Dr J's Emporium of Musical Education

While I would like to say that I am tech savvy and keep up with all that is new, in reality I am always a bit of a scaredy cat when it comes to embracing new stuff, and generally hold off purchasing 'the latest thing' for quite a while (usually until about 3 months before the next latest thing is launched!).  Thus it has been with Facebook, iPhone, Macs, the smart watch, and most recently, Twitter. I finally joined the Twittersphere last year as a colleague recommended it as a great source of CPD and advice for teachers.  After an initial false start (some scumbag had got my email address blocked after using it as a spam address), I set up my account and waited for all the followers to hang on my every word.  While I waited (and still am) on this multitude to materialise, I decided to research others who I could follow, and while doing this came across @TeacherToolkit .  Not only does this feed direct you to resources that you can download, but it also has the 1 m...

Slowly but surely I am persevering with looking into applying Orff Schulwerk ideas in the classroom.  And I have just reached the chapter of Doug Goodkin's Play, Sing & Dance  about using the instrument that sends shivers down many music teacher's spine - the recorder ! Personally, and having been initially thrown out of recorder classes for not practicing (I was 7!), I returned to playing it during my teacher training and now love playing the tenor recorder as it has a warm, rich sound.  A number of teachers I know laugh and make comments about not understanding how someone with my qualifications can stomach the sound of the recorder.  Worse, others have told me that it is irrelevant in the age of the ukulele.  I believe that these thoughts are at best a little misguided, and at worse closed minded and borderline uneducated.  I agree that the recorder can be a little grating with classes of 30, but after spending hours tuning ukes and guitars only ...