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Welcome to the Music Education Professional Learning (MPLN) Network’s Website. On behalf of the entire MPLN Launch Team, I extend to you our warmest regards and high hopes for a successful endeavor with us on our Social Media Experiment for Music Education and Musicians.

The germ-idea of the MPLN started years ago when I started to blog about Music, Education, and Technology as part of my personal Website, JPisano.com.    With it, I embarked on a journey to bring better, not-for-cost, information about music, education, and technology into/onto the Internet.   This quickly expanded into a number of projects starting with the major expansion and migration of my blog content to its own site at MusTech.Net.   From there, I started many related online projects and quickly began to find friends and colleagues with similar mind-sets and focus -many of whom are now members of this launch team.

While I don’t intend to chronicle the complete time-line of events leading to this PLN, I do intend to tell you my vision for this site and the mission of this PLN.   With regard to missions and mission statements, I believe that the most successful missions and visions are those that are relevant, succinct, and not-complicated.   My goal with regard to the integration of technology, education, and music has not changed over the years and remains the same today as it has been with the original thought-process behind my initial blog…   The mission of the MPLN is to generate better, more accessible,  information about music, education, and technology and to freely encourage dialogs from Music Educators through social media outlets.

The success of any endeavour is directly related to the effort of the individuals that “catch the vision” or see the value of the endeavour itself.    The MPLN’s success will be directly related to the effort of the community that emmerges through the use of the MPLN Website itself.   Like anything, the MPLN is now a tool for people to learn, utilize, and profit from.  Not unlike a a sword that is never honed or used -those that expect this community to exist without their participation will find themselves with a useless, un-sharpened tool.   In order for this community to thrive it must become just that… a community.

“The mission of the MPLN is to generate better, more accessible,  information about music, education, and technology and to freely encourage dialogs from Music Educators through social media outlets.”

We are using a fledgling, yet extremely powerful, social network engine to provide the platform for this Website called BuddyPress.  The BuddyPress platform is built-upon the rock-solid foundation of the highly successful WordPress engine.   I spent a long time looking at the known social-media platforms that were available to us at the start of this project, Ning, GoSocial, Grou.ps, Spruz, etc.   All of them are good platforms, but none of them provide the functionality and future functionality that the BuddyPress Engine provides.   That being stated, the BuddyPress engine requires a number of things to be coded and implemented in order to work properly, not to mention its privately owned server to operate.

Because BuddyPress is just emerging from its child-state, so the MPLN will have to deal with the growing-pains of the platform.  Rest assured, there will be some bumps along the way, but we are committed to making this work and this community thrive.   But, of all the platforms available, again, it currently offers us the best hope at making a seamless, integrated, and highly funcitonal solution for our purposes.

The striking truth of the matter is this; our ”Professional Learning Network in Music in this technological age” has been rapidly evolving, especially over the last year.   Many of us have been using bits-and-pieces of Web 2.0 technology some-what effectively as an ad-hoc PLN for months now… Twitter, FaceBook, RSS Feeds, Blog Networks, etc.   Frankly, I’m surprised that we have not had some type of large-scale Social Media Network for all Music Educators prior to this.   Again, here and there, there has been some small attempts.   It is my hope that this MPLN will bring together and connect people, regardless of the social media platform that they choose to implement AND to allow more focused and even parallel Professional Learning Networks to exist and thrive.   One of the main goals of the MPLN is to provide a meeting place so that we can all find one another out “here” on the Internet; then, once we “find” each other, we move on both in strength and purpose.

With this post we now move freely ahead into the “next”…whatever that “next” may be -we have, indeed, made another “step” forward…

In addition for the iPhone, you may easily add a shortcut button to your “desktop/home screen” by following a few simple instructions (this may work on the Android as well – I haven’t tested it yet).  In order to add the button to your device please follow the steps outlined below:

1st: Open up the MusicPLN.org in your iPhone’s Browser

      Visit: http://musicpln.org 

2nd: Touch the option button on the bottom of the browser

3rd: Choose “Add to Home Screen” from the pop-up

4th: Your new MusicPLN.org Button will appear on your Home-Screen/Desktop

…and that is “the magic”!  We hope that you all will enjoy this incredible new feature of the MPLN!

A couple of Mobile Usage Notes:

Not everything will be available in the mobile version of the MPLN.   In addition, be sure to check the “menu” button in the upper-right of the mobile version for quick access to all of the site’s features and pages.  Also, as with anything that is custom programmed, there may be some small-issues along the way.   We will be adding a feature in the very near future that will allow mobile users to also choose between the full version and mobile version of the MPLN.

Great things ahead for the MPLN!

This is a MPLN customized version of the BuddyPress Mobile Plugin developed by @modemlooper – without his dedication to BuddyPress and WordPress this feature would not be possible.

