Fort Stevens High School

Jake Anderson

March 5, 2020
 Section 2: Position

To whom it may concern:

I am a music teacher at Fort Stevens High School, I specifically teach the electives guitar

I-III, and history of rock music. Though I did teach math when I first started my teaching career.

I have had many years of experience in the field, and one of the biggest developments that I have

seen in the educational space is the rise of technology. Technology has allowed for a wonderful

impact for both teachers and students alike. Starting with the basics, projectors and smart boards

have made teaching my classes so much easier, more for my former math class but it has uses in

music as well. I don’t constantly have to stand at the white board and obstruct a students view.

However, I believe technology is more helpful for students than it is for teachers. Students

become more engaged with the activity or work they are completing if it is done on a computer.

There have been times after working with iPads or going to the computer lab where students will

ask me when they will get to use them again, which indicates how much they enjoy working with

technology to complete their assignments. I’ve also witnessed a more collaborative effort among

students. I give some sort of group project each year, and I have done them with and without

technology. From my observations, students seem to produce better projects, and each member

has been more informed about their project when presenting. Increased collaboration is noticed

by many other teachers as well, particularly in younger students as stated from information on

ed.gov. An unnamed fifth grade teacher states that they have seen students helping each other a

lot when using computers, and that kids who learn it quickly love to teach others who aren’t as

familiar with it. This page also states that students acquire a basic understanding of how various

classes of computer tools behave and a confidence about being able to learn to use new tools that
will support their learning of new software applications (International S.R.I. n.d.). This is

imperative in this day and age because technology is only going to be used more and more in

students’ daily lives and in their future workplaces. Being ahead of the curve and understanding

basics of technology and having the confidence to learn and experiment will only help students

in the future. We as educators need to plan for the students educational path, but their career path

as well. Who are we as educators if we cannot teach them the basic technological skills they will

likely need for their future?

Works Cited

International, S. R. I. (n.d.). Effects of Technology on Classrooms and Students. Retrieved March

5, 2020, from https://www2.ed.gov/pubs/EdReformStudies/EdTech/effectsstudents.html

 Section 3: Standards

There are two sets of standards for students using technology in school. They are the

International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) standards, and the Nevada Computer

and Technology Standards. The two sets of standards are similar to each other because the

Nevada Comp and Tech Standards states that their standards are based off of the ISTE standards.

For example, standard 2 in Nevada’s standards say “students use digital media and environments

to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning

and contribute to the learning of others.” ISTE standard 7 says “students use digital tools to

broaden their perspectives and enrich their learning by collaborating with others and working

effectively in teams locally and globally,” which is the same idea only phrased differently.

Additionally, standard 3 in ISTE, and standard 3 in Nevada’s where they both discuss

researching and curating using information for projects. The main difference is that ISTE

standards do not have goals for students to reach by a certain grade level, they are simple general

goals, while Nevada’s standards do have specific goals set for grade levels 2, 5, 8, and 12. This is

where Nevada’s standards are a little more specific, though it’s mostly seen in the 12th grade

goals since those are when the skills are most elaborate. Two standards I really like are 6c from

ISTE: students choose the appropriate platforms and tools for meeting the desired objectives of

their creation or communication, and 6.A.12.1 from Nevada: create an original work using

digital tools, including planning, research, editing, and production. I like these because it allows

students to be creative in completing a project or assignment, assuming the teacher allows

students the freedom of choosing their platforms, like an essay, or slideshow, or poster board.

Though I prefer 6.A.12.1 slightly more because of the extra specifications.

 Section 4: Lesson Plan

Recreation of Your Favorite Song

Grades: 8-12 (Prerequisite of Guitar I or other introductory music class)

Standard: 6.A.12.1 from Nevada Computer and Technology Standards: Create an original work

using digital tools, including planning, research, editing, and production.

Secondary Content Standard: Students will create and engage in the fundamental musical

processes of analyzing, evaluating, and listening to sound. As stated Nevada’s Department of

Education overview of standards for fine arts (http://www.doe.nv.gov/

Nevada_Academic_Standards/Fine_Arts/)

Objective: Students will understand how to use the basics of Garageband such as adding and

playing instruments, manipulating their sound, changing the volume levels and effect levels, and

quantizing by recreating a section of a song of their choosing in Garageband. Students will also

demonstrate their musical ability by playing in time and playing the correct notes.

