PIE and LEAP

Our colleague, Chianan Yen, began his Blog with the idea of PIE (Platform as Instructional Environment). This is a very good idea. It catches the imagination, and I believed that I may have remarked to Chianan that I felt he was moving in the right direction.

But I am not sure about the word "instruction" since I think the term implies a direction for knowledge to flow...from the knower to those who don't know...from the content to the acquirer of content. But there is no question that the image of PIE can conjur up associations that are attractive and imaginative.

I thought of another acronym: LEAP (Learning Environment as Platform) and that also seemed attractive since the word leap suggests jumping rapidly to another level. It is interesting how such acronyms have emerged to add words with embedded meanings to our vocabulary.

I am interested in such ideas because they create concepts that seem to cluster around what I hope would be a deeper and more creative approach to developing knowledge through the creation of material and ideas that establish personal and global meanings. I am also seeking ideas that bring music and sound making into the concept, and so far these two examples (PIE & LEAP) apply to all of education. That is good in one sense, because teaching and learning music should be associated with the great domains and categories of Education. I thought of M-Audio, a corporation that is dominating music technology and modified LEAP to M-LEAP (Music Learning Environment As Platform), but I am still looking (and listening).

Cut Off At The Knees!

It had to happen. Once everyone has the power of free speech and the power to publish freely and at will, someone is bound to come along and put you in your place. As a colleague used to remark gleefully when he had exposed a weakness of a fellow colleague, "With that argument, I cut him off at the knees!" This was usually followed with a self-satisfied chuckle.

About ten days ago, I observed that I had been expecting a higher level of discourse from graduate students who are embarked upon their own personal journeys in music technology, music making, and music education. I got irate e-mail messages, face to face challenges, and comments to my posting that were at that time, an amazing leap into a higher level of inquiry and observation.

One student completely deconstructed my entry and demonstrated for all to see how terribly wrong I was, and how I had misrepresented (my word) the course when I said it could be whatever you wanted it to be. This student indicated that the course seemed to be about advanced blogging (Blogging 201?) Very effective. Involved. Intelligent. Passionate.

Another student made it clear that it wasn't the first time that the student had been asked to contribute to a group and that experiment failed, too (maybe just as this current project is also doomed?). Cut me off, right at the knees. Passionate. Informed. Courageously devastating.

So here I am, once again. Just another Blogger who is NOT blogging for the sake of blogging--- something I would not wish on any of my students or colleagues. What I am reading now, though, has more depth because it springs from the actual encounter of technology on a personal level which provides tremendous insight, and makes me wish I could do some of what is beginning to be described. Flautaphile provides an insightful and evocative entry in "trying to contribute." For someone who claims to be dispassionate about technology, the entry itself seems intense, accurate, and a stark reminder of the limits of technology.

For another thing, I really do not regard these "students" as my students. They are more like my teachers and mentors. I certainly appear to be learning more from them than they are from me, especially when I get cut off at the knees.

A New Era for Music Education Technology?

In responding to my initial Blog, Breugnon wrote:

I have set up my blogspot and am beginning to explore the world of blogging. I truly have no clue as to what it is yet, but I can recognize an amazing opportunity when I see it. As the quote so eloquently put it, the internet has created a new platform of education...not just music education, but education in general. The unlimited ability of the internet to access even the most remote geographic locations, connecting the isolated idea with the knowledge banks of this world is truly remarkable.

He points out that the new digital revolution extends beyond disciplines and conventional boundaries, challenging those of us in music to create a higher level of discourse. In setting up our news blog, I had hoped to find sites developing music education technology exploring ideas, issues, and techniques in ways that could be syndicated and reused in new and different settings, serving to inform our own encounters with implements of digital gear.

Two important sites that represent our "best efforts" are TI:ME (Technology Institute for Music Educators) and ATMI (Association for Technology in Music Instruction).

TI:ME is a not-for-profit corporation and requires you to become a member. There are some advantages to membership, including "certification" courses and workshops. It is supported by NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants, now named The International Music Products Association) and IAEKM (International Association of Electronic Keyboard Manufacturers). This marriage with the commercial arena of musical products may subtly shape TI:ME's agenda. TI:ME has articulated a mission of developing sophisticated users of such equipment who will be able to integrate this new technology into their teaching. Technology still exists as a product and a content that is to be delivered to the learner.

ATMI is more of an association of like minded practitioners who share a zest and interest in the use of technology for the instruction of music. Some parts of the website seem somewhat dated. The Squeak and Blat section has a copyright of 1996-2000. There is a strong search engine for articles, and you will find you can dig up interesting articles on CAI, which is just one among many categories dealing with music technology and music education. I couldn't help but think that so many of these articles would be timely, even now, if they were syndicated as Atom or RSS files. However, the site seems to stop growing un terms of new information just as the Internet was beginning to erupt with the creation of new content by countless individuals now empowered as web authors.

