World Music Drumming Website
Table of Contents To the Reader Professional Portrait Artifacts Action Research Portfolio Reflection

 


In order to improve my teaching in my 6th grade general music classes, I have incorporated the World Music Drumming curriculum. This authentic learning experience has been very engaging and valuable for my students, but it has also been a significant challenge for me as an educator. Meeting the challenges of learning and implementing a new curriculum, as well as the necessary instrumental skills and background knowledge, has certainly been a growing experience for me.

In the process of learning and implementing this curriculum, I have accumulated resources and ideas from many different sources. Instead of organizing these in an overflowing binder, I decided to create a website that incorporated all of these elements in an organized, interactive format. The advantage to this is that the website can be continually updated as I learn and grow with the curriculum, and it can be published online for the benefit of other teachers and students.

The website incorporates several sections: a record of the things I've learned from others (Notes), personal ideas and developments that have helped me teach the curriculum (Tips), a repository of compositions my student groups have created (Student Compositions), and links to online resources (Links). The site will continue to grow as my knowledge of the curriculum and its implementation grows, and it has already served as a welcome resource to organize and revisit conceptual and musical ideas for the curriculum.

I really enjoy working with the structure of websites to organize ideas. The interactive nature of the medium is an effective way for me to develop a usable and worthwhile resource for myself and others. I have already incorporated a website structure for my family and for my professional portfolio, and the format has worked well for the World Music Drumming curriculum as well.

The website I have developed can be viewed here.