Brand New Design

The most obvious change in MPLN 2.0 is that we have a brand new design! This shiny new layout is much more polished than our 1.0 theme, and we are thrilled to have an updated look. We still, however, have a few kinks to work out; please pardon the e-dust as we fix some of the final bugs in the design. There are some bugs that we are already aware of, but if you notice a bug, please send me (Andy Zweibel) or Joe Pisano a private message, and we will fix it ASAP! The MusicPLN team would like to extend special recognition and thanks to Brajesh Singh, who was responsible for the main development of our new design. Brajesh, who can be found at ThinkingInWordpress, has put an enormous amount of time into developing our design and helping us work out the kinks. If you are in need of professional WordPress assistance, Brajesh is the way to go! You can find him on Twitter at @sbrajesh

New Navigation System

The main navigation has been split up to give you more options right away. You can access any of the main portals of the site by using the large blue navigation menu (Home, Members, Groups, Forums, Events). The smaller drop-down menus will allow you to dig deeper into the features of the MPLN, including our new classified section (coming soon), our fantastic link repository, and some other great resource sites. The even smaller dark menu just below the MPLN logo contains the navigation links to get you around the social network aspect of the site (profile, messages, friends, etc.). As always, you can still use the quick-menu at the very top of the screen to navigate anywhere immediately!

That’s Not All…

These updates are not the end of MPLN 2.0. We have plenty of great features coming down the line, including a fantastic classified section and a much improved “Help” area. If you have any feature requests for the MusicPLN, don’t hesitate to leave a comment on this post, shoot Joe or I a private message, or post it in the New PLN Members group!

We are pleased to announce the latest sponsor of the MusicPLN.org: Alfred Music Publishing Company. For years Alfred has been a leader in the Music and Music Education arena and we are excited to have them as a sponsor.

Alfred Music Publishing is the world’s largest educational music publisher. Alfred produces educational, reference, pop, and performance materials for teachers, students, professionals, and hobbyists spanning every musical instrument, style, and difficulty level. Alfred’s home office is located in Los Angeles with domestic offices in Miami and New York as well as offices around the world, including Australia, Germany, Singapore, and the United Kingdom.

In addition to its own titles, Alfred distributes products from over 50 companies, including Belwin, Daisy Rock Girl Guitars, Dover Publications, DW Drums, Faber Music, Highland/Etling, Kalmus, National Guitar Workshop, Penguin, TASCAM, Ultimate Support, and WEA.

Alfred is the product Distributer/Partner of Dozens of Well-known Brands:

Alfred recently launched one of the most innovative and revolutionary methods for beginning musicians to-date -aptly titled: Sound Innovations.  Available in two editions, the Standard and the Director’s Choice, they both offer a number of cutting-edge technology integrations:

• A DVD with expert musicians and teachers discussing relevant themes and method topics
• Recorded melodies and play-along accompaniments
• All printed music is available via SMARTMUSIC and the first 100 lines of music are offered FREE

The Director’s Choice edition also includes ways to customize the method book for your own situation and classroom:

• Staring pitches
• Starting rhythms
• Arco/pizzicato technique
• Tunes of song genres
• Review and enrichment pages

In addition to the method book itself, Alfred has launched a number of very cool Web 2.0 tools to go along with the program:

• Their own Blog – [RSS]
• Facebook Page
• Twitter Page
• YouTube Site

Alfred has also recently released a number of interesting products:

• iChord (iPhone/Pad App)
• Total Sheet Music
• The Led Zepplin Platinum Album Collection
• On the Beaten Path, Drumset method

You may find any number of Professional Development opportunities offered by Alfred through their EVENTS and WORKSHOPS GATEWAY:  http://www.alfred.com/Company/EventsAndWorkshops.aspx.  Additionally, Alfred offers information about relevant events, products, and music education via their Twitter account:  http://www.twitter.com/alfredmusic

Please join me today in welcoming Alfred to the MusicPLN.org by saying hello to them via Twitter or visiting their site(s) directly.

Welcome ALFRED!

Hello all,

It is unbelievable just how fast time flies during the “school year”.    Like many of you, I am now in the thick of preparations for the Winter and Holiday concert seasons.  I’m also making preparations for a couple of honors concert bands I’ll be guest-conducting this month and finishing my work for upcoming presentations in Chicago, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania -it has truly been a remarkably busy year for me so far.   With all of these demands on my time,  my output on MusTech.Net and Twitter has begun to be impacted and it may appear that I’m not “online” as much as of late… I am -I’m just pacing and bracing myself for the moment!

I was hoping to bring a number of innovations to this site over the last month, but I was set back a number of times because of the slow development of much of the core software this site is using (WordPress/BuddyPress).   The funny thing with all of this is that I’ve now become involved in the active development of modules for the WordPress/BuddyPress engine simply because there are some things that haven’t been programmed yet to do what I would like on our site.   In the end, I’m helping others build their PLNs through things developed for this one.  Again, all of this, sometimes, makes getting to where I envision this site a very slowwwww process, but I can’t wait to see where the MPLN takes us next in the evolutionary order of our collaborative music education community -it’s going to be awesome!

