Don't freak out. You didn't miss anything. The 2.5 above is because Blogger is experiencing technical issues and I had to work around something. Moving on...
Sometimes, it is nice to dip your toe in the water and ease your way in.
Sometimes, it is nice to dip your toe in the water and ease your way in.
This was not that kind of week.
You might remember that last semester I was building a digital database using FileMaker Pro for the music education instrument inventory. The database is meant to move us away from paper records and keep all records electronically. Well, I designed quite the database. By the end of the semester, it was operational and I had populated all the instrument information. All that was missing was a signature pad so loan forms could be signed digitally. I found a company who makes a FileMaker Pro plugin for signature pads, and we bought the plugin and the pad. I was super excited when it came in this past week. I took it to the pet shop, plugged it in, and
it did not work. I spent hours trying to get it working to no avail. I ended up calling the company for tech support and the guy I spoke to told me, "hmm... it should work. I don't know what to tell you. Call us back if you figure out what is wrong." So incredibly helpful, thank you, Mr. Man. I will keep you all updated.
Last semester, Graduate Seminar in Music Education was less than successful. Thankfully, the faculty heard our feedback and did something about it. At our first session this past week, the faculty sat us down and asked for our input. They wanted to know what we hoped to get out of the seminar experience. I applaud the faculty for realizing they were not meeting our needs and involving us in the process of course correcting (pardon the pun). Many great ideas were offered by my classmates. My suggestion came from an idea I had last semester for a seminar project. I suggested that we put together a graduate student journal. It would be a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal modeled after the major journals of the field. I am excited to see what the faculty decides to do with seminar now that they have heard our ideas.
Later in the week, I had a meeting with Dr. C. to discuss my independent study for the semester. We decided on two projects.
Project #1
Last
fall we hosted a community band symposium. You might remember my post
on the event. Our undergrads participated in the event. I thought it
was wonderful that our students get the opportunity to be so immersed in
the community band world, with events such as this one and Night Owls
being hosted at the university. So, I started to wonder: is there a
connection between music majors' attitudes toward the importance of
community bands and whether there is a community band at their
university. So, I am going to research this.
Project #2
I
started thinking that the graduate student journal that I proposed in
seminar might be better served as a separate entity than as part of a
course. So, I proposed that I use my independent study to set it up.
Dr. C. agreed. She also told me that she was very impressed with this
idea. In her words, "this idea has teeth." She told me that she is
often impressed with how innovative my ideas are. Hearing that made me
feel really positive about my future as a music education professor. I
think it bodes well for me that I am able to keep coming up with ideas
that push the boundaries and challenge the accepted conventions of the
field. So, I will be setting up the framework for the journal by
answering the essential questions: who, what, where, when, why, and
how. I hope to have everything set up so we can get started in the fall
and publish our first issue before winter break.
Dr.
C. did make an astute observation during our meeting she said that I
have so many ideas and interests that I have the tendency to spread
myself thin. She recommended I take the time to list out everything
that I have to do this semester so I can properly allocate my time and
design the scope of my projects to fit the time I have. So, here is my
list
- Classes
- Wind Symphony
- Graduate Seminar in Music Education
- Night Owls
- History and Philosophy of Music Education
- Wind Repertory
- Independent Study
- Community Band Research Project
- Graduate Student Journal
- Diagnostic Exam Make Up Assignments
- Form and Analsis
- Counterpoint
- History
- Study for Preliminary Exams
- Pre Dissertation Work
- IRB Protocol
- First Three Chapters
- Introduction
- Review of Literature
- Methodology
- Repair Workshop
- Paper for Publication
- Supervise a Student Teacher
Yikes!
The History and Philosophy of Music Education is an online class. I swore I would never take another online class after my master's degree. But, Dr. C. strongly recommended I take this one, so here I am. This class is a little different than my master's degree. It is a synchronous class, meaning that we all log in at the same time and are able to interact with one another. That being said, the technology is still a bit clunky and it slows the pace of the class. I admit to being less than engaged during the class period. I am trying to stay positive, but I think I am going to have to suffer through this one.
Good news! My sessions got accepted for the Connecticut Music Educators Association Conference. So I will be speaking there at the end of April.
And now for the main event: the poster session at the Indiana Music Educators Association Conference.
In Preparation
For the poster session, we were instructed to have 30 copies of our abstract for interested parties to take with them. I decided to do a nice, color layout because I get free color printing at school.
The other thing I had to do when I got to the hotel was iron my suit. I kept telling myself along the drive, "don't forget to iron your suit." So, when I got to the hotel, I started printing the abstracts and then went to iron my suit. Problem: I left me suit back in Philadelphia. I had 30 minutes before stores closed to go buy a suit. Luckily, there was a JCPenny right up the street and I was able to buy a suit before the store closed. Lesson learned: make a packing list.
The Poster Session
I felt well-prepared for the poster session. Dr. C. had given a very detailed account of what the Pennsylvania poster session is like: 100s of researchers, with their posters on the wall around a large room, talking to people in a packed room about their research. When we were designing our posters in Research class last semester, Dr. C. made sure to tell us that these are professional posters, not the kind you put together with glue sticks and glitter. This is what I was prepared for; this is not what I encountered. When I arrived at the conference I was directed to the poster area. It did not have its own room. Rather, it was in the exhibition hall... in the back of the exhibition hall... in the back corner of the exhibition hall. I felt like I was being punished for something. When I got back to the poster area, I did not find 100s of posters. There were only 7 of us, though when I set up there were only 3 posters up already. The first thing I noticed was that there was no wall. They had set up tables for free-standing posters. Nothing in the information told me that the poster needed to be free-standing. Thankfully, this was the midwest where people are nice. One of the facilities workers got me an easel and some cardboard so I could display my poster.
The people on either side of me showed up later. The guy to my left arrived assuming he would hang his poster on a wall as well. I am glad I wasn't the only one! It turns out, his research was on the same topic as mine. Initially, I was disappointed. I thought his research might make mine unnecessary. But, as we talked I learned that we were investigating the problem from different angles. He was looking at the ensemble outcomes and I was looking at the individual outcomes. I think there might be some future collaboration for us.
It turns out that I knew the person to my right. She worked with me in PG County for a couple years before going to get her Ph.D. She teaches now at a small college in Indiana. After catching up for a while, she invited me to come to her school to do a day of lectures and presentations, and conduct her band. Score!
The Crowd
We were instructed to be at our posters to talk to the people for 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon. Take a guess how many people came to talk about the posters in the morning?
What did you guess? Was it 1 or more? Then, you are wrong. Not a single person come by to talk to us. The afternoon was only marginally better. There were two people that stopped by the poster. One was a doctoral student from Indiana University and the other was a professor from Vandercook. Both were good conversations, but I wanted to talk to more people!
Conclusions
The poster session, itself was underwhelming to say the least. But, I did learn that I enjoy going to conferences on my own. It forces me to meet and talk to new people. I did some pretty solid networking while I was there. In addition to the two people I already mentioned, I met a professor from Indiana University who gave a session on cognition. We spoke about the overlaps between her presentation and the reading I have been doing on creative cognition. We decided to trade reference lists and speak again after reading some new things. I also met a professor (I forget which school he is from) who is interested in participating in my community band study. So, it was a productive trip, just not in the way I thought it would be.
Well, that is it for now. Try to stay warm out there this week!
Future Dr. Mitch, out!
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