I bumped into a listing of 7 new tools for creating music online recently. I am no musician and don’t teach or create music, but the
tools tempted me. What fun it would be to try out some of those tools and see
what I could create.
Why don’t we do more exploring into areas that we don’t
know?
As a technology facilitator to faculty I have noticed that most
people, teachers and student, (and I
include myself here) want to go only where they have gone before, perfect
something rather than try something entirely new. When was the last time you tried something
entirely new?
I can hear the arguments in my own head
- Well, it wouldn’t be any good.
- It wouldn’t be professional looking
- It would be too difficult
- It would be too difficult
- All I would learn is that I can’t do it... AND I'd feel stupid!
But I would be missing something. I would be missing the
adventure and the joy of figuring out a puzzle with only our wits, and the
combined wisdom of the group to help us. I might not learn to create a passable piece of music using
the new tools, but I might learn:
- How to attack a problem I haven’t seen before
- How others do it (and could I do that?)
- Where the edge of my comfort zone is for not
knowing what I’m doing
When confronted with
something new, what is your preferred way to learn? Ask a friend, find a book,
google it?
When was the last time you and your class had a learning
adventure? An activity which you didn’t know how it would turn out? That had
not been carefully planned and constructed and all the possible hard spots and
bumps removed? When did you learn something together?
I think I’ll try some of those tools.
