Music Education Bloggers

Music Education Bloggers are music teachers, musicians, or educators that write frequent articles (known as posts) using a blog as a vehicle for their writings about music education related topics (Common examples of Blog-engines include WordPress and Blogger). Until 2005, there were not many bloggers that were writing specifically about music education. One of the earliest blogs to be considered a music education blog was created by Steve Carter and was part of his FrogStory Records Website as early as 2002. This website contained an online journal, named "Player's Journal", where Carter wrote and writes about his playing experiences and, still to this day, contains great tips.
2005 was a seminal year for Music Education Bloggers. In this year, Evan Tobias creates what is now known as Catalysts and Connections, Espie Estrella begins her prolific writing about music education at about.com, Natalie Wickham starts her Music Matter's Blog, Jason Heath begins what would become known as the Double Bass Blog, Dr. Joseph Pisano starts his personal blog that would later turn into MusTech.Net and Dr. Chris Foley starts his Collaborative Piano Blog. These blogs are all still actively publishing today and have become some of the greatest catalysts for getting others involved with blogging either as readers, participants, or bloggers themselves.
2006 and 2007 brought about a number of other seminal Music Education Bloggers including Dr. Jonathan Savage (who in May 2012 guest blogged for third sector fundraisers Cause4 on their "Cause4Opinion" blog ), Owen Bradley, Carl Broos, Roger Whaley, Prof. Keith Mason, William Zick, composer Travis J. Weller, Alex Ruthmann, David G. Hebert, and Ken Pendergrass. Another ground breaking event during this year that validated this new sub-set of Music Education-like journalists and music information purveyors was the formation of Berklee College's Berkelee Music Blog Network.
On January 7, of 2008, Dr. Joseph M. Pisano announced his campaign to have one-hundred music educators blogging by January 2009. This campaign was successfully completed on January 1, 2009. In November 2008, Joel Wagner of SoYouWantToTeach.Com writes his partial-timeline of music education bloggers which contains many new music education bloggers that had started because of Dr. Pisano's initiative.
Since 2009, the number of music education bloggers continues to explode. In this year a number of article began to be posted by the US National Association for Music Education (NAfME, formerly MENC) with regard to the changing online education paradigm involving Web 2.0 applications as vehicles for information. Dr Fred Kertsen also writes of the importance of the information that is now being made possible by music technology and the proliferation of information it brings to music through Websites, Blogs, and podcasts.
In 2009, the NAMM(National Association of Music Manufacturers) in conjunction with MENC posted in one of its "Focus on Students" CounterPoint Articles of the significance that Music Education Advocacy Plays in the "Digital Generation" and that "Connecting music education with students’ digital lives helps contextualize music fundamentals in more meaningful ways, while fostering critical thinking, literacy skills and digital citizenship. Web 2.0 applications - blogging, podcasting, even wiki editing - offer students a pedagogically relevant way to use these familiar tools".
One of the keynote topics discussed at MENC's Technology Music Academy, held in Washington D.C. in June 2009, was the role that technology is now playing in Music Education. The audio transcript of this plenary session, which includes much discussion about Music Education Blogging, Web 2.0, and music technology in general, is relevant to the role that Music Education Bloggers have played with regard to the dissemination of free and "better" information about the field of Music Education through their blogs and writings.
The importance of Music Educators Blogging has been noted by Berklee College of Music, and there are currently many online projects that continue to encourage independent music education bloggers to write and spread their information throughout the web, including the following:
:1. The Music Education Blog Carnival
::*This ongoing blog carnival was started jointly by Dr. Joseph Pisano and Joel Wagner in July 2008.
:2. The PO-EM Project: Project OPML-Educators of Music
::*This is an OPML list of RSS Feeds of Music Educator that Blog write for Websites with RSS feeds.
:3. The Music Educator's Network
::* This is a site that was developed by Evan Tobias and Ted Love for Music Educators to encourage Music Educators to blog. This site provides free hosting and sub-domains for future and current Music Education Bloggers
:4. The Monday Morning Music Mix from MusTech.Net
::*This ongoing weekly Music News Release (started in July 2009), features many current articles from Music Education Bloggers
:5. MusicEdNews.Com: Music Education News Website
::*Started in March of 2010 by Dr. Joseph Pisano and Andy Zweibel and is the first free and publicly available website that specifically harness Music Education and Music Technology related RSS feeds that are primarily from well-known Music Education Bloggers.
:6. BlogBridge Music Education Blogger Guide.

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