Back From MTEC 2011

It’s the second time I’ve been to a conference for music technology in education, and it definitely won’t be the last. MTEC 2011 left all its participants completely knackered after three full days of hands-on workshops, but also inspired to get back to their classrooms and businesses with stacks of new ideas.

For me, this blog is one of the results of the conference.  I’ve wanted to do a music technology and education blog for months, and James Humberstone’sworkshop on delivering learning materials online finally tipped me over the edge.  So here I am.

I came away with a brand new copy of O Generator, the demo version of which I showed my students before I attended the conference.  If you’ve never heard of this music composition program, do check it out.  Not only does it look weirdly cool, it’s a great program for students to create their own loops and compose whole songs, which can then be uploaded into GarageBand for further editing.

Speaking of which, a GarageBand app for ipad has recently been released and it’s ridiculously cheap at AU$5.99.  O-Generator has also released an app for ipad and iphone, which I’ll definitely be telling my students about, since they liked the classroom demo so much.

I also attended workshops on creating short video tutorials, editing with Audacity, teaching composition with Sibelius, and using ProTools (which for me has been a bit of a scary prospect).  That was just a very small taste: there were stacks of other workshops that I didn’t get to attend, either because they were all full, or they were happening at the same time.

To top things off, we got to see the award-winning a cappella group The Idea of North perform at the conference dinner on Tuesday night.  Fantastic!

The timing of the conference was pretty good too.  Having come to the end of a twelve-week term, it was nice to get away for a few days and be reminded of what I really find meaningful in my job.  Now I have a ten-day hiatus to pause, digest, and do some planning, because I definitely don’t want to waste this moment of inspiration after such a worthwhile event.