 up. We're live! We circled the globe! Well, I am so excited. This group of educators are from all over the world and we're forced to introduce ourselves. Hello! From all over, I am Carol Gross and I live in Columbia now. I am 24 years old. Oh, 34 years. I'm so excited to introduce Andrew. And Andrew, we'll go around and introduce everyone. The main person here is Samuel. Hi there! And where are you from? Andrew, we'll go around and introduce everyone. I think we've got a huge loop. I'm actually in Vienna, Austria. And where are you from? You need to have headsets on maybe. Can you all hear me still? Yes. Now we hear you. Now there's no echo. I'm from Vienna, Austria, but originally in Australia. So many of the educators you see here. I found through Twitter, LinkedIn, amazing things. They posted online. Give me a thumbs up if you can hear properly, people. No? That's okay. It's getting better. Okay. I'll hold this and I'll talk like a radio star. How was that? Okay. We have a microphone. It's not hanging from the roof. I'm from Vienna, Austria. And I'm a music educator, an Apple Distinguished Educator. And most of the time, I just like making things. And being a teacher, I get to make things and share and then get the kids to do the same. But part of the journey has been finding other teachers who do the same. And we have Trisha here who's a visual art teacher. Can you give us a wave, Trisha? Yes. We have music educators. We have, where's Betty? Betty's in China with Janelle. Can you give us a wave, Betty and Janelle? Hey, hey. And we have Andrew and Jane and Allie from Asia or Austral Asia, we'll say. Jane, if you can hear us, give us a wave. Yes. So this is actually a very special video because we've actually got a collection of creative ideas from teachers all over the world. And this person sitting next to me here, I'm lucky enough, I get to work with. She's the PYP music teacher at Armaday in Vienna. Hi. This is Lydia. Hi. Nice to meet you. I'm so lucky I'm working with Samuel in Vienna. I'm originally from Italy. And being in Armaday has been also a very challenging and greatest experience since the beginning. And I think we will have, maybe I'll have a translator to talk about this personal experience. Yeah. Yep. So let's get started. We're actually really happy and excited because part of the philosophy of our school is that we want music and the arts. We want the kids to not just have a little bit of music or a little bit of visual arts. We want them to have the whole range. So we have concerts, we have performances. We both teach music with movement, with dance, with singing, with painting and drawing. We like to involve physical movement. So most of our lessons, we wouldn't really say they're sitting down, are they? No. Yeah. The goal is to have them getting an experience of something. It can be that they can use also outside the classroom. So they get an experience of that is linked with real life, as I say in my video. And they can use that experience and transfer it to anything they need to do outside the classroom. Yeah. If Eldar, who couldn't make it, he's an educator from Norway, one of his videos is exactly that, the idea of taking art and music, putting on a whole exhibition, a sound installation, where it goes beyond the classroom. And he's doing projects with the national radio there in Norway. Just amazing things. So I wanted to pass that on because I don't think he'll make the chat today. But every teacher that will be talking have been doing those amazing projects. And if we can somehow get teachers like the ones you'll see doing this everywhere, imagine what would happen to all the kids learning from those teachers. Carol, you've had kids go through, right? And they've come back to you. Right. Well, yeah. I mean, and I'm going to push it on to some other people because I've been out of the classroom a little bit. But my whole thing was I moved from teaching about the arts and actually doing the arts. And when I transferred that and when the kids got to be able to compose and like you said, make, that's when everything exploded. That was that was that was my it took me a couple years to sort of figure that one out. You know, we didn't study the composer. We wrote music like the composer. That that's that was the difference. So I'm going to move it on to Trisha because that's she's my inspiration, I'm telling you. So Trisha, talk about your classroom and what you do with some of the things about making in the classroom. Okay, well, we're all about making in the classroom because I'm a visual art teacher. And along the same lines that you just spoke of, we would look at famous artwork, famous artists, and then we would make art that was in the style of or take certain aspects of a piece of art and and own it ourselves and learn concepts as we go. But we're also infusing a lot of technology into what we do. So we do maybe digital extensions from our physical art making experience. And I could go into a lot of detail, but there's a lot of people here. So I don't want to do a lot of green screen stuff. And you put here, you put the kids create their own backgrounds, then they put you put the kids in the art. So it's like they're at the two things going at the same time. Right. And there's storytelling involved, there's movement involved, voice involved. We're really connecting all the arts in in my art room when we do things like that. That's what I loved about your video, Trisha, the fact that you had the kids and it looked like they were working on the projects together in groups. And everyone had a sort of a job they're all creating. But the projects were amazing. The one with the person dancing on the hand. Yeah, that was really cool. And it wasn't that hard because you know, we have iPads now. And just a few clicks of a button, you can do amazing things. And it wasn't like that before the iPads. It was very complicated. And maybe one computer in the room and the teacher pretty much had to do all the technology and the kids stood by and kind of watched over my shoulder. But now they're making it. It's in their hands. They can do it themselves. Yeah, literally, it's in their hand. Yes, literally. Andrew, you used a lot of technology in the classroom too with your film video. How did