Bruegnon remarks on the miracle of "connection"---and I suspect that we are still in such a primitive stage in understanding how significant this connectivity is---for we still look to it as "ignorance" connecting with "knowledge". I suspect it will take a while to value the unique quality and contribution of each "connector." This requires a growing recognition of the unique qualities each of us can share. Wikipedia is an open source encyclopedia that be edited and contributed to by anyone. It is multilingual with more than 500,000 articles and growing. Many of the newer platforms like Flickr, Google, and Yahoo provide easy access and creation of new material, which can grow exponentially, archiving the created works as they grow over time. Each of these platforms explores connectivity in very original ways that may be helpful to understand in terms of music, musical growth, musical understanding, composition, improvisation, and performance.

Paradiddles and Paradigms

When I first started learning drumming, I was taught to play a paradiddle by breaking it down and playing it over and over and over and over. This was the procedure for most music learning at the time. Commit the piece to memory by playing it over and over and over, and over.

The only problem was that with such learning, we might "forget" the music and be so lost that we can only play the work by starting over from the beginning. Disaster.

I remember the breakthrough that occurred when a mentor helped me to "practice" away from the piano by conceptualizing the phrasing, the texture, and expressive destinations. I could actually "rehearse" the music in my mind, visualize my performance and hear within myself the music unfolding. Strategic elements of structure served to anchor this inner hearing and performance. This process involved me much more profoundly than playing passages over and over in almost robotic fashion.

In computer instruction, universities have been moving away from the practice of having people sit in front of computers to parrot steps through spoonfeeding. For one thing this practice slowed the pace of learning to the slowest learner and became a source of frustration for many in the class. For another, the focus was on small increments of a larger concept and the concept seldom emerged as the focus of learning. More importantly, such practice prevented the class from coming together as a community of learners, since the focus was shifted to each individual isolated in front of a computer screen.

Now there is more emphasis on the concept and the relationships of content. Applications have been designed with a certain aspect of game strategy where we can discover the next step of a procedure in several ways. There is always more than one path to completing most tasks in digital technology. We can probe menus intuitively, trying different applications, and we can also access tutorials that are clear and succinct, allowing students to move at their own pace.

Even "blogger.com" reflects this new paradigm. Notice that in setting up the account, you found your way through that process with sequential instructions that were simple and direct. Also notice that you could simply begin to blog. No special skills. Just fingers on the keyboard. Then hit "publish" and suddenly your authoring career has been launhed.

It wasn't until we needed to change the template that we had to bring our own previous html background into play. However, even if you did not have that background, blogger.com also contained a very clear tutorial on how to add links and how to change the template.

The goal is provide everything we need to accomplish a task, and to enhance and enlarge your capacity as you go along, thus enabling you to focus on the content and on the moment. The technology starts to recede as a transparent overlay. Try to imagine your creation of content as the focus of your learning. That is the new paradigm that continues to emerge as we engage this process.

Struggles Along the Way

So far, our Blogs have not gone very far (with one or two exceptions) in exploring the concepts of technology as applied to creating opportunities in making, teaching, and learning music. For one thing, as group we have no rhythm to our blogging, and there is virtually no evidence that we are reading each other's work. We are a small group, and it is relatively easy to visit all the blogs on a regular basis and to enter comments on each other's work. Of course, I would like to see this emerge as part of your own discovery process. For me, nothing is more deadly than requiring you to comment on at least three of your colleagues entries. All too often that is the value system that drives our activity: "Is this a requirement?"

So here I am, a participant with the rest of you in this blogging group. I have the same pressures on time, and the same doubts about what to blog about, and I find that few are really entering into the spirit of the process. Unless we are engaged as a group and as individuals, there is no chance that anything special will emerge from our quest.

If you think this is a class about Flash and Dreamweaver, then you are definitely missing the point. This is a class about process and engagement of ideas. Flash and Dreamweaver are implements of process, a means to an end. In a few years time, they will likely disappear and be replaced with new instruments of process, and if we have learned to see the changing technoscape, we will come to understand that it is not about "memorizing steps" as one of our colleagues has put it, but about discovering the concepts underlying a particular application.

It is somewhat similar to the idea of learning music by rote or by conceptualizing the content as phrase and musical ideas. Sitting with an instrument and playing the same thing over and over again has been shown to be counterproductive to developing musical understanding and expressive range. Musicians have a special opportunity to engage technology as creative expression. The processing of images and sound can draw upon our musical sensibilities of feelings and proportion. The authoring of websites can draw upon our musical sense of structure.

