My second block technology project tied in with my impact on student learning project.

For my three lesson unit plan, I introduced the music notation software, Noteflight to my sixth

grade classes. The students brought their school-provided Chrome Books to class for a total of

three lessons.

Some challenges I faced with this project were students forgetting to charge their

computers before class and maintaining student focus while I gave instructions. Thankfully, we

found a few extra charging chords for the students who forgot theirs. As far as maintaining

students’ attention during instruction, I quickly developed a strategy to keep focus where I

wanted it to be at any given time. After discussing this project with my cooperating teacher, she

warned me that the students would be used to having “free time” on their computers rather than

using them as in-class instructional tools. I began the first technology class by setting the

expectation that the students must wait for me to say a key words or phrase before touching their

Chrome Books to complete the tasks I was describing. Additionally, once they completed a task

they had to turn their computers to face me. This not only ensured that they wouldn’t start

playing around with the software, but helped me see each student’s progress with the lesson.

Another challenge I faced was learning how to use the software myself. I was not very

familiar with Noteflight before beginning this project, but decided that it would provided the

easiest access to all of the students without having to download extra programs or pay any trial

fees. I spent time exploring Noteflight on my own before writing my unit plan, but teaching each

tool to my students also helped me get more comfortable with the program.

The main goal of my unit plan was to introduce the students to a music notation software.

I planned for them to write an eight measure melody and use specific tools to change/enhance it
(dynamics, articulations, etc.). All of the students were able to complete the goal and most were

very excited to share theirs with the class. I even had the chance to teach the first of the three

lessons to a general music class, as their teacher got suddenly ill and they had to combine with

my class. I had the challenge of simultaneously teaching the introduction lesson to a class of

general music students who had never read music before and teaching the second lesson to my

band class. I had to make a lot of adjustments to both lessons in the moment in order to keep all

of the students on the same page. For example, rather than have the general music students

practice entering notes by writing a scale, I just had them fill four measures with quarter notes on

any line of the staff. It was exciting and challenging to have the opportunity to introduce this

software to another class as well as my own.