that go? Well, thank you, Sam. It was a really interesting project. We've over the past few years have been trying to move to some more authentic learning tasks. So our philosophy at the moment is we want our tasks to be big and to be meaningful. So in some way, try to reflect real world applications. So in music, we try to approach that by rather than just learning about film music. We try to approach it by actually creating a short film or a film trailer and creating the music that goes with the actions. So, yes, the technology was a real big focus on that. But it really was just a tool to get us to that end product where we were creating that piece of film and the music that goes along with it. So what we saw from the, it was, we've got boys in our middle school and that was focused on that area in year eight at that time. What the boys really got out of that was the fact that they spent a lot of times in groups talking about ideas and then moving around to the school with their iPads outside filming themselves. And, yeah, that actually getting up and moving and creating and taking it back into a space and saying that was rubbish. Let's do it again. It was a real different learning style than what we're, I guess, what we've been used to in the thinking back five, ten years ago, where it's very sit down, listen to something and sort of learn through that transmission style. This was this flip that whole concept completely on its head. That's like what you were saying, the transfer, taking the skills and what Trisha's doing, transferring all those different ideas to these projects. Betty, hello. Can you hear us from China? It's working. Yeah, you're kind of breaking up a little bit, I'm afraid. Because you're working, you and Janella were working on something quite special. You're taking that idea of working with the kids, not doing the usual thing of, if I got this right, the ensemble classroom. You teamed up with Janelle. Hello, can you wave Janelle? Yeah, I'm here. Who's a, would I say tech coach, tech coordinator? Yeah, that all of those can be me. Betty here is a string specialist and she teaches at a school in Guangzhou in China. And I'll let you explain. Can you tell us what you did and how it wasn't just music? Oh, Betty, can you hear us? Maybe Janelle, can you try and jump in? I can. Betty is, Betty, are you there? Yeah, but I can't, I can hardly hear, so sorry. I just don't know what the question is. Just if you want to explain a little bit about what the project was and how it was different than a usual string ensemble projector class. Well, we've been doing a bit of composing as part of the performance ensemble. And it's always like a little bit of, you know, you need the commitment to just not always be performing to carve out that time. And then because they've been doing several composition using GarageBand already, and I just wanted them to have more choice, the whole idea is really again, connecting technology to real life and make it meaningful so that it's just not, it's not just a project that they do and then they go, okay, we're done. Sorry, next time, you know, let's wait until next term. And what's the best thing about this whole thing is that I am really not, even if you tell me that I have to actually make music out of Minecraft, I will have a fit myself. But the kids, I mean, like, they already have all of these knowledge and they'll say, oh, well, this isn't really homework. And then they spent hours and hours of, you know, choosing sound making things. And they go, okay, I'm going to keep working on that. And it's just been so amazing because they now own it. And not only, you know, even though they said, well, we just get to play Minecraft. I'm going, ha, that's what you think. But you're actually making sound and music out of it. And so that's been the most amazing thing in my journey. And Janelle's just been wonderful because I'm naturally not a very techy person, really. I love the fact that you said that I had a parent comment to me at parent teach interviews that the child who was doing Minecraft music from one of your ideas, you and Janelle. And they said that I had to walk in and my student, my child was doing three hours of homework. And they thought it was bad. And then I explained to them, no, they're just being creative. They got lost in flow. And they didn't even see it as homework anymore. It was something they wanted to do. You know what, I think all of us are going to say this. We don't call what we do homework. We call it work. And I think that because work is not in the home, work is in your mind. And it's work. I got to get my work flow. It's flow. Yeah, it's flow and work. It's not homework. And if I could just add something. I'm my background isn't in the arts or in music. I'm a math major by trade. But now I'm new to this role as a tech coach. So I kind of work across all subject areas and everything from grade six to 12. And something that's been really important to me is STEM learning across genders and across all facets of life. And the idea of incorporating the arts in STEM learning, I think is really linking in, especially girls, but even some boys who might traditionally not be interested in science or math or technology in a more traditional sense. And by using Minecraft or using GarageBand or using green screens or different things like this are really getting students to realize that these subjects aren't just for nerdy type people. We can make this work for everybody. And do amazing projects that are not just, as someone said, not just per term. Exactly. If I can jump to Ali, Ali's in Laos. Hello, Ali. Hi, how's it going? Just to build in on that project idea of taking things further than the classroom or taking things beyond just let's say, for example, we mentioned GarageBand. But if I was to take the next step further, you've done something. What have you done? Oh, I've done a lot of stuff on Ableton, which is a program and this Ableton push, which is a device to help work with the program to compose. So I've got my little Ableton push kind of thing set up here. It looks pretty fancy. So for the kids, the biggest thing for me was to show them how to make, because a lot of them want to get started, but don't know the starting point. So last