Materials: An iPad for each student, and one for the teacher, each with the Garageband app

installed. One real time video capture device that is compatible with a projector so the teacher

may show students what they need to know for when they use the app.
Suggested Group Size: 1 student. Each student will turn in their own project, though they will

have the freedom to ask each other for feedback and help each other.

Procedure: Today you will be recreating the verse of chorus of a song of your choosing in the

Garageband app. I recommend choosing a song that is not very complicated, meaning it doesn’t

have complicated chords, bass parts, or drum parts, because you will be very limited in what you

can play on the app. More specifically, you will be tapping the notes rather than strumming them,

so you will lose a lot of the techniques that normally come with guitar playing. Songs that

contain riffs more than chords are better for this project, for example it will be easier to play the

riff of Enter Sandman by Metallica than it would be to play Good Riddance by Green Day. Or

playing Beat It by Michael Jackson will be easier than playing Hey There Delilah by Plain White

T’s, you get the idea. You will at least three components in your recording, drums, bass, and

guitar, though you can incorporate other instruments like piano/synths or even vocals if you’re

confident enough and have the time. But I will only be looking for those three instruments.

Additionally, you should mix each instrument so that it sounds good, meaning that you should be

able to hear what each instrument is doing, and not hear one instrument louder than the others.

Compare your recording with the actual recording and try to mimic the mix. This project is more

about learning how to record and understand how Garageband works rather than being able to

play the song perfectly, so it is acceptable if you make minor mistakes in your final product.

Everything will need to be played in time, or as close as you can get it, again you don’t have to

be perfect. The length of your recording will be 8 bars, but you can extend that to 16 bars if you

need or want to make it longer. Here’s how you will create your recording.
1. Create a new project once they open the app.

2. Select the ‘Tracks’ tab at the top, then swipe in either direction to select the instrument you

want to start with. You can start with any instrument, in the examples I will use the guitar.

DO NOT SELECT THESE OPTIONS: Drummer, External, Sound Library, or Amp. The

drummer is a drum machine that creates the part for you which is not the point of the project.

Same idea with the sound library, they are pre-made loops that don’t fit with this project.

External and amp won’t be used in this project so there is no need to select them.

3. At this point you will need to setup the technical aspects. Upon selecting an instrument, you

will be taken to a screen similar to this:

This is the guitar screen, it will vary in look depending on what instrument you pick. There is

also a help button at the top right which will tell you what everything does on the screen, in case

you get lost on anything. Once you have selected an instrument there are a couple things you

should do before playing or recording anything.

First, tap the notes button next to the dial near the top right

The instrument should now look similar to this. This will allow you play the notes as if you were

tapping the fretboard.

Next, make sure your metronome is on, and the tempo is set correctly. The metronome is on if

you see the icon is colored blue.

You can change the tempo by tapping the gear in the top right, and tapping tempo.

You can change the specific instrument you play by tapping the button with the instrument on it.

4. Now you can being playing and getting a feel for how the instrument sounds and works on

Garageband. Experiment with what actions cause what sounds and what you will do to play your

song.

5. Once you have a feel for how to play the part of your song correctly, you can practice playing

it in time by tapping the play button in the top middle of the screen. This will trigger the

metronome to sound which will allow you to hear the tempo at which you need to play at. You

can push the button again to stop the metronome, or you can push the stop/rewind button to the

left to stop it. Once it is stopped the left button will have a rewind symbol, which will restart the

track, press this button each time you start recording.

6. Once you feel comfortable enough playing along to the tempo, you can click the red circle

button right next to the play button to record a track. You can stop the recording yourself by

pushing the stop/rewind, play/pause, or record button again. The recording will stop itself when

you reach the end of the 8 bars, so don’t worry about stopping it yourself.
7. After you have recorded the part you can tap this button to see the audio of the track.

This is the screen you should see.

8. From here you can add more tracks, and edit the audio levels. There is a little tab you can

swipe to edit all of that.

