This week, the resource that I added to my collection was Andrew Brown’s Music Technology and Education. I specifically looked at Chapter 14 of this text, titled Assessment.

A few things that interested me right away was that Brown used Elliot’s definition of assessment, but distinguished that the chapter considers assessment as both feedback and grading, with the primary purpose being to provide students’ feedback on their development. Brown also uses Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences to inform the assessment process, which made me wary as in 401 we are discussing the relevance/usefulness of applications of Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences. I found that I kind of tuned out of this section of the text because of that, finding it wordy and hard to follow along with as well.

I did however like the practical information surrounding how technology could be used in the classroom for assessment. Overall, though, I found this chapter to be very lacking in depth and examples of how to really apply assessment and technology together into a music program. One take away I had that was positive however was the suggestion to have students save and provide drafts of their work at multiple stages, which can allow them to speak to the process and the various stages of creation. This is mostly in reference to composition, I believe, but I do like the idea of sitting down at the end of a composition project and seeing the evolution of the drafts and being able to discuss with a student why they took things out or kept things.