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Calling all musicians! Come join us!

Are you out there?

It’s that time again…

time to join in with !

(photo CC-BY-NC by Eknath Gomphotherium)

What is #MUS654?? A MOOC? – well yes and no. It is an open connected course. The idea was borne out of a basic and essential desire to learn, connect, and find the best resources (people and things) to enable my students to grow and develop their knowledge as they enter the profession. These people will be developing their own curricula for their students. Music teachers do this all the time and there are not so many resources to guide people in how they do this. I teach within the Music Department at the University of Chichester and I have students who are studying instrumental/ vocal teaching and performance – and this is all part of their course-  I believe that learning about connection, networking, communication, and working with others is something that cannot be done solely in a closed classroom or in a private lesson. We need to reach out.

Every time I connect with someone else, I learn something from them – from their experience and observation, from their perspective of life and learning. In music we often learn from a select few individuals and that can give a narrow focus to our perspective. With that in mind, I made this online content, to encourage people to look outward, connect, and draw upon music students, teachers, and enthusiasts world-wide.

The rationale behind the topics follows a bit of advice that my teacher once have me – to build a taller house, you have to build a stronger foundation. And so to be prepared and equipped to create a curriculum for a student, first we have to deconstruct the components involved with music making and music learning, and then we can put them back together in a way that fits the situation. We are really bespoke practitioners. In education people talk of ‘student centred learning’ – and this is it. In music each private student comes with their own needs and to have the tools to understand how to guide them to be able to learn and achieve is a great skill and asset.

Tomorrow I welcome another class of students on campus to learn about how to create a curriculum. is the online version of the class and you are invited to join in with us regardless of your musical experience. We will be following along, week-by-week, having discussions over twitter, doing the various tasks, blogging, having google hangouts, and making things interactively between us – across the ether.

So I hope you will be interested, and maybe know someone else who is interested in music, music learning, and music teaching and that you will join us ! Dip in to a few sessions or follow along every week. Sessions are located under the tab at the top of my webpage. You are most welcome to join in with any part of the course. Come explore, learn, and create with us.

We will be using the hashtag whenever we post things on Twitter, on blogs, or on any other platform.

Enjoy! and any questions, please ask!

🙂

Rusty Guitar O' Mine

Photo CC-BY-ND by madhan r

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