Thomas J. West Music

My blog is the latest to join a list of Music Education blogs hosted by Dr. Joseph M. Pisano, music instructor at Grove City College, Grove City, PA and owner of MusTech.net

Dr. Pisano is an original thinker and a savvy internet marketer as well. My blog became #76 in the long list that you see on the right of this page. Dr. Pisano's goal is to have 100 Music Education blogs listed by 2009. If you paruse this list, you literally can find information on nearly anything and everything that has to do with Music Education. What a fabulous interactive community!

In addition to the ME Blogger campaign, Dr. Pisano is hosting a Music Education Blog Carnival. If you're not familiar with a blog carnival, think of a blog entry that lists a bunch of articles from blogs other than your own that are all related to a specific topic. I started submitting my blog articles to Blog Carnival dot com in July and have been very pleased with the traffic it has generated to my website and the networking it has allowed me to do.

I will be hosting a blog carnival here in about two weeks. It is the Carnival of Education, which is hosted on any blogger who volunteers their time and blog. This will be my first time hosting a carnival, and I am anxiously awaiting the opportunity to receive all these great blog articles on education to paruse. I'm also interested to see how much traffic it generates for my own blog as well.

Some Music Ed Blog Highlights

I intend to visit every blog on this list eventually. Here's a few that I picked because they struck my fancy:

Making the Most of Notation Software is the blog of Tom Rudolph. Tom is a middle school band teacher close by me here in the suburbs of Philadelphia. He is a nationally-recognized expert on both Finale and Sibelius music notation software. He had several published books on both programs through the Berklee University School of Music. I took a 3 credit graduate course of his a few summers ago on Finale. I had already used Finale for 10 years, but Tom's class taught me tons of shortcuts and other features of the program I had never used before. His blog is as clean-cut and professional as his classes. It is a go-to place for anyone with a question about using computer software to write printable music. Tom incorporates lots of helpful images to illustrate his tips, and a quick search of his blog will probably find you an answer to just about any question about music notation software.

Teaching the Wire Choir is the blog of Dale Lewis, a middle school strings teacher. After attending a seminar presented by Dr. Pisano, Dale realized as I have that the internet is a fantastic place for music educators to share their expertise with a much wider audience than their own school room. I myself have spent most of my career teaching band, but now in my new job will be teaching strings students full-time for the first time. I will certainly be keeping Dale's blog on my RSS for some helpful hints. He shares freely his experiences and expertise, and I find that he and I have some philosophies in common, such as this post on teaching students to evaluate themselves. I am using a similar assessment tool with my students this year.

Marching Music is the blog of Alison Hulihan. She delves into topics on marching band, drum corps, music education, selecting the proper undergraduate music school, and music technology. As a marching band director of 15 years and a former junior drum corps member, I can easily see that Alison has a lot of personal experience with multiple styles of the marching artform. I'd love an "about" page to get to know a little more about her background. She shares some strong opinions on the blog and has no problem backing them up.

The Band Ed Toolshed is the blog of Roger Whaley, a fellow band director who, like myself, is exploring the nearly unlimited potential of Smart Music to improving music education. I'm looking forward to comparing notes with him as this school year progresses. Be sure to visit his personal website as well. This is a music educator who's "in the trenches" and exploring new and better ways to get the job done. Definitely my kind of company.

I will be doing an extensive recommendation page plus blog updates on my use of Smart Music and will continue with reviews of all of these great music education blogs. I really am looking forward to making new friends and learning much from all of them.