An Interview with Catie Dwinal from Quaver Music

Music Education & Technology Podcast

In the third episode of the Music Education & Technology Podcast, Chris and Paul start off by reviewing the latest developments, as well as discussing tips and tricks. Afterwards, Paul and Chris talk with Catie Dwinal about Quaver Music, elementary music education, and how Catie found herself involved with Quaver Music.

Show Notes:

• Chris Russell’s blog: techinmusiced.com
• Paul Shimmon’s blog: ipadmusiced.wordpress.com
• Flat.io released another update that allows for the customization of number of lines on a staff.
• iOS 10 was released
• There is a bug with iOS 10 and Notion for iOS (referral links for Paul, for Chris). If you select a measure for editing purpose, the app will crash. Notion has found the solution and a future update will solve the problem. For now, if you are using Notion, make sure Speak Selection is turned off. You can find this in your device’s settings, under General>Accessibility>Speech
• YouTube subscriptions are being “weird” on the iPad in iOS 10
• Mac OS Sierra is out…both Chris and Paul are skipping the upgrade. Chris’ MacBook is so old it can no longer be updated, and Paul’s 2010 MacBook isn’t able to use the new features (newer hardware is required)
• Apple has been very slow in announcing or “leaking” news about new MacBooks and iPads. We would love to tell you when new products were coming. Nobody but Apple seems to know at this point.
• A special shout-out to Loren Finkelstein, who has helped us with some of the technological aspects of the podcast.

Information from our guest interview:

• Guest: Catie Dwinal, Key Accounts Representative for Quaver for the Northeast United States and Global Sales. e-mail: [e-mail]; Twitter: musiccargirl14
• Quaver Music Link
• Quaver is a K-8 (soon to be PK-8) cloud-based, customizable general music curriculum. Quaver is creating 21st century resources that meet the needs of 21st century learners.
• Quaver is generally accessed on a computer or a Chromebook (not an iPad program yet)
• The Q Student App does work on iPad (interaction with teacher and assessments), and there are two stand-alone apps: Qastronotes and Qdancer.
• The Quaver curriculum is subscription based, up to ten years. There are significant discounts starting at year five. As an example, a single year license for K-5 would be $1500. A five year license is a better deal for the school.
• Quaver’s 6-8 program is project based.
• Quaver modifies for the needs of the individual teacher and the technology that is available to them.
• Quaver is reaching a lot of beginning teachers who need a curriculum. Those teachers are using Quaver as a curriculum versus as an supplement.
• There is a new college initiative with Quaver where students can access Quaver before they graduate and prepare for the workforce with a curriculum in hand. Collegiate teachers, reach out to your local representative (see the Quaver website) if you are interested in more about the college initiative.
• The free virtual world is a collection of free activities for students at the Quaver website. They can create music with a drum pad and loops, visit musical periods, play games, and more.
• Every Quaver game has a purpose.
• The Quaver Music Library (Class Play) is a song based activity hub with many types of music. Activities surround each song. There are printable that follow each song.
• There is a full twelve week recorder level in 3rd Grade, keyboard unit in 8th grade, ukulele in 5th grade and 7th grade. There is also a lot of Orff instrumentation in the program.
• Quaver is getting ready to launch a new Kodàly/Orff/Music Learning Theory section called “Song-Based Lessons.”
• There are topic-based essentials that are used by band directors. There are 30 Quaver episodes (DVD or online) that teach the basics of music theory, terminology, instruments, and so on. If you feel “I need to reinforce ____,” they can often find a Quaver activity to meet that need.
• Some things that Catie did to incorporate technology in the elementary classroom when teaching K-5: Skype visits with other classrooms, go out on a limb and find someone out of your area and build relationships with others, invest in mobile devices and their power (for teacher and students), have students listen back to themselves.
• All of the curriculum is going digital; Quaver was just there first. In other words, elementary curriculum either is or will be digital.

Key Thoughts:

• Want to improve the performance of your older MacBook? Get an SSD drive and max out the RAM on the machine. Ask others for help if you need it. SSD drives are becoming incredibly affordable right now.
• If looking for a used MacBook…consider one that is 2012 or newer. If you want a new MacBook, wait for the next new model.

Tip of the Podcast:

• From Paul: It is important to constantly record your ensembles. Cubasis (referral links from Paul, from Chris), a full featured DAW by Steinberg, is on sale right now for 50% off until 10/6/2016 for $25.
• Set a realistic goal when incorporating technology. If you are a techie, feel free to experiment with students. If you are not, practice before hand. Go for one thing and focus on that.
• The Apple Camera Connection Kit is a great solution for a number of things. The new USB 3 version also allows you to connect power to the adapter.

*Note: referral links, when used to purchase an app, send 7% of the purchase price to the person who refers the app. This comes out of the 30% that Apple collects from the app, not the 70% that goes back to the developer. When you use a referral app, it is the same price as if you search for it yourself on the App Store. We thank you in advance for using our referral links when possible.

Link to audio: https://archive.org/download/METPodcast/MET%20Podcast%20003.m4a