Skip to content

Blog: Catalysts & Connections

Hip Hop and youth documentary this Friday!

This weekend I’m planning on watching “The Hip Hop Project” a new documentary on a community hip hop program for youth based in New York City. The movie has been getting mixed reviews ( positive) & (less positive), though it won 13 film festival awards. Recently the MPAA re-rated it from “R” to PG-13 despite the use of the “F-word” 17 times. Chris Rolle the founder of the Hip Hop Project was quoted in the Hollywood Reporter explaining his reasoning… Read More »Hip Hop and youth documentary this Friday!

What's your position on assessment?

MENC is currently accepting feedback on a current draft in progress of a position statement on assessment in music education. This is a great opportunity to reflect on our own perspectives and class/school/music department policies on assessment. Do we make use of both summative and formative assessment? What are our criteria for assessing our students? Are we using authentic assessment? Do our students practice self or peer assessment? Do our students keep process and product portfolios? Over a year ago… Read More »What's your position on assessment?

Save Internet Music Resources For Music Students…

Both James Frankel and I have blogged about our concern over the potential loss of internet music streaming due to recent changes in royalty rates as determined by the copyright royalty board. The board recently denied webcasters a rehearing and the new rates and possible demise of internet streaming resources will happen 20 days from now unless congress intervenes. Take a look at savenetradio.org   for more information and consider signing a petition either as a listener/webcaster or as a musician… Read More »Save Internet Music Resources For Music Students…

Potsdam People Article & Using American Idol in the classroom…

It was fun to read the recent write up in the Potsdam People that spotlighted me however, I was a little concerned about the way it discussed my use of American Idol in the classroom. These two sentence in particular were inaccurate: “Tobias also had his class compose music, and he would have the students judge the compositions like on American Idol..” & “Yet at the same time, Tobias had his students use American Idol-style judging when students composed their… Read More »Potsdam People Article & Using American Idol in the classroom…

An electronic music community in your school?

While looking online for information on MAX/MSP patches I came across an online electronic music community. We don’t often hear about computers being used as instruments to perform in public schools and when it comes to electronic instruments we are usually referring to electric guitars, basses and keyboards. One of the topics I find myself returning to in this blog is the use of technology to go beyond what we have traditionally done in public school music programs. When I… Read More »An electronic music community in your school?