The crossed out speaker on the left will mute that instrument. While the headphones will play

only that instrument. This is more helpful when you have multiple tracks and want to listen to

certain instruments. There is also a volume adjuster which will make the instrument louder or

quieter, which is how you will do the mixing. You can also delete a track entirely, or delete the

recording (the green section) in a track by tapping in their respective sections.

9. The plus (+) symbol at the bottom will let you add a track and take you to the instrument

select screen which you saw when you made the project. Choose the instrument you want to

record next and record that part.

10. Here is what I recommend for recording the drum part of your song. Unless you catch on

quickly and can play all aspects of the drums with your fingers, you won’t be able to record the
full part at once. What I did was make two drum tracks and record the kick and snare drum part

in one track, and the hi-hat part in another like so:

The top track is the kick and snare part, and the bottom track is the hi-hat. This will make it

easier because you don’t have to do everything at once, you can focus on playing the part

correctly rather than playing it all at one time.

11. There is one setting I would like you to change on the drum tracks. Your timing may not be

exactly perfect, which is fine, that’s what this setting is here for. Tap on the green section of the

track, this will bring up a lot of options, tap the ‘settings’ option on the far right. Another menu

will show up, tap the option that says ‘quantization.’ Then you will see another menu with

fractions on it. Select the option ‘1/16 Note.’

The reason for doing this is that not everyone is a drummer, or has perfect rhythm. Doing this

with the drums will allow for your sample to have a good baseline of being well put together.

Without getting into too much detail, quantization puts the notes in time with the tempo, making

it sound like you played in time even if you were off when actually playing it. ONLY USE

QUANTIZING WITH THE DRUMS, IF YOU DO IT WITH ANY OTHER INSTRUMENT IT

MAY MAKE YOUR RECORDING SOUND WORSE ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE PLAYING

MORE THAN ONE NOTE AT A TIME IN THE RECORDING. Again, quantizing the drums is

important because the drums are keeping the tempo, and being in time with drums is arguably
most important. To better show you what I mean, here is the drum track to the song I chose with

and without being quantized. I recommend lowering your volume before playing the samples.

This is before being quantized: This is after being quantized:

Notice the difference?

12. After you have all of your tracks recorded, you will have something like this:

Tap the slider like button directly to the left of the FX button to bring up this menu

Here is where you can fine tune the volume, compression, bass, treble, echo, and reverb. Edit

these as you see fit to reach the sound of the song.

13. Once you have recorded, mixed, and edited everything to your liking ask your peers for

feedback, if they haven’t heard the original song play that for them as well for comparison.

Reminder, your sample does not have to be a direct 1 to 1 recreation, but the notes should be

exact, and the sound should be similar. Meaning that if the guitar is clean, yours should be clean.

If it’s distorted then yours should be as well. When you believe the sample is good to turn in, you

can either play it to me in person, or send it to me as an m4a file, which is the default file made

when exporting a song in Garageband.

Assessment: I will grade this project based on how well the song was replicated in terms of its

composition, are the same notes being playing in the guitar and bass, and is the drum section
mostly the same to the original, and is everything close to being on tempo? I will also check for

the mix of the recording, is an instrument too loud or too quiet? See rubric below.

Composition - 10 points: 0-4 mistakes, minimal wrong notes and playing well in tempo.

5 points: 5-9 mistakes with a wrong note or being way off tempo.

0 points: 10+ mistakes, or no project turned in.

Mix of recording - 10 points: Instruments are all well mixed within a slight margin of error.

7 points: 1 instrument is too high or too low.

5 points: 2 instruments are too high or too low.

0 points: No project turned in.

Section 5: Student Sample

I created a sample of the verse section to a song called Be Quiet and Drive by Deftones. Click

the speaker icon to listen to my sample. Notice how my sample is not perfect, I make a couple

noticeable mistakes. See an explanation of my sample below the screenshot.

I would recommend lowering your volume before playing the sample just in case.

As you can see, my sample has 5 tracks. The two drum tracks are because of what I explained

earlier, it was easier for me to replicate the part by playing the kick and snare drum in one track,

and the hi-hat in the other. I also have two guitar tracks, all I did was copy the one guitar track I

had already recorded. This is something professionals will do if they want a beefier guitar sound,

though they record the part again rather than copying it. For the sake of this project you can copy

the guitar part if you so choose.