coordinated by Ryan Thomas
rthomas@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu
Purpose
Through my studies here at the University I became interested in the philosophy of aesthetic education, in particular music education. A question that is hotly debated in this field is where the value of art/music lies (Reimer, 1988). Formalists believe the value of the art lies only in the medium whereas Referentialists believe that the medium refers to other things which are of value. Absolute Expressionists, on the other hand believe that the medium has the ability communicate a form of feeling that is not purely referentialist (that is it does not refer to anything in particular) yet communicates more than just itself. Regardless, the relationship between the value of art/music and the individual's perception of it is at the heart of the matter. Therefore, I chose to devise a project that asks the student to think about what makes music meaningful to them and gives them the opportunity to see what others say about music that is meaningful to them (See Project Description and Solicitation, appendices A & B). The goal was for the student to gain insight regarding the relationship between the medium of the art and the individual's own perceptions and experiences. I used a project, also carried out this spring, by Martha Gail Weatherly promoting a discussion of poetry as a guide for my project.
Purpose: The purpose of this project is to get students to discuss music that means something to them and to endeavor to investigate and communicate effectively how the music does what it does.
Use of Network
At first I was hoping to be able to share music directly over the network. But copyright problems and the difficulties of recording and transferring audio to the network prompted me to stay simple. All that was necessary for this project was access via email. I asked the participants to include information of the recording or manuscript along with their description so that others would be able to seek it out at their local store should they desire to hear what the individual was talking about.
Then I had to decide whether or not to set this up as an interactive group or as a forum for the construction of some kind of document that could be considered a contribution to the knowledge that exists on the internet. Because of time considerations and my interest in the World Wide Web, I chose the latter. In hindsight, as I will discuss later, this turned out to be a mistake, most of the contributors did not have access to the WWW and were eager to interact. As a result, the final product was a compiled digest of all the contributions organized by age group (elementary, junior high, and high school).
Further, it was my hope that students from outside the United States would contribute, making the potential for insight (the objective) even greater. Unfortunately, no students outside of the United States did participate.
Participants
In soliciting participants, I tried to keep things as wide open as possible and yet focused on an age group. My target audience were individual students who were exploring the Internet/FrEdNet on their own who felt the desire to contribute. Primarily because of the nature of music education outside of the U.S. (music is often not part of the public schools), I thought this was most appropriate.
For Teachers and Students around the World: Project Proposal Description
[...]
Grade Level: High school (approximately 14-18 yrs. of age)
Participation: This project is not class-oriented partly because of the nature of music education outside of the U.S. Anyone in the above age group is welcome to participate. All submissions will be edited and collected into digest format to be redistributed to all participants (see 1 & 2 below example).
Country: *All* countries are welcome, but we can only interpret submissions in English, Spanish, German, and French (digest will be in English).
But as it turned out, only two of the contributions were from individual students (they were also the best ones by far). Most contributions came from teachers who had recommended the project to their class and were doing it as a class project.
Role of Contributors
This project was really rather simple. All it took was a single email message on the part of the contributor to participate. The role of the two individuals who contributed on their own needed no middleman/facilitator for their participation. They were simply interested contributors. The contributors from classes, on the other hand, were dependent on the role of the teacher. Each set of class contributions came through the email accounts of the teacher who was some sort of technology coordinator or home-room teacher--no music teachers. Interestingly enough, two of the three teachers' email accounts were from America On-Line (one was from a nearby college). The teacher, in contrast with my expectations, was a key participant in the project. The teacher found and suggested the project (in one case offering it as an option among several) and then collected, edited, and sent the contributions to me.
Length
I expected the project to take the individual contributor about five to ten minutes and anywhere from a minute to a day to fill out the information on the music itself depending on whether or not they needed to find the information on the piece of music in their own or someone else's collection. However, in the class setting, I imagine time was set aside during the day to write the responses, give instructions on how they were to turn them in, etc. For the project itself, I had a closing date of April 11 and the solicitation and project description were distributed in mid-March.
Evaluation
Although the project had just enough contributions to say that it "worked"; It was by no means a great success. Ultimately the value of a project is in its ability to achieve some sort of educational goal (whether that achieved was planned for or not). I think that my goals were not met and there were virtually no benefits to the individuals participating in the project beyond the minimum that can be expected of virtually any Internet project (such as writing skills and a sense of personal ownership of the product and, therefore, the associated motivation for the subject). But, considering the brevity of the contribution and lack of control over the product, the degree to which these improved is also minimal at best.
The goal that the individual would gain insight by discussing how music affects them and what it is the music does to achieve this was primarily undermined by unclear language in the project description and solicitation (Appendices A & B). It was apparent that most of the contributors didn't understand the distinction between how and why, that is, between the effect and the reason for the effect.
Another thing that may have led to a misunderstanding of the request was my sample. I made an effort to avoid sounding formal in my sample so that the task would not seem to difficult or daunting. Instead, I fear that the tone alone may have reinforced the reader's inclination to see the project as a way of describing their "favorite tune".