year, I was teaching myself how to use Ableton, totally new to it, totally scared by it. And I ended up getting the kids to make little snippets of tunes and we put it on to this device here called the Ableton push. And we're able to make an overture for a player, as you would have seen in the video. But as well as that, I started to use it to get the harmonies made and to put that on here as well, just testing out composition ideas and seeing how things work structurally in a composition. And I like to have a lot of stuff shown visually. And the Ableton push has really helped me to kind of help the kids to see how ideas are sequenced one after the other. It's really interesting looking at the room behind you. I know we're talking about technology. A few of us mentioned it's been a key part of what we've done that's creative. But each of us have used it in a way that's tactile. We've actually engaged with all of the sensors. So it's not just been that it's a piece of technology, but we've done it with hands, with singing, with our sight, with you've got instruments. So you actually use that and you've got buttons. Who doesn't like pressing buttons? Oh, and I got some of these as well. So my kids had seen a tiny little MIDI keyboard that I'd had that I was typing music in on. And they said, oh, can I play with it? And there were so many who kept asking, oh, it's so much easier if I use that. So I bought a bunch of these for my grade 10s to experiment on. And now they can do things with this that I had no idea was possible. And so sometimes I had kids in my classes who have just explored on their own so much about music production that they're sharing with me all of these ideas now. But I think the fact that I'm trying it and getting it wrong and actually go to them with questions is a way for me to build relationships with them around music. So and that's that's kind of key. I love the fact that everyone is saying that by doing all these sort of activities in the classroom, they are experimenting also, you know, the teacher are taking an adventure. They don't know where the old they're all nodding. It's really good learning thing is going to end, you know, it's that is that is the key. We are the first who are taking a journey into something new. And by doing that, we are being created to to get with the kids and they are giving us something and we are changing it and we are. I think one of the hardest things about using the technology is maybe the first steps. And but then the brilliant thing is that now that there are so many things like like this, like Twitter, like YouTube, like, like Facebook, even just to share of I learned how to do this thing, you can learn how to do this too. And this is how I think it's it's encouraging us to go, oh, look what I found out to the kids. And then we're looking like we're learning in the moment to and then then they're unafraid to go, oh, well, I can try out these ideas. Yeah, I think I agree. I think that's really important. Yeah, you know what, Samuel, I think is he might have muted his, his microphone. We're going to go to is it iron? Did I say that right, lion? Ian, Ian, I'm sorry, Ian. Hi, everyone. Yes. Just tuning in. Great conversation. So just a bit. Okay, great. And Jane Marie, why don't you talk a little bit about what goes on in your classroom? Yeah, so I work at Tara in Sydney with with Ian. And so a big part of our music curriculum with the girls is encouraging them to think outside the box and sort of where creativity comes in to our classrooms is challenging them to yet think beyond the scope of what they use to so presenting them with so we're a music classroom but presenting them with different kinds of music that at first they might think, oh, that's what is that? And my background is composition. So I've been exposed to some really, really weird stuff that might not, you know, the average person would go like, what is that? So showing that kind of thing to the girls and then saying, well, why not, you know, and then from that, so they're not confined and constrained by all these rules that you have to follow and that sort of freeze them up to explore, you know, music from their own experience and their own perspective and then we give them the tools of music, notation and a bit of technology so that then they can create their own composition. So it's all about creating and in every year, we have a composition task and it's very free and open and they can write whatever they like within, you know, the scope of whatever task we're doing. But there's always that challenge of, you know, think a bit bigger, you know, what's it about and some of the girls came up with their own definitions of music in year seven and it was really cool to see that they were saying that, you know, music can be anything so long as it's got sort of artistic purpose or it's got some sort of structure or form and they were coming up with these things that you would see in other things like creative writing and visual arts and dance and things like that. So yeah, I think that's really cool. And next place I'd like to see that go is maybe some cross art form collaboration that would be really, really cool like Edgar was doing with, you know, bringing the visual arts into the music and learning about technology. So yeah, that's sort of what we're doing and yes, it's been really, really great so far. I've only been at the school for one term and what the girls have done has been really exciting so far in that time. Jane, can you hear me? Yes. So you've been there for one term at this school and you've got this class of students and all of a sudden you have this idea that you want to experiment with what they call music. What's the first place that you go to? I don't want to put you so much on the spot but what's the first thing you think of to say I want to be creative? Is that what you say? For me or for them? For you as the teacher. For me as the teacher. Yeah, I just want, I want, I don't want, I guess what my motivation is is that with, I see that with the technology that we have today, the risk is that we can have a lot of music that sounds the same. And with tools such as, especially sequencing tools such as Ableton, which is a fantastic tool and Sibelius, you know, which is a