Advocate project

*Print screen of my project*

Most schools have some kind of music program. Every program is different from one another because each school district divides up their budget differently from each other. Even the richest school district would have a poorly funded music program because that is not what the district main focuses on. All school districts should try to budget more money to the music programs.

Through the music programs, students learn so many different skills and abilities no matter what instrument they play. While doing research for my project, I found out that music does much more that just teach kids more about math and science. Yes, math and science are used in music making. They learn how to be more patient, not every piece of music is going to be easy. They also learn how to multitask. Musicians have to read the notes on the staff, take in account dynamics, or how loud or soft to play, how short or long the note is supposed to be, who has the more important part at that time, whether that note sounds in tune or not, and much more all in the fraction of a second. Students also learn how to be part of a team. They have to work together as hard as they can to make even one piece as close to perfect as possible, and most bands tend to perform more than one piece at a concert. Funding to have students learn these valuable skills that will help them become better people, and should be continued so those skills will still be taught to younger generations.

While continuing my research, I was surprised at how many studies have been done on the teaching of music and what the advantages are to learning music or just even appreciating music. I found out that even by listening to music, people can learn to appreciate it more and can then think about solving problems differently than if they didn’t listen to music. Just writing this, I’m listening to music to help my creative process. Then I got writers block for an hour, but music does help me organize my thoughts on to put them on paper, especially classical music.

When working on my project, I was reminded of my experiences in high school. These experiences were the character building moments in my life. When the band went to competitions, we were always told by our director that “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” That means that the scores shouldn’t matter; the only thing that matters is how well you performed and if you think you did well. It doesn’t matter how well someone else thinks you did, as long as you know that was your best. Band taught me how to organize my time. It also helped to me find the inspiration that I need when I’m trying to finish something. I know that quitting is never an option, and you have to work through the hard stuff to appreciate the simple things. Because I had band, I learned those things which is why the school districts should put more funding into music programs.

Project #1

I think that I'm going to advocate about the funding for music programs in schools. In my high school, the band program didn't have much funding to go to the competitions that we needed to go to and we had to try to fund raise most of it. Being from a small area, not many people would want to help the band out because they didn't feel that it was a good enough cause to give money to. Therefore, we didn't get to do a whole lot because we didn't have the money to do so. If the band programs got more funding, their program will grow and get better, and then more people would want to donate money to them.

As of now, I would like my audience to be school officials and others in the community.

Print Screen 1

How does composing change shape in digital spaces?

If by the composition changing when the window it's in changes, the composition doesn't really change. It stays the same, but the window size changes. If 'change shape in digital spaces' means something to the effect of the way things have been composed online over the past few years, then I can help answer that. Since the Internet and other online stuff has been created (i.e. AIM, MSN messenger, text messaging, etc.) most of the younger generations don't really know how to compose a well written thought. A lot of what they write is abbreviated now. For example, 'by the way' is now 'btw' and 'talk to you later' is 'ttyl'. Because most teenagers use these abbreviations, they have a hard time actually writing a paper for class. They can forget the differences between they're, there, and their, and other simple grammatical things we were taught in elementary school. I will admit that I do make those simple mistakes every now and then in a paper, and it's those stupid mistakes that bring the papers' grade down. May be if people these days would put the phone and computers away and actually try to write a letter to a friend or talk to someone in person, the writings of these people would be much better.


How can we better understand digital composing process?

We can better understand the digital composing process by creating a little dictionary for those of us who do not always understand what abbreviations stand for what. I still, to this day,have to ask my friends "What does that message say again? I don't understand it." Asking that same question over and over again can get old very fast. We can also try to do more assignments online then on paper. I'm not a big fan of this proposal, but it might work. I have noticed that most people tend to be able to express themselves more easily online instead of in class, or face to face with someone. We could also try to learn more about how websites or other online sites are created to get a better understanding of what goes on to put that opinion or idea on the Internet for people to see.