Perhaps the music that affects me the most *every time I hear it* is a tune called "Sumer is Icumen In" (or "Summer Is A'Comin' In"). It was a piece written/notated in the 13th century, presumably by an English Monk. It was found in the binding of some old manuscript.
One of the reasons it affects me as it does is probably the timing of my exposure to it: I was in London having the time of my life! What amazes me is the (not necessarily accurate) image of this 13th Century monk who secretly composed/notated this *secular* tune, probably risking a good deal of punishment and stuffing the result in the binding of one of the manuscripts on which he was working. In addition, its sweetness, the tertial harmony resulting from singing it in a round with the tenor accompaniment ("Sing Cuckoo, Sing Cuckoo") fascinates (and yes, awes) me everytime I think about how different the music was that was being composed on the continent at about the same time (such as Perotin). This piece was dangerous and secular and progressive (at least in a historical sense); very exciting.
Yet another element that I believe could have affected the nature of the contributions was the context of participation. That is, it seems that there would be much less ownership of the project were the project presented by the teacher as another assignment. The two who contributed on their own, even though there were only two, contributed much superior descriptions and did include some description of what the music did that made it meaningful. Further, research has indicated that the quality of writing, when students are writing to peers over the network tend to write more clearly and with better organization (Cohen & Riel, 1985). From this I speculate that the students contributing from a classroom environment took less ownership and less interest in the project than the two who participated on their own. Another possibility is that in the classes, the teacher, serving as the facilitator, failed to make the distinctions as well.
As mentioned earlier, I solicited high schoolers for the project and was surprised to receive the contributions from the elementary class. Because (as could be expected) these contributions were particularly brief, I returned a message thanking them for their contributions with a personal response for each of them, prompting further thought on their descriptions (See appendix C). To a large extent, their responses to my specific questions led me to think that the students hadn't grasped the concept:
artist: Lenny Kravitz
song: Are You Gonna Go My Way?
This music makes me feel confident and that I am somebody, like a leader. These heavy metal songs wake people, wake them up from being bored. Some people hate these songs but I like them.
My reply:
Heavy metal is definitely powerful music. But, what about it wakes people up? Is what wakes people up in heavy metal what also makes you feel like a leader? What is it in the music that does this?
It wakes people up because it's loud and up beat. This music makes me feel like a leader because it makes me feel confident and fills me up with self esteem.
On the other hand, sometimes the prompt got a little something from them:
song: FAT
artist: Weird Al Yankovic
CD/Album: The Food Album
This song makes me laugh because I've heard the real version. I think the parody is hilarious! It's funny because it talks about that he's fat and talks about that "at the beach, he's the only one who gets a tan!" You should hear it, it's funny!
Me:
Ah, I know of Weird Al Yankovic. He's definitely got the corner on the "Musical Parody" market. I can't quite remember what song FAT parodies (assuming it does). But, assuming it does parody another tune, when you compare the two, can you tell if Weird Al does anything to the music itself (not the lyrics) that adds to the humor? What does he do?
"Fat" is a parody of "Bad" by Michael Jackson. I don't think he changes the music any but he might add an accasional BURP or start gargling to the same tune. That is what makes it funny because if you listen to one of his songs with either of them you'll probably laugh!! He might use a different instrument like in the song "Lasagna" which is a parody of "La Bamba" he gargles to the same tune. He does that cause that's the way he does things, funny. He's probably my favorite artist that does parodys of songs.
At one point, one of the teachers asked if I could show them other contributors' descriptions so that they could interact. Because I had established in the project description that the contributions would be available in April via the digest, I felt confined and did not release any contributions. With hindsight, I can see I should have contacted the other participating groups and asked their permission to begin transferring contributions. I was not very flexible.
Recommendations
Were this project run again, the first thing I would do would be to clarify my objectives. I would discuss the distinction between the effect music can produce and what the music does to produce that effect. For example, when I say that a particular piece of music makes me feel proud (the effect), I would need to describe how the music does that either by discussing the music itself (the moderately slow yet straightforward rhythm) or some association (reminds me of when I saw King Charles crowned).
The next thing I would do would be to make sure that the technology I was using facilitated interaction (one of the most important reasons to use the network). I would set up a listserv so the participants could discuss the contributions and establish an FTP/Gopher/WWW repository so students could take a look at the contributions on their own and even contribute via FTP or WWW forms. Because some students only have access to email, however, a periodic release of the items posted to the repository would need to be released over the listserv.
Also, I would, in my project description and solicitation, encourage rather exotic music or music that the participants are able to record on their own and submit in digital format. I would attempt to acquire copyright clearance for that material which was copyrighted. The University of Indiana is developing some technology right now that will allow CD quality audio via the Internet. Releases are expected soon. That would open up some new possibilities as well.
References
Cohen, M., & Riel, M. (1989). The effect of distant audiences on students' writing. American Educational Research Journal, 26(2), 143-159.
Reimer, B. (1988). Alternative views about art on which a philosophy can be based. In Philosophy of Music Education. (pp. 14-38).