great notation tool. They organize music into uniform boxes and if you're not an artist that just completely shuts down creativity and everything becomes the same and it's boring. Whereas if you're completely free flow and treat it like a blank canvas, then we get interesting art and then we get purpose and design and all those interesting things. So yeah, so what I want is, I want interesting pieces of art. I don't want every student to produce the same thing and I've got some really unusual results from some of the students as well as some more conventional results. They shouldn't all be writing the same thing and getting the same results because then we're going to end up 10 years down the track with everybody's music sounding the same in the real world and we don't want that. So yeah, as a teacher that's my big thing is I really want them to be just free and creative and not be consistent. And they do bring all of their own personalities to the music, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Exactly. They've all got their own take on it. Absolutely. So one of the things I'm doing with my grade 10s right now, we've just finished a unit on performance practice in classical music and now we're writing music and it's free to a degree. It's free in that they're going to bring their own personality and ideas about music to it but we're still learning some composition strategies to then get around what they have to do. So they're writing music with a purpose for a play. So they're meeting with some students who are acting in the play and they're directing a scene and they have some ideas about what that's going to be. So I think, I think I'm more in boxes than you are. But one of the things that's been good about this is that the classes that I have here that are class sizes are really small. So it means that I know that the individual kids and I go and so I matched up a kid for instance. I'm like, oh, this play is set in the 1950s and 60s. And I know that you really like playing electric guitar. Why don't you look at some kind of Chuck Berry ideas and then try and experiment with those. Maybe that would fit in with this scene or have a read through the scene and then see and then present some ideas to the to the actor who's doing the play. And then I had another kid who's really into electronic music and producing stuff on Fruity Loops FL Studio. So I said, okay, for this composition project, yes, you have to tick these boxes but I think that all the electronic sounds that you've been experimenting with anyway, that's where you should go with this play project. So yeah. Yeah, I think it's really helpful to have some boxes and have some set parameters. Obviously, even for ourselves when we're creating, if you don't have, if you don't set some rules at the beginning, it's really hard to get started. I think we need to find a balance between setting some parameters and also encouraging that freedom of creativity. I'm very curious if I let my kids at the final unit just do other stuff, it could be really, really interesting. I know I've got one student who, yeah, Marco who's been doing weird things with FL Studio. Could be really interesting just to say, all right, you have free reign. Yeah, we actually did. I think at the end of last year, Ian, I think that was your class that was doing a, an Anything Goes composition in Soundtrap. That's right. So just a bit of context. So firstly, good evening and yes, it's a really exciting time for our music department. Firstly, having Jane Marie who's been superb. It's just been great to innovate, collaborate with her. So that's been very exciting. And we're also heading towards authorization for our Middle East program with the IB. So that's really given us an opportunity to look at what we're doing, our programs and tasks. So that's been superb. And so part of it, we're a PC-based school. And so, and to find a good loops-based program is difficult. So Sony Music Gas, you'd have to buy the license each year. So we came up with Soundtrap. And so part of that was to explore, to create and collaborate with others. And my just overarching idea was to have hard fun. So, so that they go and push themselves to wherever they need to. And they went to town on it. So it was just great to see them enjoy. And we had students, again, I think it was Alison, I'm mentioning to her students just doing amazing things beyond kind of what they, what our knowledge might be. So we had students importing files, parts of the Caribbean showed up in there. And so they're doing all sorts of great stuff with that. So I think, yeah, just not be afraid to try new things. But I know for us, yeah, looking to again, try a few new things using technology. And we'd love to head down the Ableton Road ourselves and just find out, yeah, how that works best. And also for the students, I think my big thing for technology is not to be using it for technology's sake, but what is it and how do we use it to realize the learning outcomes? And for us, I guess that's that's an important thing to keep in mind. We've got that question over here in the chat window. There's been some questions that have been asked as we're talking. I can try and roll in a few of these questions. And I'll open it up to everybody because if I can just take a few of the questions and put them together. The question was Susan here who's watching is very curious about how all of us, all these wonderful educators, that's you, how all of you came to use technology in your classes. Was it a part of your training? Or did you learn it by connecting with other teachers that you just changed that a little bit because when we become teachers, we generally don't learn the things. This is my experience, we don't generally learn the things that eventually in the field you have to learn. Does that make sense? College is, university is one thing. When you're actually in the field, it's a completely different story. And then you've got curriculum and then you have to think about how can I be creative with curriculum as well. So I guess if I just put all these questions together, how would you find inspiration in your classroom doesn't have to be with technology, but how would you find inspiration to be creative with your kids? Let's say you have