Implementation Report

This was implemented into the music class and it was a 2 month long project. Since the building I work in has serious attendance issues, I wanted to make sure that students were going to have enough time, didn't feel rushed, and I wanted them to be proud of their end product. I would often joke around with them that I wanted to hear Grammy's by the end of the project. 

At first there was resistance to the project, which is something that I did not anticipate, I thought that the students would be excited to use laptops, and to be able to use the software. A lot of them thought that it was too difficult to do all by themselves, and I felt very pressured to change the project and make it easier, but I stuck to my guns and kept pushing through. 

The student learning outcomes that I want to implement were simple, I wanted students to appreciate the music that they hear on the radio. I felt that they were taking the music world as if it was so easy for an artist to create a song. I wanted to challenge them.  I have many students in my class that have IEPs, and to make the project fair to them their song didn't have to be as long as the other students (I had asked for everyone else to make a 3 minute song, there's just had to be a minute, but if they wanted to make it longer than they were more than welcome to). I also allowed these students to create their song using only loops. 

I had a few times where classroom management was a problem. I still haven't found if this is because of the classroom I have (which is auditorium seating) or if it was because of the students lack of desire to work on the project. As the project progressed, they seemed to get more into it, and the lack of desire to work changed into a drastic run to the finish. I'm pretty sure that was also due to the fact that they wanted to get good grades on their report cards. But I'll take that if it means they are completing the project. 

A big question that the students asked was why they had to do the project, and a lot of them seemed very against it and had this "we aren't artists" attitude towards it. I didn't like it, and I told that them if that was the mindset that they were going to have that they weren't going to have a good time with the project. 

The students didn't have a difficult time during the implementation process, after they got over the "we aren't artists" part of the project everything has gone swimmingly. The project is going to be over on Wednesday, and the students have been having a ball with it. The students are eager to get into the closet and record their songs, they have really gotten into the whole project. 

If I were to do this project again, I'm not sure if I would have given the students as much time as they got. I think I would have given them less time to complete it so we could have more time to review each others work.