That being said, there actually has been a number of improvements made already and some “beta” items have been tested “under the hood”.   You can expect to see most of the new features to appear here this month.  Of paramount importance with regard to upcoming site improvements are the following enhancements:

• More stable integration with regard to Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, Youtube, and Flickr
• The ability for site users to add their own events (concerts, professional development opportunities, etc.)
• The ability for users to post their own pictures and relate them to their profile
• Re-instatement of the integrated Chat (this will work just like Facebook’s Chat)
• Better notification of site-wide enhancements
• Re-integration of music education related articles, posts, and important information
• A group that pulls specific posts from active Music Education sites
• More groups
• Better searching
• Even faster site response time

In the last month, I have fixed a number of site-wide issues including: the double notifications of personal messages; the issue with the wrong timestamps on the personal messages; a better, simpler registration process; a search function that now includes tags; a groups page that includes previews of what topic was last created in each group;  and have added a few back-end items that will help us as we emerge into the new year with regard to a more unified and collaborative group/site management.    It is my hope to have almost all of the above bulleted items and even more site enhancements completed by the end of November.

Then, optimistically, I’m planning on moving to what I am calling “Version Two” of this site shortly after the new year.  Version “two” should allow us to experience the summer with a plethora of new functionality and completely revamped and more efficient “skin” of the MPLN.

Stick with us, the best is yet to come and we haven’t even started yet!

P.S. here are some approximate MPLN Stats as of October:

• 1049 members, 1400 personal updates, 27 groups,  230 topics,  2000 forum  posts, and 23 blog comments!

After weeks of discussion and months of watching this site grow to nearly 900 members, I am pleased to announce the newly organized leadership of the Music Education Professional Learning Network.  Officially titled the  ”Steering Group”, this committee will be responsible in helping us build and maintain the site, as well as helping to develop creative and long-term strategic ideas for it.   As always, I am humbled to work along side such a talented and educated group of individuals.

Starting in late October 2010, we will begin to meet virtually every 6-8 weeks and discuss matters related to the MPLN.   In addition, the Steering Group will be participating in ongoing discussions on the site itself.   In the weeks and months to come, you will be seeing these individuals take more active roles with the site.   Please join me in welcoming the new leadership!

Meet the Music PLN (MPLN) Steering Group:

The MusicPLN.org steering group is comprised of some of very best musicians, educators, and technology integrators.  They are responsible for helping to maintain the utility, focus, and creative development of the site (Scroll down for biographies):

MusicPLN Leadership:

Executive Committee:

Founder/Managing Director:  Dr. Joseph Pisano
Associate Director: Dr. James Frankel
Associate Director: Barbara Freedman

Steering Group:

Site Technology Committee

Co-Chair Andy Zweibel
Co-Chair Justine Dolorfino

The Technology Committee works with the needs of the Web platform itself including: issues with the site, graphics, updates, modifications, etc.

Editing and Quality Control Committee

Chair: Mary Elizabeth

The Editing and Quality Control Committee will minimize the effect of typos and ineffective web-design for the membership.

Membership and Groups Committee

Co-Chair: Brian Wis
Co-Chair: Thomas West

The Groups Committee will encourage people to become active moderators for each group, answer questions from members, make decision about new groups, direct traffic to appropriate groups, and encourage members to engage in discussion.

Pre-Secondary School Music Committee

Co-Chair: Amy M. Burns
Co-Chair: Yoon Soo Lim

The Elementary/Middle School Committee will ensure that we are meeting the needs of pre-secondary members and bring focus to issues that are pertinent to them.

Secondary Music Committee

Co-Chair: Brandt Schneider
Co-Chair: Doug Butchy

The Secondary School Music Committee will ensure that we are meeting the needs of the secondary members and bring focus to issues that are pertinent to them.

College/University/Research Committee

Chair: Dr. Rick Dammers

The College/University/Research Committee will ensure that we are meeting the needs of the members and bring focus to issues that are pertinent to them and the field.

Music Advocacy Committee

Chair: Marcia Neel

The Music Advocacy Committee will ensure that we are indeed advocating music through the use of the MusicPLN.org and focus on bringing and discussing relevant issues to/with our members.

Music Technology Committee

Chair: Richard McCready

The Music Technology  Committee will ensure that we are meeting the needs of the relevant members asking about and discussing music technology and will bring to focus issues that are perteninet to the them and the field.

International Committee

Chair: Katie Wardrobe

The International Committee will help the MusicPLN.org reach beyond the borders of the United States and create opportunities and encourage the discussion and educational matters of importance from any country on the MusicPLN.org.

You may view extended biographies of these fine individuals by viewing this page.