a class next term and you have an idea where would be the first place that you would go. I'll leave it, I'll ask Lydia on my left here because she's here. I'll let her break it, but what would you do with it? Well, we also have the IB curriculum. So we kind of have to connect with the other subjects. And we have to think about concepts and this is the key for me because concepts of overarching many other things. And so when I'm like brainstorming with my colleagues, we are thinking about what we, how we can connect the different subjects through the concepts. Then I tend to have some lights in my hand. And so links come up and say, oh, I saw that thing or I was walking in the street and I don't know, I'm in the city, there's this going on or I watched that video. And that was great for me. I mean, bring me little water, the Facebook. Yeah. And nowadays, I mean, you spend a lot of time also on the internet. So it's even easier to get to know what the great ideas the others are developing somewhere else. And so from there, then I start thinking about my students and I say, what would that be? What is interesting for them about that thing that I like? And how can I put it in the classroom? And so then I think about something that will stimulate their thinking. And like a provocation or something that somebody said something weird. I like that because I think if we were looking like the different classroom, while we are teaching people that don't know what we're doing, they will think like, what is that, you know, and that that question would lead natural to curiosity. Yeah. So what it is that is cool about it. And then that will lead the students inquiring on how that thing works and what is the form and and then they're discovering. So for me in the classroom, the experience that the students should have is always like an experience of discovering something. Because if you don't want to explore, if you don't have that curiosity, you will just be still and forget because you will not use them learning. I don't know if that makes sense for you. I hope so. Does anyone want to add something to that? Yes, can I jump in? Andy, go for it. Okay, sorry. Yeah, look, when it comes to inspiration, I like to think assessment first and that might sound a little bit weird. But I often think at well, how is the student going to demonstrate they understand all of this content? It's not to say that you can't be creative with content delivery. But I think if you're looking for entry points to being creative, think to actually demonstrate all of this. And along the way, how do you design an assessment sort of project that gives the teacher enough points to give ongoing feedback along the way to help shape that project? And how are you going to get the student to also stop along the way and reflect on their process? So really, if you think about the assessment as the whole, where do you want them to get to at the end? And then you start to try to break down the boundaries and think, well, rather than completing a test or just doing something that ticks boxes for an assessment in your curriculum, how can I extend that further into a big project? And I often like to try to challenge myself to think about something which is almost unobtainable, something that I don't think that the students could probably do at the start of the term. But then once you challenge yourself into thinking that way, the first thing that you'd probably start to do is just googling and looking up other educators and seeing specific tools that can actually help you take that project on. And that's really how I find most of the tools that I'm looking for. It's just out of necessity. It's me thinking, I've got ourselves into this project which is going a little bit crazy. I need some tools, I need some technology that's going to help me do that. So that's part of it. It's just myself frantically searching around. But the other half is just by connecting on Twitter and Facebook and just getting ideas from what other people, other educators are doing. Sometimes that can just light up a light bulb somewhere that you think, hey, that's going to help our project. I know I can use that, not in maybe the exact same way as the other educator, but I can definitely use that in my teaching. So yeah, really, I just kind of forced myself to design projects which require me to look around for technology tools. If I add it to the question, and Janelle, can you still hear me there? Yeah, good. Yes, I can. If I just add to that question, because we've got another one coming through the chats and it's tied into exactly what Lydia here and Andrew just said. The question is, how do these amazing educators find inspiration now and collaborate with each other beyond what they've done for K-12? So try and think of this as a beyond task now. How do we find inspiration and collaborate with each other beyond what we've done? So Janelle, I'm just directing it to you because I know we've had some tweets backwards and forwards about Minecraft music. Sure. Is that okay? Yeah, I can take it from there. So this is my first year in this role and first year at this school. So kind of how this came about was I did a presentation to our high school staff, just a five minute thing about what I could do for them. And Betty came up to me after and said, I've been thinking about using Minecraft and she knew that I knew you a little bit. And she said, what do you think about that? How can we make it happen? And I just said, well, let's try. We'll just see what happens. And then from there, I think we connected with you on Twitter, even though we knew you a little bit before and got some of your resources. And then I did some digging on my end and showed that to Betty. And then we kind of collaborated together with her class and then it kind of just snowballed from there. So I think it's important. I think what Andrew's talking about with like, doing something that you don't even know if it's going to work or you don't even know if it's possible and just letting yourself try and just seeing how it goes and looking for support. If you have a tech coach in your school, definitely ask them for help because I'm willing to help with any subject. And I'm always just so happy when people approach me with