online between class periods.

Online learning is here to stay, but how deep should we go? Dr. Maury Klein speaks of it this way:

Technology is value neutral. It is neither good nor evil. It does whatever somebody wants it to do. The value that is attached to any given piece of technology depends on who is using it and evaluating it, and what they do with it. The same technology can do vast good or vast harm. It develops and proceeds by a process of accretion. An inventor brings something into the world; once that something is there, whole hosts of other inventors look at it and try to figure out how to improve it or how to make it do other things.¹

Enhanced or Replacement Technology?

As he stated in his article, the question about technology is seldom whether, but rather, how, why, who, and when. He goes on to clarify the distinction between enhanced and replacement technology – a fact that is particularly helpful for this conversation.

Technology in broad terms has two forms: enhanced and replacement. Enhanced technology is something that improves an existing invention, making it better, faster, or producing more of it. By contrast replacement technology is one in which one technology literally replaces another, using entirely different principles, and renders the first one obsolete. Often this process causes all kinds of economic chaos.²

…But Online Teaching Clinics?

Yesterday I received an invitation from our Academic Dean to attend a demonstration of Synchronous Delivery. The concept is that we will be inviting distant learners into our classroom. We were encouraged to come with an open mind. I actually welcome this opportunity because I have heard about exciting possibilities for allowing students from anyplace there is a computer to be present in my classrooms. Better yet, perhaps, I will be able to bring real classrooms to people around the world. I may be able to bring great classroom teaching from the elementary or early childhood clasroom right into my own methods classes in real time.

At first glance, it would seem that I might have to take great care when discussing this issue, because so many important people and movements are affected by the outcome. In reality, I know that curriculum providers are already determining the legitimacy of online learning for their own teacher preparation and support efforts. Some have decided yea, and some have decided nay, and some are still, understandably, undecided. We will watch this play out over the next few years

Conversation with Mary Ellen

Meanwhile, in the interest of knowing, I have invited Mary Ellen Pinzino, to share some time with us in this forum. Mary Ellen has developed a unique approach to providing her music curriculum. A central feature is that her teachers receive skill development and support online from Mary Ellen as they teach. At first glance, it seems to me that this might be the answer for, for example, a parent in a remote area with no access to early childhood music for her children. I am sure that Mary Ellen will have her own take on this. Meanwhile, I will focus on the technology, and let you decide if, or where, it might belong in your own life.

As the old G.I. Joe character says… Knowing is half the battle.

Stay tuned. The conversation is about to begin…

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1} http://www.fpri.org/footnotes/1318.200807.klein.techrevolution.html

² ibid.

Maury Klein is Professor Emeritus of History, University of Rhode Island. His books include The Power Makers (2008), a history of steam and electric revolutions, and Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War (1999). This essay is based on his presentation at the FPRI Wachman Center’s May 17-18, 2008 history institute on America in the Civil War Era, held at and co-sponsored by Carthage College, Wisconsin; videocasts and texts of lectures are available. Core history institute support is provided by The Annenberg Foundation; additional support for specific programs is provided by W.W. Keen Butcher, Bruce H. Hooper, John M. Templeton, Jr., the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The next history weekends are What Students Need to Know About America´s Wars, Part I: 1622-1919, July 26-27, 2008 (Wheaton, IL); and Teaching the History of Innovation, October 18-19 (Kansas City, MO).