#Composer #producer, #technologist, #teacher, #MusicEducation #researcher, #scholar & #academic. Senior lecturer - Sydney Conservatorium of #Music, University of Sydney. FRSA. #Humanitarian #feminist #environmentalist #vegan #atheist quadruple-vaxed #cricketer, living respectfully on unceded sovereign Gai Mariagal land. Views own, & formed critically.
My “Flip Sample” unit of work for middle/high school (e.g. year 7/8) students, updated to meet the new NSW Music 7-10 Syllabus
(And a GPT Agent for aligning the new Content Points!) I wrote this unit of work in 2021 when YouTube creator-producer Andrew Huang released his fantastically simple (yet still pretty powerful) Flip Sampler. I’ve already shared that original Unit of Work and some supporting resources here. It’s worth noting that the app now also works on Android devices!
New Unit of Work planners for Stage 5, NSW Music 7-10 2024 Syllabus
At the moment I’m busy re-working some of my best high school units of work for the new NSW 7-10 Music syllabus (2024). While it isn’t due to be implemented for another year, the Department of Education as announced that teachers can start teaching it from this year if they wish, so here at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music we are making a quick shift to really focusing on the new syllabus in our preservice music teacher training, rather than teaching both the old and new syllabi as we did last year.
Do the recommendations in the Initial Teacher Education report, Strong Beginnings, offer any benefits for the music education of Australian children?
On 6 July 2023, the Final report of the Teacher Education Expert Panel was released. At the time, I wrote a response for AMIE (the Access to Music Education for Inclusion and Equity (AMIE) Network is a collective of scholars and innovative music professionals from around Australia working to ensure that the lives of all children and young people, no matter their background, ability, or circumstance, are enriched by a creative and culturally responsive music education).
A blog post suggesting we find an advocacy message for music education that we can all get behind...
https://humberstone.org/2025/01/21/advocating-for-music-education-today-can-we-stay-together/
Donations to the Climate Council are doubled today https://worthfightingfor.climatecouncil.org.au/
Well, I was on the telly! https://youtu.be/MEc8Jz16MEE?si=DBVUupssWvjMQRqd If you live in NSW and haven’t already signed the petition, please do: http://bit.ly/MusicPetition
I co-authored the following article with the brilliant Dr Jennifer Carter, the leading expert on music syllabus development in NSW, Australia. It will be very difficult to get the government to reverse these draconian changes - so please share publicly!
https://humberstone.org/2024/11/14/our-nationally-leading-music-courses-are-now-under-threat/
New blog post on why the new HSC courses for music currently in development might be good, but won’t be great.
The ABC reported this morning that the teacher shortage is just going to get worse. In this piece, I explain how the new NSW 7-10 Music Syllabus will make teachers’ workloads even worse.
The final episode of the season, in which I share creative resources we made for Genevieve Lacey’s www.FindingOurVoice.au project for secondary school students based on music by William Barton, Lior, Nigel Westlake, Lou Bennett, Mark Atkins, & many more!
https://humberstone.org/2024/05/10/musiczettel-s3e15-finding-our-voice/
In this episode of MusicZettel, I share some of my previous projects with you, and talk about what Project Based Learning (PBL) is, and how when we do music education well, everything’s a project! Listen on any podcast platform!
https://humberstone.org/2024/05/03/musiczettel-s3e14-everythings-a-project/
On Monday 100s of music teachers in NSW will do PL on “Explicit Teaching”. There’s a research base behind the use of Explicit Teaching, but does much of that research come from *music* education? And if it doesn’t, what should music teachers make of it?
https://humberstone.org/2024/04/26/musiczettel-s3e13-explicit-teaching-in-music-education/
I’m really sorry everyone, I just couldn’t resist being ANOTHER person making a podcast about AI. In this case, what AI music generators might mean for teaching music creation (composition, songwriting, production, etc) in schools. Yes there are examples!
https://humberstone.org/2024/04/19/musiczettel-s3e12-ai-and-teaching-music-creation/
Episode 11 of the current series of my podcast, Music Zettel! Today I’m reflecting on a couple of courses I’m teaching at the SydneyCon in which students have to blog publicly, & the research suggesting that this is a good idea.
Introducing the 2024 cohorts for my technology in music education classes at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music!
https://humberstone.org/2024/04/11/introducing-the-2024-scmtme-and-mc1-extension-cohorts/
Unfortunately this post was deleted in a website update, but I’ve just rewritten it! Here I’m sharing the planners that we developed to help teachers plan creative units of work for the current and new NSW Stage 4 syllabi.
https://humberstone.org/2024/04/10/nsw-unit-of-work-planners-for-the-current-and-new-syllabi/
MusicZettel S3E10 – Teaching music creation in Australia
Having had a grumble about the lack of an evidence-base in the local government’s supposedly “Evidence-based syllabus” in the last episode, I turn this into a positive, with the first of several podcasts accounting for my own research in music education, as well as others’. In this episode, specifically, my chapter on teaching music creation in Australia which is part of a relatively new book “The Routledge Companion to Teaching Music in Schools”.
https://humberstone.org/2024/04/05/musiczettel-s3e10-teaching-music-creation-in-australia/
MusicZettel S3E9: The new NSW Syllabus pt. 2 – When ideology gets in the way of educative evidence-based practice
Following on from the last episode of MusicZettel, in which I focused on the positive things about the new NSW Syllabus, in this episode, I look at the things that the New South Wales Education Standards Authority (NESA) got wrong, especially given that they’re claiming this is an “Evidence-Based Syllabus”. I hope that this critical look at the syllabus is useful for listeners in other states and countries also being affected by syllabus/curriculum reform.
Unit of work planners for NSW classroom music teachers (new and old syllabi)
I mentioned in the last episode of my podcast Music Zettel that I would share the planners that we make for pre-service teachers in the Music Education degrees at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. I developed the planner, and updated it with the help of my colleague Brad Fuller, to encourage students to design engaging units of work in the spirit of the Aim of the Syllabi (which you’ll see written around the edge of the planner!), to…
MusicZettel S3E9: The new NSW Syllabus pt. 2 – When ideology gets in the way of educative evidence-based practice
In this week’s podcast, I describe it as “the downer episode” - but sometimes there’s a lot of good learning to be had in reflecting in what’s wrong with such an important document as the first new music syllabus for 12 to 16 year olds in 21 years. My criticisms are NSW focused, but are applicable right around the world, in terms of curriculum reviews in music education.