these crazy ideas. So I'd like to jump in. Okay, so earlier in the conversation, we talked about how it might be homework or work for students. But I always think of it as play. And in how much joy creativity brings to myself and my students. And so I do a lot of playing and experimenting for myself. And then I tried to see how this can be useful in my classroom. And one of the silliest things came up and I was going to share this if we were going to talk about something personal or professional. But when I was little, my mom caught me playing with my fingers. I would have conversations where one finger would talk to the other. And I was about three. And I remember my mom said, you'll never be bored when you have that kind of creativity because you always have your fingers hopefully. And so I remember thinking, well, if I can be creative with my fingers, I can, you know, see what I can do to inspire my students to think about taking ordinary things and turning it into a piece of art. And at the end of the video that I submitted, I don't know if you remember, there was like a thumbtastic idea where students made a creature out of a finger, thumb or hand. And so that was from my own personal experience, having thought that way about my own hands. But then I was able to think about what learning content is involved. And we can do a digital collage where they put their own eyes and their own mouth in it. They could think about the expression in their face when they are creating that collage. Then they could use their voice to speak through their artwork when they're done and incorporate some sort of pun. So they're using the finger, hand or thumb pun as they're speaking. So I was able to like take something that was funny and brought joy to me and put it in my classroom and make it meaningful for my students. And that structure, then there's that little bit of structure like here's what you're going to work with and here's what it's going to contain. But it had this creativity. They had to completely invent who this creature was and think out of the box and do something completely silly and create a character. It was so joyful and strange. But I love that my art could be like that. Yeah, that word that you said that joyful. Can you hear me? Yes. That's sitting here with Lydia. We have conversations about that all the time. And sometimes we as teachers, we don't feel joyful. But when you get in front of those kids and you do something, you forget about that stuff. And the learning with the children can be joyful. I'm going to direct the question directly to you because what you said was really good. There's a question coming through from a guy called Wes. Hello. And he has this question. How will you get students to stop along the way and reflect on their process? If Trisha, if you could give a quick answer and then maybe Ali, how do you make students maybe not necessarily stop, but to pause, to take time from their play and reflect? So I have an online digital art gallery for my students where we post our finished art projects. And part of what we do is we write an artist statement. So we just go ahead and type what we're thinking, what we're learning, what we're experiencing or whatever prompt I might put out there. And share it with the world. And mostly they have fan club members in their portfolio. And that's their parents, their grandparents, their aunts and uncles. And they have, they continue these discussions at home because their fan club members are seeing their art and hearing what they're thinking about their creation. Cool. And Ali? So with my grade 9s and grade 10s, we keep a process journal about how we're developing our idea over time. One good example is my grade 9 class at the moment. We're doing songwriting. And so as we're generating lyrics and looking all these different lyric models of learning bits of the guitar and all of that, we're talking about the, all of the strategies that are helping us or motivating us to, to continue to work at playing guitar or continuing to work with our lyrics. And, and so we document that in the process journal, as well as that I show them models of my really bad songwriting. So a while back, I started a SoundCloud account. And I would record some of the lyric ideas that were coming to me. I also, I've got pinned up next to me at the moment, all of my bad songwriting lyrics that I'm going to record in the studio this weekend. And so I'll show the kids my ideas and then say, keep all of the bad ideas. I show them my bad ideas. I showed them the ideas that the change got better and explained through that process. And then they do the same thing themselves when they're songwriting with my, so that's with grade nine. The other thing, my grade 10s right now, we're using a lot of screenshots because we're using programs like Sibelius and Ableton and Logic Pro in order to start generating some compositions. And so about every 20 minutes, I'm like, take a screenshot, write a comment. And then so they have a, they document everything that they're doing as they're going through so that they see, it helps them to see that there's a process and a flow. Sam, before you were talking about creative flow with my grade 10s, we looked very specifically at Chicks and Mahaley, I don't know how to say his name, please check, through kind of the modes that we go through as we're being creative and getting to a point where we know exactly what we need in order to be creative. And then we're able to get into the zone, the zone of flow. And so I talked to my students about setting up that environment as well. So if they've got their process journal, if they're documenting their ideas, they're actually building from one day to the next, plus they're thinking about how this idea connects to the next idea. And what do they need in that moment? Maybe it's intervention from me, maybe it's intervention from looking at things on a YouTube video, then we do that, and then they're able to generate their ideas. And so for me, it's not just about final product. In fact, the majority of it is about the flow and the process that they've been on and to see how they can then apply that to future music projects. Oh, Sam, your mute's on. It's on. It's on. Okay. My back now. Yes. So we'll stay