Jamstiks in the Classroom: Week 4

Welcome back!

It's our fourth week of Jamstiks in the classroom at Paideia Academy. Things are going very well! I'm seeing students learning, having fun, and improving their skills as guitarists.

I always tell my classes that my favorite thing in the whole world is independent students. More than coffee, music, or gummy bears, it's independent students. This week, my goal was to allow my students to go from start to finish without any additional help from me. The beauty of the JamTutor app is that it works like a flipped classroom, one where learning happens individually and where practice is done in class with a teacher assisting as needed. I am able to give one-on-one help to students who need it and the majority of them are able to progress independently. It was a breath of fresh air to allow for a more constructivist approach to music education, allowing students to self-identify areas for improvement and work at their own pace.

As I've stated in previous posts, I set up my classes the same way each day so students always have an idea behind the pacing and format. Today, after logistics like attendance and setting up the Jamstiks, I displayed a PowerPoint slide with the day's goals: beginning JamTutor lesson 3 and demonstrating skill with the Moving E and A Chords Challenge. It reduced a lot of my explanation time and allowed me to address the more important questions. For those interested in the annotations I made, I use the Jing screen-capturing software. It allows me to copy or save screen caps and annotate them with highlights, boxes, arrows, and words. It's great and free! Every educator should have it.

I created an exit ticket/quiz tracker for my students this week. Because of the wide variety of student experience with guitar and comfort with technology, I am not grading exit tickets on the score, but whether or not they improved with subsequent attempts. It's been working well, and students get the satisfaction of improvement, which really is the bread and butter of education!

Things continue to go well with the Jamstiks in the classroom. It really does appear that students are learning real guitar skills. Next week, after more practice with the E and A chords, I'll test their knowledge of chord recall--demonstrating the fingerings without having them displayed on-screen beforehand.