Dr. Michael Webb and the MMGS

This morning I had the honor of listening to Dr. Michael Webb present a very engaging and enjoyable presentation at the Term 4 conference of the South Australian branch of the Australian Society of Music Educators (ASME). The topic of the day, as I mentioned in a previous blog post, was Closing the Gap: Engaging students and delivering educational outcomes through pop culture and technology.

Dr Michael Webb, is a lecturer in music education at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He researches and publishes in the fields of ethnomusicology and music education. His current research activities include new literacies and classroom music learning, popular culture, ethnomusicology and education, and Melanesian hymnodies.

Michael presented on the topic of "The Music Motion Graphics Sequence (MMGS) and cross media listening", which was based on and article entitled "Music Analysis Down the You Tube" which he wrote for the British Journal of Music Education. In it argues that as school students are almost constantly immersed in an entertainment media environment, that this in turn has a great impact for classroom listening habits.

How many times have you heard yourself or colleagues say "the kids just don't listen", or "they don't focus when we are doing analysis work" or "they don't know how to sit still and listen", "they love doing practical but I have to just about tie them to their seats when we have to do listening!"

In this talk today Michael presented the idea of encouraging music analysis and listening through the Music motion graphics sequence (MMGS) and cross media listening. And I feel he is definitely on to something, because when you think about it, we hardly ever just sit and listen to music! Music always accompanies something else - driving, washing the dishes, talking with at a social gathering , standing in a lift, walking the dog, watching a movie or TV program, even watching an orchestra on stage - we don't pay the privilege of going to a concert to sit and stare at a blank wall or behind a screen whilst a 100 piece orchestra plays on stage hidden from our view! So why do we insist on making our students do it??

As educators we need to consider the way that music analysis and listening activities are presented, and need to take into account the myriad of aural, visual, spatial and kinaesthetic ways in which structured music listening activities and analysis can be successfully engaged in.

So what is MMGS? According to Michael MMGS involves the presentation and creation of  "visual musical works, pieces from moving image genres that are structured according to the codes, materials, devices and processes of music."

I hope the following clips Michael shared with us on You Tube will help to demonstrate what MMGS is all about and the creative opportunities our students can have by similarly responding to music through the use of with technology and constructing their own learning !

Rowan Atkinson performs on the Invisible Drumkit (there are many from Rowan Atkinson more including The Piano Player and The Conductor). When you are watching it think of the learning possibilities to be extracted including timbre, call and response, rhythmic and melodic devices, instrumental range, layering etc.

Tags: engaging asme mmgs australian society of music educators pop culture students you tube
Posted at 03:51PM Nov 22, 2008 by Alison Hall  |  Comments[5]

A day in a sentence...

Sheryl McCoy has created a list of resources on diigo for those who wish to take part in the Sentence a Day, or the One Sentence Journal blogging challenge. As a Twitter user I find this challenge somewhat alluring. Then again, I'm not sure if I could sum up my day in a sentence, without mentioning the word "stuff" or "dunno..." In Twitter as well I tend to respond to what others have been tweeting, so it's not always about me.

Maybe Kevin's Your Day in a Comic challenge would be more to my taste. But then there's the question of creativity. I ain't got it!

So lets turn the floor to you. What challenges (blog or otherwise) have you undertaken to get your blog posts flying out and your creative juices flowing? PLUS did it work?

Tags: blog project writing learning2.0 thinkin students collaborativ
Posted at 02:03PM Jun 20, 2008 by Alison Hall  |