connected. How's that? How's that? We're back. Yes. We're back. So just to build on another question that came through, all the things you're doing and all the things everyone here is doing, we'll stay connected on Twitter and Facebook, won't we? Absolutely. So one of the things that you shared on Twitter recently was about all of the Minecraft ideas. And in fact, a bunch of you are doing Minecraft with music. And that got me thinking about video games and music. And then for my, that led me into the spark of thought of someone else was mentioning. And then so I went to my grade 12 student who was trying, struggling through composing an idea. And as soon as I mentioned music for video games, he went, oh, that's how I can change my piece. It doesn't have to have a vocalist. I can just have like the soundscape that kind of develops and flows. And that's how my composition is going to work. So through Twitter and through what you guys share online, sometimes sparks of ideas come in. That's great. I think if I can add to that, Alison, that's a big part of how we collaborate is we are constantly watching what each other is doing and feeding off of that back into our classrooms, just essentially what you're saying is we're seeing what each other is doing because we're all sharing, we're always taking shots, screenshots or photos or writing tweets about what we're doing in the classroom and we're all watching each other and listening and then that's feeding back into that creativity loop for us as teachers. And it's exactly the same for me. Like I've been seeing everyone doing these Minecraft things through the same thing, for example, and we're just about to go into a unit with year eight where it's film, TV and multimedia. And I don't think we had really been looking at multimedia very much in that. And now I've been thinking, well, I've been saying, what about anime? What about game music? What about all this stuff? What about phone stuff? And so we've actually broadened our task and we're letting the girls come up with their multimedia or whatever it is that they're going to compose for. And we'll see what they come up with. Maybe they'll come up with game music on their own. Yeah, that's just from watching what everyone else is doing and going, oh, yeah, right. So it's just that constant feedback loop. And it's because we're all sharing that it works. Yes, I was just going to say that sharing thing. And stealing, which is good. Yeah, making your own way. Creative plagiarism. Yes. I have some things here, processing all of this. I always had the end of the year a spectacular project. And that was a project that had to involve music or free one art had involved art. And they were allowed to do anything they wanted. It had it, but it had involved music. And I had one of the students gaming. And this was five years ago. And he put games together and did all the videos for it. And then he decided to put a website together and ended up winning a huge award. And he flew out to Hollywood. I didn't even know how to make the games. He knew how to make the games. But the music was what put it all together. He had all the different sounds that went with and I think we're talking about, you know, with ringtones with the different art that Patricia does, you know, we're not just sitting in a chair playing the same music that everyone else is playing or doing the same art project that everyone's doing. I think you want to do something at least I used to tell my students, do something that no one has done before. Yeah, unique creativity somehow. And that happens when you give some freedom. But there's also a structure. So I think our job as educators is to help the students take a journey. But then they have, they should have space for their own ideas and help them help them build something out of those ideas and give them some freedom. That's a really important thing. Oh, sorry. Oh, no, sorry about this. Well, the other thing I was just going to quickly add in here is as well as structure and freedom that that's sort of dichotomy. The other really important thing is to develop what sort of in the research is called a growth mindset, which is where a student well feels like it's okay to fail, it's okay to take risks. They don't have the opposite, which is a fixed mindset, which is they think that they've got their all of their creativity and their knowledge and their capacity is in built and it's it's not flexible. And there are some students that have that that they think, well, they're just as good as they are. And they don't like to take risks because they, you know, and the one thing that we're really trying to foster in our students is the the opposite of that. It's where you do have a growth mindset. So that, you know, the more that you try, and you might fail 100 times, but that one time, you might succeed and it'll be spectacular. And I think that's also something that we don't always think about with when talking about creativity is that it's okay to fail and it's okay to make mistakes. Definitely. I just wanted to, I really like the idea of students exploring within a structure and giving them the tools for success because of the structure. And that's also where I can add my instruction, you know, I can create content within there and within it. And then they can be creative and still have a product that they feel is successful. For example, I give my students a movie making challenge. We call them Fugal Flicks. They're movies that our student created aren't related. And they become a piece of my resources that I use in the future. So this year, I had them make a movie that would be about taking care of the artwork when it's on display in the hallways. So it was called Don't Crush My Dreams. And so it's a music video. So they have to sing and record an original song. And then the song helps create structure for what the movie's going to look like because that's a perfect format for storyboarding. Like here's what we're going to see at this moment of the lyrics. And so that's when they can be completely creative about storytelling and have a package that when they're done is a resource that we could show all our students, share it online, get a bigger audience for it. And just last weekend, we screened it at a local film