Grants/Creative Commons in Music Education
Describe the project you are proposing as clearly as possible in just five sentences.
This project, Creative Commons in Music Education, will connect a group of interested music educators to develop a deep understanding of creative commons licensing, design and implement projects that integrate CC licensed digital content for K-12 music students, develop best-practices of CC licensed content in music education, and promote the use of creative commons licensing across music education programs. The group will meet several times throughout the year and make use of a web-based social media platform such as Buddypress to reflect on and document their projects. The group will pool together their collective knowledge, project experiences, and findings to build a knowledge-base and best practices of how creative commons licensing can be used specific to typical K-12 music education contexts. The group will then act as a set of experts and mentors to assist other music educators integrate creative commons licensing in their music programs.
Detail the tangible project output (e.g., paper, blog post, written materials, video/film, etc.; this would be in addition to the final written report that successful grant recipients will be expected to deliver to CC at the conclusion of the project).
Tangible project output will be both process and product oriented. Throughout the course of Creative Commons in Music Education, participating music educators will use web-based social media to document their experiences working with creative commons licensing in their own music programs. In this way, other music educators may learn from the groups’ processes. Output at the end of the project will take the following forms: - Descriptions and examples of each music educator’s creative-commons focused project - A set of best practices based on the music educators’ experiences, findings, and group dialogue - A knowledge-base of creative-commons resources specific to varying K-12 music education contexts in the form of a media rich website - Presentations and workshops based on Creative Commons in Music Education to increase awareness, knowledge, and possibilities for creative commons licensing among K-12 music educators. - A paper documenting and analyzing Creative Commons in Music Education for a professional music education journal
Describe the community you are targeting. How would the project benefit the community?
Creative Commons in Music Education is designed specifically for the K-12 music education community focusing on but not limited to the U.S. and state of Arizona. This project would benefit music educators and their students by broadening the discourse of music and ownership beyond a current focus on copyright and intellectual property rights infringements within music education. Creative Commons in Music Education will also result in resources for expanding the types of musical engagement that takes place in K-12 music classrooms and ensembles to reflect contemporary forms of musicianship and digital culture. While resources related to music and creative commons currently exist, they remain largely outside music curricula. By working directly with music educators Creative Commons in Music Education will foster interest and build support for the use of creative commons licensing in music classrooms in ways that can be replicated, modified, and scaled up across US and International school music programs.br />
As a member of the School of Music in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University, I work regularly with pre-service and in-service music educators. Through the Consortium for Digital, Popular, and Participatory Culture in Music Education @ ASU(CDPPCME) I am currently working with several music educators interested in the use of contemporary technologies and expansion of traditional music programs. I regularly present on topics related to technology and popular culture in music education, teach several courses that integrate creative commons licensed digital content in the context of teaching and learning music, and regularly discuss related topics on my music education weblog. As a former public school music educator I understand the challenges and benefits of integrating and contributing creative commons licensed content in school contexts. I have also generated interest in digital culture, remixing, and creative music making among local music educators through my courses, workshops, and presentations.
How will you measure and evaluate your project’s impact - on your main participants? Other contributors? On the larger community?
Creative Commons in Music Education will be measured and evaluated through both formative and summative assessments of project work and output. The use of social media will allow for continual communication between the various project group members and myself. Reflection will be built into Creative Commons in Music Education through discussions, meetings, and questions posed to the group members to determine their progress, challenges, and growth in developing an understanding of how creative commons licensed content can be used in their classrooms. All members of the Creative Commons in Music Education project will work collaboratively to create a rubric designed to evaluate its impact on their teaching, their students’ musical experience, and the local music education community. We will also maintain the online knowledge-base and determine to what extent additional music educators replicate or modify the various classroom projects. After the first year of Creative Commons in Music Education, a concerted effort will be made for group members to mentor and communicate with additional music educators interested in integrating similar projects in music classrooms. Additional projects will be documented when possible to determine the potential expansion of the projects’ impact beyond a local context.
How many participants do you expect to be involved in your project? How will you seek and sustain their involvement?
A group of 8-10 local music educators representing vocal, instrumental, and general music at the elementary and secondary level will serve as the core set of participants involved in the first year of Creative Commons in Music Education. Each of these educators’ music students will also be involved in Creative Commons in Music Education leading to approximately 100-200 students involved throughout the year. Project group members will be recruited through the relationships developed with the local music education community via the ASU music education graduate program and work of the CDPPCME. Additional music educators may be included locally, and in other geographical locations through the use of web-based communication systems and social media. Creative Commons in Music Education is designed to sustain involvement for at least one year through opportunities for group members to discuss their project process and progress at physical meetings, via video-conferencing, and via web-based social media. Participants will also be provided with resources such as music creation software and music/education-focused software-as-service subscriptions. To support, sustain, and acknowledge the participants’ work in developing resources for their peers, professional development credit will be provided. Group participants may also have their work acknowledged through their potential engagement in related presentations and workshops at the local and national level.
Describe how your project will benefit Creative Commons' mission to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in "the commons".
