How can technology be used most effectively to support and assess student learning?

The subject of my project is "How does music reflect society?". When I originally began to work I intended on focusing on music's reflection of the Civil Rights movement. As I continued research and gathering of resources, I realized that there was enough information available to broaden the possibilities of topics to almost any major historical event where conflict, war or injustice was involved. I then decided to alter my project goals to include these possibilities giving the student the opportunity to have more personal input in their assignment and the freedom to shape it's direction.

I chose to focus my student sample on music and the Vietnam War. At first I thought I would find mostly music that protested the war, however as my research progressed I found that there were many examples of songs that both supported and protested the war. I also found that many song topics explored many other aspects of the war. There were examples of what roles, jobs, expectations, feelings, hopes, dreams, patriotism, honor and pride.

In building my student sample, I found that technology can be used effectively through the different modes of presentation that are available. I found that my project could also be a model for the Audio Visual class that I have been teaching. It would be possible to present this project in almost any medium available, IMovie, Pages, Keynote, PowerPoint, as web page and all could have blogging incorporated as well. For my project I chose to use Pages because I had never used this before. I quickly learned that there were many advantages to using this software and the ease of setting up something that was visually striking. However, I did learn that there were limitations that left me in a position of not being able to offer actual musical examples, (as suggested by two colleagues). I then learned that I could move the entire project into IWeb or to set the project up as a Google page, which brought the entire project to a new level visually, but also its accessibility to others on the web. This of course expanded the possibilties for student use and accessibilty. I feel that I will be able to guide students into more exciting directions and options for their work.

The creation of my student sample helped to ensure that students could find nessesary information to complete a project within a reasonable time frame while having the choice of using a variety of technological mediums to produce a project. Designing the project also helped me to frame the project as possible use in my History of rock and roll class, but also gave me many new ideas for students in my Audio Visual classes.

Student learning can be ensured through the available information on the topic of music as a reflection of a significant historical event. Student interest can be encouraged through the variety of available technology to produce and build a project, and also the many ways students can save work through bookmarking sites. external storage, e-mail and server storage. Students also have the ability to interact with each other, the instructor and other resources (both human and electronic) throughout the world. I can also ensure learning through benchmarks, rubrics and by providing example sof past work. There are also many resources available as websites, dissertations and available information from protest composers.