Becoming Conscious

Like so many things, we often learn how to do them and then allow ourselves to go on auto-pilot. Sometimes we may have been told how that thing works, but many times we don't. This happens with day to day things like household appliances (etc), but also applies to other parts of our worlds. For me, graduate school in music education has allowed me to look at what I do through a more critical lens - for example, WHY and HOW do we as individuals and in specific cultures create and play music in certain ways, etc.? I'm finding that I face similar modes of inquiry for the process of learning about technology in this class. I use computers practically every day; they're such a part of my daily life that I don't ever stop to think about how they really work or why I have been drawn so far into this way of communication. This class has numerous practical applications for becoming a music teacher; but importantly, it is helping me remind myself that technology and its applications are continuously being grown and shaped by humans (just as happens with music). By engaging in the process of creating through technological means, as opposed to being a user of the technology who does not understand why and how what I am looking at or interacting with came to be in the first place, I am reminded why the experiential part of education is so imperative. And I am only scratching the very first layer of the surface - with beginning to explore how the technology works, and hopefully at some point, why.