Week 5

This week we reviewed music education software and programs.  There are many kinds of programs.  According to the Wikipedia link provided by the class, "Freeware [...] is software that is available for use at no monetary cost or for an optional fee" (Wikipedia).  I chose to focus on freeware for this module because I am always interested in programs that are free to use.  As a teacher in her second year of teaching, I don't have a lot of money to buy programs for myself.  I have many bills including student loans.  And my school budget is a whopping 324 dollars a year.  Unfortunately, that won't cover the cost of many music education programs.  Because of this situation, I am always on the look out for programs that are free or have a very minimal fee.

We were charged with locating and reviewing a program.  Using the lists provided by my Professor, I discovered a program called "Drum Station" but a company called D-Lusion.  D-Lusion had a few different programs however, since my students are really interested in drums, I chose to use Drum Station.  When I first downloaded the program, there was a tutorial on their website on how to download and install the program.  However, when I opened the program, I discovered that it was incredibly confusing.  There was no tutorial on how to actually use the program.

I began to play around the program and could not figure out how to make a sound.  It took me about 7 minutes to discover how to actually begin composing music in the program.  When I actually discovered how to compose in the program, it was incredibly simple.  The program could benefit from either a tutorial on how to use it or an updated look that makes it easier to spot where you need to press in order to compose.  

In this program, you were given four "measures" with four possible places to make a sound.  There were 8 instruments you could use including closed and open high hats and claps.  The user simple presses where in each "measure" they would like the instrument to play and it begins to play and loop the sounds over and over again.  I discovered that you could adjust the tempo, dynamics, and the effects on each of the instruments as well which was a nice touch!

Overall I found the program incredibly confusing at first.  But as I played with the program, I discovered it was incredibly easy to use.  This would take just a little bit of explaining to my students and they would be able to create short loops using percussion instruments.

In addition, we used Diigo.com this week.  Diigo.com is a website that you can bookmark website and webpages all in one place.  There are also tools that enable you to highlight certain passages on the website so that you can easily identify what you bookmarked the website for.  This is an incredibly helpful website for keeping all your resources in one area, rather than bookmarking each page individually.  Users can create "folders" so that you can keep track of multiple things without mixing up your categories!