kylie grace snyder

audio engineering, technology, and miscellany . . .

publishing

Snyder Contributes Chapter To The Routledge Companion To Music, Technology, And Education

blog ·

The Routledge Companion to Music, Technology, and Education is a comprehensive resource, released in December 2016, that draws together burgeoning research on the use of technology in music education around the world. Rather than following a procedural how-to approach, this companion considers technology, musicianship, and pedagogy from a philosophical, theoretical, and empirically-driven perspective, offering an essential overview of current scholarship while providing support for future research. The 37 chapters in this volume consider the major aspects of the use of technology in music education:

  • Part I. Contexts. Examines the historical and philosophical contexts of technology in music. This section addresses themes such as special education, cognition, experimentation, audience engagement, gender, and information and communication technologies.
  • Part II. Real Worlds. Discusses real world scenarios that relate to music, technology, and education. Topics such as computers, composition, performance, and the curriculum are covered here.
  • Part III. Virtual Worlds. Explores the virtual world of learning through our understanding of media, video games, and online collaboration.
  • Part IV. Developing and Supporting Musicianship. Highlights the framework for providing support and development for teachers, using technology to understand and develop musical understanding.

Kyle P. Snyder is excited to have contributed Chapter 11, Audio and Education, to The Routledge Companion to Music, Technology, and Education. In this chapter, Snyder considers the interrelated nature of Music, Technology, and Education within today’s classroom and especially audio engineering curricula. He also considers ways technology is used within audio engineering curricula, research germane to pedagogy and effectiveness, and suggestions for future development with a nod to practical implementation as is the long withstanding heritage of the trade.

With technologies themselves a primary curricular focus proving to be a powerful platform for study, not just of audio specifically, but of music more generally, the recording studio is itself rewarding musical instrument. It is an instrument well-suited for composing and performing music, individually or in ensemble. It is an interactive environment offering multiple modes of rich user feedback, and several paths for structured and independent exploration and research, across a broad range of musical elements. Relating to music via the multitrack recording studio offers a wealth of opportunities – by doing and through listening – for a rich and rewarding music education.

The Routledge Companion to Music, Technology, and Education is designed for undergraduate and post-graduate students, music educators, teacher training specialists, and music education researchers. It serves as an ideal introduction to the issues surrounding technology in music education.

Snyder Presents At Ohio University Library Open Access Publishing Event

news ·

The world of publishing is constantly changing, and in response to that change, OHIO Libraries is hosting a panel discussion on the benefits and challenges of open publishing.

Four OHIO faculty from the departments of math, political science, media arts and studies, and geological sciences will speak at the “Open in action: the practicalities and pitfalls” panel presentation, which will be held on Oct. 26 at 1 p.m. in Alden 319. The panel will give researchers and faculty the opportunity to hear from their colleagues who have successfully published open access resources and learn more about the value of open publishing.

The open access movement promotes access to academic research by freely disseminating ideas and information, often online.

Kyle P. Snyder speaks at the Open in Action faculty panel (John Michael Simpson/ Ohio University Libraries)
Kyle P. Snyder speaks at the Open in Action faculty panel (John Michael Simpson/ Ohio University Libraries)

“Under the current publication system, sometimes institutions can’t even afford to subscribe to the commercial journals in which their own researchers are published,” said Andrew Stuart, assistant head of reference.

Kelly Broughton, assistant dean for research and education services, said the world of publishing is quickly changing, and open access resources are a response to that change.

“Open access has the potential to change our broken scholarly publishing model—to remove the pay walls from the results of research funded by taxpayers and tuition,” Broughton said. “The only way to really accomplish this is for faculty to be open to new modes of scholarly communication and to test the impact of these modes.”

Jennifer Fredette, assistant professor of political science, will be speaking at the panel about her open licensed publication “Constructing Muslims in France: Discourse, Public Identity and the Politics of Citizenship,” which was published through the Temple University Press in 2014. The book is available for free online with a Creative Commons license through Knowledge Unlatched, an organization that works with libraries and publishers to make research more freely available.

“For me, as a scholar, open access is key for knowledge dissemination,” Fredette said. “It’s amazingly useful for me to be able to tell students, colleagues, and people I meet at conferences, ‘Oh yeah, you might want to read my book. It’s free; just Google my name.’ That’s an incredible resource.”

Martin Mohlenkamp, an associate professor of mathematics and another speaker on the panel, has both taught with open resources and co-authored an open access textbook. He has incorporated open resources into his teaching by having his students improve Wikipedia articles on math concepts as class assignments, and he uses the SageMath cloud computing environment in some of his courses. This software allows his students to collaborate with each other on the same programs, even if they are using different computers.

His book “Introduction to Numerical Methods and Matlab Programming for Engineers,” available free online, is used in the MATH 3600 Applied Numerical Methods course. He co-authored the book with Todd Young, who created the Math 3600 course and was able to customize the text for that class. One piece of advice that Mohlenkamp has for researchers who want to look into open publishing is “scratch your own itches.”

“Do something that you’re going to get value out of and you’re going to use so that your own dissatisfaction is fixed,” he said.

Daniel Hembree, associate professor of geological sciences and another panel speaker, serves as a handling editor for Palaeontologica Electronica, an open access journal. He said the journal’s online presence gives researchers the opportunity to include digital features such as animation in their articles, and the journal can also easily publish in full color. Having the journal online has also helped the content reach an international audience.

“There are no publishing costs associated with it. It’s a nice venue for getting research out and making it available globally,” Hembree said.

Kyle P. Snyder, a lecturer in media arts and studies and another panelist, authored the open access book “A Crash Course to Making Your Mark in the Recording Industry.” The publishers, Routledge and Focal Press, partnered with Creative Live to make the book open access, although readers have to provide an email address to download a copy. Snyder not only contributed his own writing but also reached out to other researchers in the field to contribute.

“My goal was to take what I thought was the best information that they had and make it free to audio engineers. If I wrote a basic book right now, what would I want my students to have access to?” he said.

Snyder is also chair of the education committee for the Audio Engineering Society, a professional society devoted to audio technology, and has worked with open publishing in that role.

The Libraries is holding the panel to celebrate Open Access Week, which will be held by SPARC Oct. 24-30 to encourage publishers and universities to increase access to open resources.

The panel is only one of many of the Libraries’ initiatives to increase awareness of open resources, such as the Alt-Textbook initiative, which helped students save money by encouraging faculty to use open access and Library resources rather than textbooks.

Original article by Megan Reed