While on a Skype Call with my dynamic and enthusiastic co-editor Andy Ritenour, I noticed that today is a very special day in MusicEdMajor.net’s life. Today marks MusiscEdMajor.net’s first birthday! That’s right, it was one year ago today that I launched the site and welcomed everyone with the first post. Back then, I was scrambling to get things in order for my live-blog of MENC’s Music Education Week. Now? Well, things aren’t much different now, and we’re still getting ready to cover Music Ed Week (stay tuned for more info soon!). Over the course of the year, however, we’ve had some great milestones:
Happy Birthday!
MusicEdNews.com Launches
I am thrilled to announce the launch of MusicEdNews.com, a project of myself and Dr. Joe Pisano!
MusicEdNews.com is set to serve as your one-stop shop for all things music education-related. It will act as an aggregator for over 30 different RSS Feeds from blogs, websites, and podcasts related to Music Education. In short, if it’s about music ed, and it’s on the web, you can find it at MusicEdNews.com! In this day and age, music educators of all types have started creating content online. With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies and RSS, this information is now easier than ever to consume. However, this doesn’t mean we should be satisfied with using basic RSS Feed Readers to consume our information. MusicEdNews.com aims to make the consumption of information even easier by aggregating the top feeds in one place.
In addition to the website, which offers a streamlined and categorized way to view the most recent feed updates, we have created a twitter account (@MusicEdNews) which will tweet updates from each of the feeds that MusicEdNews.com follows. If twitter is your primary means for information-consumption, and you’re a music educator (or aspiring educator), then @MusicEdNews is definitely an account you should follow!
The website launched Wednesday night, and will be on a constant state of flux for the next few weeks as Dr. Pisano and I make changes. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please feel free to contact us. In the meantime, give MusicEdNews.com a look!
MusicEdMajor.net Welcomes a New Editor
It’s my pleasure to announce that MusicEdMajor.net now has a new co-editor! Please welcome Andy Ritenour, Music Education student at Grove City College in Grove City, PA. Andy comes to us as a student of Dr. Joseph Pisano, who was instrumental in getting me blogging to begin with. Andy is in Dr. Pisano’s Music Technology class, and has participated in the past few weeks’ #MusEdChat discussions. He also has just started a blog, Future Music Educators.
Andy is a Sophomore at GCC, and is extremely involved in ensembles, playing in two brass quintets, two concert bands, a symphony orchestra, and a touring choir. He also serves as a member of (and the librarian for) the Grove City College Wolverine Marching Band. Andy’s primary instruments are Tuba and Euphonium, and he also works as a marching and brass instructor for the Somerset Area High School Marching Band.
I am extremely excited to have Andy on the MusicEdMajor.net staff! Although referring to the two of us at the same time may be confusing (Andy and Andy…?), he brings a fresh set of ideas to the site, as well as a clear writing style and a passion for what he does. Be on the lookout for regular posts by both Andy’s right here at MusicEdMajor.net!
You can contact Andy Ritenour by email at andyr@musicedmajor.net, or on Twitter at @andrewritneour
New Music Ed Major Facebook Community
This website was started in an effort to create a community of Music Education Majors (and current teachers) to discuss important topics in the field. While commenting on formal “posts” here on the site is one way to do this, I have come to realize that a better avenue for more frequent conversation is a website that is much more frequently visited than this, and that already has a large number of Music Education Majors as registered users. That website, of course, is Facebook. I came to this realization after coming across a Facebook community for Band Directors, thanks to a tweet from Thomas J. West (@thomasjwest). The page has over 3,700 “fans,” and discussions occur frequently and on a wide variety of topics.
Because most college students (myself included) practically live on Facebook, and as a result of the success of the Band Director page, I have decided to start a Music Education Major page on Facebook! On this page, you can meet other Music Education Majors, as well as discuss topics that are pertinent to the field, but may not be worth a full-length post here on this site.
Don’t get me wrong, I still plan on posting here frequently (at least more frequently than I have already). The Facebook page will be more for connecting with other students, and discussing more specific questions. If you have any suggestions for topics you’d like to see discussed on the page, please feel free to contact me at any time!
If you’re a Music Education Major, or already have your degree in Music Ed, I would encourage you to “become a fan” of the page, and to suggest the page to any other possibly-interested friends you may have!
MusTech.Net Lists Must-Have Freebies
Dr. Joe Pisano, the man behind MusTech.net, has put up a fantastic resource that was just too helpful to pass up sharing with everyone here. He has compiled a list of the top downloadable “freebies” for music teachers. These programs range in type from audio editing to ear training to metronomes, and the list includes programs that run on each of the three major operating systems (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux). While the post is billed as being a list for music teachers, I found that many of the programs that are mentioned have been extremely helpful to me as a music student as well. With tuition being the way it is nowadays, too, we can always use more free resources!
Check out Dr. Pisano’s post, “Music Teachers -Must Have Downloadable Freebies For The New School Year,” today at MusTech.net. Be sure to check out some of his other great posts too, including his creation of a netvibes page for Music Education bloggers/podcasters (which MusicEdMajor.net is featured on), and his list of the top music pedagogues to follow on Twitter!
MusicEdMajor.net Featured on MusTech.net Netvibes Page
First off, please allow me to apologize for the lull in activity here on MusicEdMajor.net. I have been, as many of you also may be, extremely busy with the excitement of band camps! I am staffing one camp this summer, which is currently halfway over, and am also preparing for my own band camp at the University of Miami, which begins in just under a week. I do have a few posts planned, and expect to have them up over the course of the next week or so. Stay tuned for more!
I do, however, have an exciting piece of news to share! Dr. Joseph Pisano, creator of MusTech.net, has published a Netvibes page which he calls the “Current Music Education Beat!” Netvibes is a service that allows users to create accounts and aggregate the latest posts from multiple RSS feeds onto one page for viewing. Dr. Pisano has put together 12 of the most frequently updated blogs in the field of Music Education, and I am proud to announce that MusicEdMajor.net has been chosen on this list!
Here are the 12 blogs and bloggers that have been placed on the Netvibes page (list courtesy of J. Pisano at MusTech.net):
- Phil Kirkman
- MusTech.Net (Joseph Pisano)
- Amy M. Burns
- Espie Estrella (About.com)
- The Collaborative Piano Blog (Chris Foley)
- Music Ed Lounge
- Be a Techie (Carol Broos)
- Travis Weller
- Music is not for Insects
- Double Bass Blog (Jason Heath)
- James Frankel
- MusicEdMajor.net (Andy Zweibel)
I have had correspondence with about half of the bloggers on this list, and subscribe to almost all of them in my Google Reader. I would highly recommend you check out not only Dr. Pisano’s Netvibes Page, but also his blog at MusTech.net. He is truly one of the top authorities on Technology in Music Education, not to mention the person who motivated me to take my blogging onto a more professional level with his 100 ME Bloggers campaign in 2008.
Additionally, Dr. Pisano has aggregated his top 7 Music Education Podcasts, which are all fantastic resources as well. The list of featured podcasters is as follows:
- Dr. Frankel’s Podcast Page
- Music, Education, & Technology Podcasts from MusTech.Net!
- Music Tech For Me
- Naxos Classical Music Spotlight Podcast
- Music Teachers 911
- What Music Means To Me
- Music and Technically Speaking
I also subscribe to many of these podcasts, and can attest to the high quality of the content. A special thanks, again, to Dr. Pisano for featuring MusicEdMajor.net on his Netvibes page! Be sure to stay updated with MusicEdMajor.net by subscribing to our feed!