#saltydance

It has been both a frustrating and great week for NextGen Dance. I was challenged this week with projector troubles. Our projector was moved in hope for the ability to finally use the Mimio board. However, the projector did not like it's new home and has put up quite the tantrum turning on and off on it's own all day long, sometimes multiple times within a minute. But what doesn't kill us, makes us stronger. As a teacher, you have to make the choices of when to push ahead, move on, change channels, or give up. We pushed ahead with lessons, but I had to brush up on my wipeboard skills and rolled an old projector cart into my class. I am so blessed with all of this technology, but it is hard to choose "push ahead" instead of "give up" when you are a classroom that is expected to be using it and you spend so much extra time planning your lessons around it.

Nevertheless, we still had great things coming through the adversity!

• Dance 2 continued their ballet vocab in Quizlet and Google Classroom journals
• Ballet 1-3, Ballet 4, and Jazz 4 have continued pre-assessment on their ballet vocab spelling skills and Google Classroom journals
• Injured students used Google sheets to work on ballet vocabulary skills

Dance & Media could access the lesson as needed since I make it on Google Slides, so when projector goes out, then we can still follow along, even with lesson videos. Students began their exploration of videography in their "Dancing My Tribute" project. Learning to become part of the dance and making choices of what you want seen through the lense of the camera to tell your story. We used the dongle (since Apple TV wasn't an option with the borrowed projector) to share our Airdropped practices in filming. Students analyzed motion of the camera, noticed changes in location, framing of action, emotional quality, and even "bad techniques" such as seeing yourself filming in a mirror. All of this dialogue and ability to analyze is tremendous help for planning their final video project for the semester.

And now for the first post of my big DEP project (the name of a required project for NextGen teachers). I met separately with the Music & Media teacher, Cayla Cardiff, as well as with Chemistry teacher Lisa Ivy, to prepare details for the project and prepared all of the documents and folders needed in Google. Special apps were loaded specifically for this class.
Let me introduce to you: Elements in Music and Motion.

Day 1-Music & Media students and Jazz 4 dancers met on Monday in the dance studio to hear about the big project reveal.

• Step 1: Pair 1 Jazz 4 dancer with 2-3 Music & Media students.

• Step 2: Use Name Selector to assign each group to a chosen element from the Periodic Table.

• Step 3: Have Jazz students access a collaborative folder that they then share with the music students so that they can access on their laptops.
• Step 4: Have each Element Group connect to their own folder and a Google Doc that was pre-loaded with the information they needed to gather such as information on atomic mass, electron configuration, electrons, history. 

• Step 5: Have Jazz students use 3 various Periodic Table apps I had pre-loaded on their iPads and have Music students use their laptops to research the required info on the elements and record on the Doc. Sophmore students help lead the learning from their chemistry classes to teach Freshman and help recall the info for Jr and Sr students.
• Step 6: Open a shared board in www.awwapp.com to brainstorm adjectives and other descriptive words in regards to qualities, characteristics of the element.

• Step 7: Use the descriptive words to talk about how they see this element being portrayed in music/dance. 
• Step 8: Use your devices to share ideas in music and dance to determine what movement style and what music qualities you plan to use.

Day 2-

• Step 9: Music students will now use the next few class periods to create a  short music piece (1:30min) to be shared with the dancers
• Step 10: Jazz students used the Periodic Table apps and their Docs to create a Pic Collage regarding information on their element. Sophmore students helped lead the learning from their chemistry class to teach Freshman and help recall the info for Jr and Sr students. This included them asking me Chemistry details that I was not prepared to answer :). The Pic Collage gives all the important details as well as a QR code link to a website for more info. These Pic Collages will be used in Thinglink to add a link to remainder of the project. 

Music students will continue to work on their music next week while my dancers will use their descriptive words in improvizational explorations on their element to help gather movement ideas for their choreography. We can not wait to hear what they will be dancing to! Ever seen a dance based on the element Iodine? Me neither! #saltydance