If you can imagine yourself doing something, you will be able to do it, because that is the process of bringing newness into the world. The exciting thing about music is that it is born out of the silence of the moment. As musicians we bring this music into being from the origins of its silence. The mind of imagination is the most potent force in the world. It is the source for creation of all that we experience.

The Changing Context of Our Inquiries

One of the most revealing experiences this week has been to discover the how blogs engaged in this exploration of technology as teaching and learning music appear in the context of the news group. I go to the newsgroup first now, and find our entries in the midst of extremely diverse and exciting observers at the intersection of technology and education. I've begun to notice that what surrounds each entry does shape the way I regard the entry and even plays a role in how I select something to pursue and explore.

The news feed has been set up to pull things in a focused randomness, but somewhat influenced by how recent the entries are and how many postings are available from a specific source. The more prolific the blogger, the more the algorithm seems to kick in to grab the ideas that are in constant state of continual disclosure. As time passes, certain items disappear from the new and new ones replace the older entries, so that the landscape gradually changes until it is again an entirely new episode.

One blogger noted that it seems important to establish a rhythm for blogging, which is probably true. At least that has been my experience. The rhythm generates ideas as the emptiness of the screen is waiting urgently for the text, for the images, for the music, for the ideas that will define our context. Our individual blogs also establish context. There we can begin to see certain themes and threads of connection with one's self and emerging ideas.

When these individual postings are "fed" to the news blog, suddenly the context provides a new meaning, making the original context even richer, while enabling one to read the work with new perspective. Not all content is equally "reusable." The image of feeding the news blog is apt, as news blogs are hungry, and news blogs feed on news blogs in a virtual feeding frenzy.

Noticing

Each of us is uniquely prepared to notice the world as no one else can. In our venture toward new parameters for blogging music and blogging musically, we need to notice our process as we move along our technological paths. One purpose of blogging is to draw our attention to what each of us notice and to comment on what our colleagues "notice". Noticing the world and how we make meaning in and of this world is a lifelong process. We are discovering that new technologies are emerging that help us share what we notice, and in the noticing we are transformed and we transform the world.

Some of that noticing will be in the focus of our blogs, and other noticings will be in the moment of musicing or teching or worlding our personal world. We are generating a platform for growth, development, and exchange.

Our noticing brings a new reality, a new content that exists in the world as you create the materials of expressive response to the moment. Education is ultimately a sensitive noticing, a bringing forth, and a sharing that inspires others to notice anew.

Discovering Really Simple Syndication

As I work with the implications of infiinite filaments connecting us in infinite ways, I am somewhat bewildered by the way digital technology melds the distinctions of text, images, videos, and sounds. Although my first efforts at syndication have focused on text, virtually anything can be syndicated (made available for reuse in a new setting) whether it be images, podcasts, or vodcasts.

So as we begin to follow the yellow brick road to the Digital Kingdom of Oz, I look for the tools that make such actions REALLY simple. Somehow, Google Reader, as nice and simple as it is, falls short of expectations. The best application I have found so far is FeedDigest, a straight forward web tool that helps you collect your site feeds and gives you simple code to paste in your template.

So now a weblog for scouring sources for news has been created. The paricipants of this music tech discovery experiment are the primary sources, and they may discover many new worlds before we are done. Web Musicing News and Views has been my first attempt at creating a page for syndicating our explorations and discoveries,

Making Music and Music Making

I remember hearing the word musicing (musicking, musiking) in the late 60s and 70s. At the time I thought of it as a Heideggarian twist, since Heidegger would transform nouns into verbs which often uncovered a more dynamic and deeper sense of the word. Thus world became "worlding" and how the world becomes is uncovered through this shift. Language can help us inquire into the essence of the worlds (worldings) around us, a tool for excavating our sense of reality and beingness.

Musicing becomes the essence of our process and my exploration of this was explored in two manuscripts. One was called Making Music, which I gave to a composer friend as a present. The other was titled Music Making, which I stopped writing when I was about 60% complete. Unfinished business, I suppose. Both were phenomenological explorations of process. Making Music was about the act (the action) of composing, and Music Making was about the act (action) of performing, bringing sound into being from the silence. Both intimately linked, and for me, musicing is the wholeness of that incredibly powerful process.

Perhaps one reason I never finished the second half was the manner in which the idea exploded and imploded all at once, and I found myself overwhelmed at the magnitude of the task, somewhat dwarfed by ambition to probe at the essence of my own working and understanding, and somewhat blinded (deafened?) by the perception that it seemed as though I were trying to count stars, to measure the immeasurable.

Yet, for me there is clearly an extraordinary difference between making music and music making, a difference that is continually expanding and defining itself from moment to moment. "Musicing" becomes a gift of reducing immensity to the simple presence of sound in time, the disclosure of eloquence because the music simply is---and this "is-ing" expresses our human activity of making the music become.