Roger Whaley

Here's a tip or two about SmartMusic, passwords and e-mail accounts.

First an observation, kids that have no e-mail accounts are the ones that forget their passwords.

If a student does not have an e-mail account to use for contacts via SmartMusic, be certain that they use a password that is very easy to remember because there will be no password recovery options (except for sodium pentathol or very deep hypnosis. My district doesn't allow me to use truth serum!)

Actually, I have another way around this, if you don't mind some extra e-mail. I have my family e-mail accounts set-up with a junk mail box. Anything that is not addressed to me or my family gets sent to the junk drawer. Originally, I was using this for businesses that wanted to thoughtlessly add me to their e-mail lists. So, NO_SPAM@rogerwhaley.com was born. Now my students who need to fake an e-mail for SmartMusic use something like SuzyStudent@rogerwhaley.com. When we run the forgot password link, I just look in the junk mail drawer for the password.

It is either that or use that old favorite password-- "password" as your student's password.

Posted by Roger Whaley at 2:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We were filling time with SmartMusic and one of my flute players pointed out the obvious with this comment, "I wondered where we would be with one of those other method books. You know you can just go play in one of them in SmartMusic."

Boy. A comment like that can get the idea machine going!

If the kids are bored, suggest they try the other book for sight reading.

Or send them on a hunt for the same topic in another book.

You could see if the examples are better in a different book.

Maybe there are some solos coordinated with the other method. Do you want to see where they fit in their curriculum?

You could have your talented kids get a fresh look at the same topic in another book.

If you need to re-teach something, where will you go for ready made materials?

Have you taught kids how to find exercises that will help them with the topic at hand?

Or..... You get the idea. In fact, send me some of yours!

The really, really, exciting part for me is that one of my students figured this out! Here's a beginner that isn't just doing the assigned. She went out exploring. Pretty amazing!

Posted by Roger Whaley at 1:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The end of the quarter must be coming soon. I don't think that the practice rooms could get any busier!

There has been a rash of instruments going out the door for practice as well.

I do like how the login gets the student exactly what he has left to do for work. That makes it very easy to tell a student what to do...login to SmartMusic and find out!

Interesting observation about working with SmartMusic Impact this week... if you miss a student when making an assignment you can still send it without completely starting over. In Impact, go to assignments, then to your personal library and find the one you want and push the assign button. From there you can assign it to specific student. This may not have been a convenience that was designed into the product to be a convenience, but it sure beats starting over and adding another assignment to pick up the student you missed.

Posted by Roger Whaley at 3:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, back to the grind tomorrow.

We do have the big All District Band Concert next month.

We do one piece that everyone plays all together. That can be the hard one to select. Because time always seems short between now and the concert, you can bet we will be selecting tunes with SmartMusic assignments in mind.

I hope that music publishers and MakeMusic are moving things along quickly for more SmartMusic enabled pieces.

Posted by Roger Whaley at 2:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)