Janine’s blog

I have introduced myself to iTunes this week, something I have been meaning to do for some time. I have observed my own children, my nieces and nephews and others using such tools, developing their playlists etc and have understood it all at a conceptual level. My personal motivation to get involved was to address my inability to easily tell whether or not I already have particular tracks when I consider buying a new CD - particularly if it is a compilation and especially if it is classical music. I can now know rather than sense that I have many copies of Ravel’s Bolero, Pachelbel’s canon and many Chopin etudes but not Op. 10 No. 3 which is my favourite.

So I set about the task, beginning with Windows Media Player but 300 tracks later switching to iTunes on the basis of some Gen Y colleague’s recommendation. I am still reserving judgement about the pros and cons of each but each do the basic job in a fairly equivalent way as far as I can tell. Contrary to the initial advice given to me they do not use the same default online database.

So I now have several evening’s worth of ripping while doing other jobs, and about 1200 tracks on my computer, fully catalogued. I think I have moved from novice to intermediate user, and have discovered several efficiencies when I want to edit all tracks in a sequence (that is significantly different in the two systems from what I can tell so far).

I have been taken by surprise to witness my own excitement at having my music collection organised in a visual way! I love it! When the mood takes me I can with the stroke of a couple of keys, play all my versions of “I still call Australia home” and decide which I prefer.

As I have experimented, read the on-screen help, played around, made mistakes, it has struck me that many (what proportion I wonder?) of our young learners are using such systems on a daily basis. They are using powerful information systems and I imagine are developing strong  understanding of key concepts in information management. I wonder how they translate that in their learning when trying to understand systems? Will it unnecessarily limit their thinking by being the only example they use in great depth?

I see great potential to use this concrete experience that they have to link fwith their formal learning. I hunted around the ‘net for  examples of educators commenting on this and could not find anything. I’ll keep thinking about this…