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http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/880028/protestsong_wiki

If nothing else it will make you feel better!** ** "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter" Martin Luther King ** So don't be silent! Write and make music and live - and this space will be able to help you. It has been designed by ordinary people (technophobic non nerds who just know how to turn a computer on and click a mouse) so it is really easy to use. Go check out the music studio and you will find everything you need to vent and take action.
 * Pissed off about an injustice? Then sing about the change needed to right the wrong.

Protest songs have lyrics that comment on or advocate for social change, so don't go writing or recording anything that supports the status quo in our studio! Songs have been used by people to tell stories of injustice at least as far back as the Enlightenment period. During this period ‘the times they were a changing’ and concern for injustice and social betterment were popularised – and we haven’t looked back! From this period to the present day music and song has been a weapon of choice for those advocating a fair go and a better world for all.

Just think of your favourite songs or tunes and at least one of them will be a protest song. It will be that song that makes you believe that you can make a difference that - justice is worth fighting for. Think of war and you’ll probably think of ‘Give peace a chance’ or ‘He was only nineteen’ or even ‘US forces get the nod’. Think of racism and you’ll probably think of “We shall overcome” or Beethoven’s Ode to Joy or if you are younger Hip Hop singer Mos Def or folk singer Archie Roach.

Music and song can change people’s moods and protest songs generally have an uplifting effect on the singer and listener. Many lasting protest songs are so effective because they make people feel empowered – they make you feel like you can change the world. And this is why we have created this online community. We want you to feel the power and the passion and take action to drown out the sound of war with your songs.

The text above provides the 'start up' context for our site and clearly informs potential users/ learners of what is expected to occur. Whether this context continues will depend on who uses the site.

Our learners ** The intention of our learning community is to provide autodidactic learners interested in social justice issues with the tools and support to create songs that will help make a fairer world. Our site targets people who are already motivated by an injustice and who want to give expression to this through song.
 * Key features of our learning community **

These learners are driven by what social cognitive theory calls ‘internal motivation’. According to Cornford, I (1999 in Athanasou Ed. p.90) “Internal motivation involves the individual making judgements and rewarding him or herself. This form of self-reward will involve various considerations centred around the value of the learning or performance to the individual including the feelings of satisfaction gained from engagement in the learning or performance of the skill.” In short our site targets already motivated learners who will use it to meet their own needs.

To ensure these highly motivated learners have an experience at least sufficiently fulfilling to make them want to return to our site and also tell all their friends about it, a constructivist framework has been used to design the site. Duffy and Cunningham (1996 p.171) as quoted in Redman & Lock (2006 p.268) consider constructivism requires “ (1) learning to be an active process of constructing rather than acquiring knowledge and (2) instruction is a process of supporting that construction rather than communicating knowledge.”
 * Our context for learning **

To this end the site provides learners with a range of information and opportunities for specific skill development in song construction from which they can pick and choose what they need to meet their individual learning. To paraphrase Fowler and Mayes (1999) as mentioned in Redmond & Lock (2006 p. 268) our site allows our learners to do and discover, and through this process create new knowledge and meaning as evidenced in the songs they produce.

The picture below is an example of a home page which may support our learners in this process. It is envisaged that our reception area would be a recording studio, with musically themed avatars to guide new community members around the key features of the site.



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