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 own pieces.”
One of the main aspects of the way we covered the show in class was to make sure that students DID NOT critique music in the way that the judges do on the show which is why we spent a lot of time critiquing and analyzing the judges’ responses on the show. By the end of the lesson students could give much more clear and accurate critique of performances than the judges on American Idol and in a manner that was respectful and constructive.
As far as the “we’ve got a hot one here ya’ll quote” …….. see what I wrote above. I have a feeling this might have been confused with an elementary school classroom from a different school that appeared on the same ABC news clip.
You can read a detailed explanation of how I used American Idol in my classroom which ranged from a critical media literacy perspective to developing aural skills and the ability to critique performances.
As for the article in general, it was fun to think back to my days in undergrad at the Crane School of Music and recall many great memories and was glad for the opportunity to do so.