festival. So the students got a chance to see it on the big screen. The host asked them questions about the movie making process. They got on stage and talked about, you know, what they learned, like how to do green screen effects and how to record in GarageBand and sing a song together. And they also had to, well, I mean, they got all this attention at the film festival, which was wonderful to have that kind of audience for a project that we just did in our little art room. So that's what I'm talking about, giving them the structure so you know that they're going to be successful, but then letting them have creativity and ownership in what they do. Can I add to that? Ali, yeah, go. As soon as you can put a project in the real world, that's just the most brilliant freeing thing for the kids. But it can also be really terrifying, but it's also terrifying in a good way. My grade nine class, no, grade 10 class have just written some critiques of an open source composition that has been made available through Chronos Quartet and just happened to tweet out there and send an email to the composer and said, hey, by the way, my kids loved your composition. And here's some things that I said about it. And then so suddenly the composer's got in contact with us and said, hey, would love to read what you're doing, would love to see the compositions that your kids are doing. And I showed it to my grade 10s and they've gone, oh, he can actually read our work. And I'm like, yeah, if you want to see it, send through your critiques, you can do that. And then they're like, oh, well, I have to tidy mine up. I still need to edit mine further. I don't think it's perfect yet. So having the real world application, I think makes them work that little bit harder, makes them like more engaged, more motivated and more inspired to do something a little bit more special. So it's really cool reading about some of the things that you guys have been doing out there. And what, who's the gentleman who can't be with us from Norway? Elder. Elder, what elder has been doing in getting art and music together out in the real world and having his kids work seen by such a huge audience? That's really amazing. I wanted to bring all this together. We've got a few minutes left. Hopefully for those watching, they've seen that we've got all these music educators, art educators, and I know I'm putting subjects on them, but they should notice that every teacher so far has been using visual arts, music, drama, voice, technology, literature, film. It's interesting that this is the creativity strand and yet we've represented in the video I put up used mathematics. We've used almost every subject group, despite our titles being music or art teachers and things like that. I find that very powerful and the fact that we are not afraid to make mistakes. One of the comments was share the errors, share the mistakes. So Ali, you having your lyrics, one of the things I say to my kids is the teacher should make the project first because we learn how to fail and if you're brave to share that with the kids, they actually think that's cool. And then you connect to the wider audience, your idea of you tweeted the composer. Anyone here, if you heard of Warcraft and the new game that's out called Overwatch that all the kids love watching. Yeah. I got onto Twitter and tweeted the composer Neil Lacry and he skyped my classroom and gave us composition tips for Warcraft and for, they will do this thing, the Lego Batman movie, Lorna Balfe has said he'll skype my classroom. So if you just, yeah, I know Batman, come on. I find that our curriculum, we think it can be constricting, but because we're creative and we pinch, we borrow from each other, our classrooms become better places. And someone has asked the question, her name's Alisha, her question was, so are the ideas for Minecraft in music being compiled and curated somewhere? Because we've all said that we're liking Minecraft. We all have websites. I'm assuming most of us have websites or Twitter accounts and Facebook. So we all share these things. Maybe what we could do after this is start to find a place where we, I don't know, a group or a Twitter hashtag where we continue to share ideas. What do you think? Yeah. Yeah. And on the K-12 thing, I have all of the websites. If you give me a website, I put it up there so that your name is highlighted and it goes to and all your Twitter handles are on there. So, so all of that is a place so that we can be sharing my, um, I've just finished teaching Minecraft to music. So I'll be sharing all that stuff. I know Janelle and Betty have done that as well. Um, and Jane, you were talking about anime music, right? Yes. So that's just because I've got a bunch of anime enthusiasts in my classroom who, when I open that can of worms, wow, it's a good one. My kids, they said, we want to learn anime music. And so I thought, do you know what? You're going to write it. So their task is, they actually have to write the unit and teach it to me because I don't know. I like watching anime, but I don't know anything about the composers. I like the fact that you would say something like that and it triggers all of these ideas and we can then share it. So for those who are watching, you need to follow these people. You need to follow Andy, Andrew, Betty, Janelle, um, Trisha, Jane, Ian's there as well. Um, Miss Campanelli here. Follow these people on Twitter from the website and look at what they're doing. And then if they start sharing other people's work as well, follow them. That's how it works. And if we can connect from Norway to China, uh, we're in Austria, but I'm Australian. Lydia's Italian. Trisha's from the US. We've got Australia. If we can find all those people online and great ideas, you can too. Great. Great. Yes, we will follow you. Yes. Oh, Samuel, I can thank you enough, Samuel, for all you have done. Um, this is great. I mean, uh, to put this group together and it's like you said, it's amazing that all of us come from different areas, but we all really believe the same thing. Um, it's, it's fantastic. Thanks everyone for all your hard work and play and, uh, you find joy every day. Um, this has been fabulous and we're going to wrap it up right now. Okay. I'm going to stop the broadcast.