Last week I held the last of three sessions for the Connected Classes project. They wove themselves into one of my university modules and became the content. The students in my class were studying one-to-one teaching in music, and they all had taught a student of their own throughout this term. Our usual ending sessions had to do with looking at the wider picture, troubleshooting, and reflecting on the experiences over the term and and so we used (and expanded) those ideas to engage with them as part of our #cclasses sessions.
We had one of the librarians visit us and watch what was going on. She wanted to see me teach, but I told her this would be like no other session she had ever seen, I probably wouldn’t even seem like the teacher! I invited her to bring her headphones and join in. She did listen, but didn’t tweet – instead she made notes, and I asked her permission to share some of her notes with you. So here you have an observer’s account of what went on…
“Laura had asked her students [and others] to submit a recording of themselves talking about a profound musical moment in their lives, which Laura then edited into an approximately 15 minute long track. This was brilliant as it enabled the students to be creative with the recording they sent and encouraged them to use IT tools.
When I came to listen to the track I could tell they all really enjoyed talking about the moments that meant the most to them personally. Asking them to do this exercise as they completed their own course was a really poignant thing, as Laura commented to them ‘these are the moments that inspired you to love music, go out and inspire those moments in others.’
Laura had set up a twitter hashtag for her group and asked them to use this in order to communicate during the session. Laura was able to sit at the front and direct the conversation through twitter. This enabled not only the students present to make points, but also to receive the contributions from the absent students. Laura explained that one of her students contributing was visually impaired and was able to join in the twitter discussion at exactly the same level as all the other students. I thought this was excellent.
Unable to speak at the front of the group [as the class was in a shared computer area] Laura moved around and spoke to each student in turn, handing out cookies as she went round. (This did results in a few pictures of cookies being tweeted.)
By using twitter I felt that Laura was also teaching her students how to make effective use of social media as a teaching tool, which is no doubt something they will use in future.
These students had all just handed in their dissertations and finished their exams. I was very impressed that even though they didn’t have to attend 8 of the 14 students turned up for the session.”
Reflecting on it is tricky for me, as it was really the last session I will ever have with most of those students, and now they go off to begin their professional careers. After having spent a term studying one-to-one teaching, this was a low-stress way to reflect as a group in a very positive way on the good that comes from music. I am going to integrate positive celebration into my classes much more in the future. Usually students big (formal) achievements relate to their work, whether an essay or performance. These happen at the end – and taking the time to reflect with them was really rewarding. I felt it also gave a greater value to the student voice.
I hope the students felt the same.
Feel free to have a look at our Storify and add your voice.