Over the course of the past couple months, I've been completing a (re)design of a popular unit for my band students. The two topics (single unit) I've been working on have been how to teach band students about proper tone quality and good intonation. They are both the fundamental building blocks of a good musician and instrumental music program. Like I tell my students at the beginning of every school year, "It doesn't matter how fast you can play, how high or low you can play, or how many notes you can play... if you don't have a good sound, then no one is going to want to listen to you play."
So far I've had a pretty great experience redesigning this unit, we're currently on the Testing/Experimenting phase in which I used technology components to Augment and Modify (SAMR model) my existing approach to teaching these concepts. I'm happy to report that many of my students have participated in using the technology rich components I've been testing out including EdPuzzle, YouTube, and FlipGrid!
One overarching theme that has emerged from doing this, has been that technology engages and immerses students. They have grown up with technology since the mid-2000's and it is part of their culture. Teachers my age (who grew-up in the 80's and 90's) started seeing these developments as adolescents and young adults, so it's important to empathize with the current generation one is teaching. Being able to keep students who grew up differently that we did engaged in learning can be a very useful tool, as long as we keep it sharp!