Creative Commons in Music Education has potential to act as a catalyst for increasing the amount of creativity in “the commons” through (1) developing direct connections between K-12 music classrooms and the commons and (2) developing students’ awareness that they can become life-long participants with the commons through creative musical engagement. This project, in developing resources specific to creative commons licensing by music teachers for music teachers, will create opportunities for perceptual shifts regarding the place of music in the commons among music educators. Additionally, Creative Commons in Music Education will result in tangible curricular and pedagogical approaches for music teachers and students to make use of and contribute music and other creative content with creative commons licensing. By infusing the discourse of creative commons within school music programs young people will have direct experience with new ways of thinking about ownership of artistic content and the commons. As students engage with shared content and in turn create their own music, they will have opportunities to embody the very ethic of the commons throughout their school music experience. The potential for young people to continue working with and creating new content outside of a school context and over the course of their lives will increase exponentially as the creative commons becomes embedded in the culture of K-12 music education.
Describe what technologies and tools your project will use. What kinds of technical skills and expertise do you bring to the project? What are your technical needs?
Creative Commons in Music Education will leverage open-source social media such as Wordpress and Buddypress to allow for project group members and their students to discuss, reflect on, and document their projects. Video conferencing software such as Skype and DimDim will be used to allow for collaboration. Funding will be used to access software-as-service to ensure stability and scalability of all Creative Commons in Music Education collaborative work and output. Open source software and APIs will be modified and extended to allow for their use in conjunction with this project in school contexts. The CDPPME website will include a section specific to Creative Commons in Music Education to display each participant’s project and make the best-practices and knowledge-base available to other educators and the public. Computers will be used in the group members’ classroom for students to engage with creative commons licensed and original digital content. Software such as Garageband, Ableton Live, and iMovie will be used for students to create and manipulate music and other digital content such as video footage. Affordable video cameras will assist in documenting the music educators’ various projects, provide students with the ability to create video content, and be used for video conferencing. A variety of acoustic and electric music instruments will be used to create music along with the computers and software. XLR to USB adapters will allow microphones to be used for recording music. Web-based collaborative music services that make use of creative-commons licensed music will be used for students to engage with existing content. I bring years of experience using the above technologies in my own classroom contexts along with expertise in assisting music educators in implementing these technologies in their own teaching. Aside from the open-source resources, the music educators participating in Creative Commons in Music Education will need to acquire the above mentioned technology resources and software-as-service. These needs are accounted for in the budget proposal.
What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to overcome them?
The Creative Commons in Music Education project faces two potential challenges (1) shifting the discourse within music education from a focus on copyright protections and infringement to one that includes creative commons licensing, sharing, and new paradigms of ownership and (2) resistance to the projects’ findings and best practices by music educators who do not view digital culture and related forms of musical engagement such as remixing as relevant for music programs. Three aspects of Creative Commons in Music Education are designed to overcome these challenges: (1) starting with a core group of motivated music educators to develop and implement strong projects (2) documenting the process, student work/learning, and providing resources for others to implement changes to their programs, and (3) designing best practices based on music educators’ experiences implementing projects to demonstrate their worth and potential in other contexts. The fact that the Creative Commons in Music Education project is being carried out within music education by music educators will assist in mitigating potential skepticism of integrating aspects of the creative commons in music programs outside the immediate project group. As additional students and music teachers engage with the group’s projects and information is disseminated across the field, the discourse related to copyright, ownership, and infringement within music education will expand beyond its current narrow focus.
How do you plan to sustain your project after the Creative Commons funding has ended? Detail specific plans. How do you plan to raise revenue to continue your efforts in the future?
The initial funding will result in a core group of music education projects that can be replicated, modified, and scaled to various contexts. The CDPPCME will work to continue fostering collaborative work around the projects along with the addition of new projects. Social media, professional organizations, conferences, and workshops will all be used to disseminate information on the commons, the projects, best-practices, and knowledge-based created by the original Creative Commons in Music Education group. Grant funding will also lead to the extension and modification of open source software that can sustain the Creative Commons in Music Education project and support its development in other contexts. Other than web-hosting, additional revenue will not be needed to keep the project ideas and related conversations available to the public. Schools wishing to use technology to carry out the educator-created projects and access software as service may use their own budgets to purchase needed software and services. Creative Commons in Music Education thus serves as a catalyst through fostering the creation and implementation of music education-specific projects which are self-sustaining through the community that is created around them online and the use of schools’ own resources to carry out the specific projects in their classrooms.
How can this project be scalable, or have a scalable impact?
Creative Commons in Music Education is inherently scalable in that the teacher-created projects, best-practices, and knowledge database are designed to be used by other music educators. The project group will also serve as experts and mentors to assist other music educators’ integration of creative commons licensing in their classrooms and ensembles. The use of cloud-based software, software as service, and tech support will ensure the capacity of Creative Commons in Music Education to be expanded beyond individual project group members’ physical resources and eventually beyond the local project’s context.
What resources and support do you expect Creative Commons to provide to your project to ensure its success (if any)?
Grant funding from Creative Commons will assist in ensuring success of Creative Commons in Music Education. Creative Commons might also support this project by providing expertise on fair use and digital media to assist project group members explain the legality of using creative commons licensing to district administrators, IT personnel, and students. Additionally, it would be helpful for Creative Commons to feature Creative Commons in Music Education and the group members on its website at some point. This increased visibility and acknowledgment of the Creative Commons in Music Education group members’ work would provide additional support from their administrators and communities along with increasing the potential of the group’s work being replicated and modified in other school music programs.
Describe how your organization currently communicates with its community members and network partners. (100 words)
Our organization currently communicates with community members via email, phone, and face-to-face meetings. More recently, several community members have experimented with using NING. Creative Commons in Music Education would act as a catalyst to leverage social media such as Twitter, Buddypress, Facebook and technologies such as Skype and DimDim to communicate and collaborate.
Legal
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