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 I spent the last several days attending the 2008 Music Educators National Conference (MENC) conference in Milwaukee. I had been looking forward to the trip for several months, and as conferences always do, the experiences I had there have recharged my enthusiasm for teaching music and made me want to be a better teacher. In this blog post I will highlight some of the big things I learned and saw over the course of the event.
The conference itself went far more smoothly than my first experience of navigating Milwaukee. The locations of the sessions were, for the most part, easily accessible although very spread out between three different buildings. The sessions were all top notch, and the classroom management theme seemed to be quite heavy as almost every time slot held at least one such presentation. Technology was everywhere, with four conference rooms dedicated to presentations from major technology vendors such as Sibelius, Finale, Yamaha, and Roland.
The Music Classroom Of The Future:
One of my personal favorite sessions was the "Classroom of the Future" presentation by the Yamaha folks. In this session I was finally able to play with a real ActivBoard system. I can only imagine what I could do in my classroom with one of these. For those of you not familiar with the concept the ActivBoard is an interactive whiteboard that has an attached video projector and a stylus that writes on the computer screen instead of on the board. It functions like any traditional white board except that all marks are digital instead of ink. Students can interact with teacher created content and all of that content can be saved for use in another class or in another building that is also equipped with an ActivBoard.
Also seen in the technology workshop was a live demo of the latest MusicPad Pro sheet music system. I could easily see the MusicPad becoming very common in music classrooms over the next thirty years. Other great improvements and new releases were found while roaming the floor of the exhibit hall, but you will have to check out my article in Teaching Music next month to see all of those.
Boonshaft's Presentation is Highlight of Conference For Many:
By far the highlight of the conference for me was getting to see a session by Dr. Peter Boonshaft of Hofstra University. The room was completely packed with people and there were dozens more standing in the back for a presentation that was by any stretch of the word, incredible. Again the theme was on classroom management, but the way he presents it just makes it all click and fall into place in your head. He has two books out right now, both of them excellent material for any music educator to read. His latest, Teaching Music With Purpose is one that I hope to get my hands on very soon.
Over the next week or two I will reiterate some of the more important things that I heard or learned from the many sessions and speeches during the MENC conference. Check back often or sign up for the weekly email newsletter to be updated when they are posted.
Tags: MENC 2008 conference music teachers conference convention session classroom management
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