Ashley's+Article+Review

Link to the Article:

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Article Citation and Summary: (can also be found in the lesson plan on my homepage.)

Sichivitsa, Veronica. "Audacity in Vocal Improvisation." Teaching Music 14.4 (2007): 48-51. EBSCOhost. Web. 10 Dec. 2012.

This article focuses on motivation of your students through technology. It discusses the problem of students feeling nervous and reluctant to improvise in front of peers, and talks about the shyness of students in music classes and how this can pose problems for the music teacher. The article then goes on to make the point that students nowadays are so accustomed to using technology that this may be the key to get them to improvise in the music classroom. The article then gives a detailed description of the Audacity software and how to use it, where to download it, etc. It then gives a sample mini-lesson which exemplifies how Audacity can be used to allow students greater ease in improvisation. The implications for arts education are huge, as everyday arts education is becoming more and more reliant on technology. Improvisation is something that many music teachers struggle with due to students shyness and unwillingness to participate, if technology can help with that, it would create entirely new realms of possibility in the music classroom.

Article Review:

I think that this article is a great resource for the tech savvy person, or maybe someone who has already integrated technology into their classroom. Or someone who is very comfortable with technology to make that transition easier on students. The article gave completely thorough explanations on how the students would be using the Audacity software, but not yourself. It would take some guessing and trial and error for me personally before I would be comfortable using this program. However, the points made in the article about students being unwilling to improvise openly hold true, and I do believe that this article makes a good case for Audacity being a possible first step to more open performers in the classroom.

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