Blog Assignment #2
Begin thinking about your "teachable website/blog" project. This is a website/blog that you would use in the classroom. Find 3 resources that you could include on this website/blog. This can range from "create online quizzes for free" to a website that talks about composers in a language that is accessible to your students. Please list the following things under each site:
Site address
Cost
Ease of set up
Age of students for which you would use this
How you would incorporate this into a lesson
example: www.proprofs.com (free and easy to embed into blogs) - can create polls, quizzes, tests, etc.
* you do not need to use blogger.com for your "teachable website/blog"
(email me with any questions.....)
21 comments:
1. (http://www.sphinxkids.org/index.html)- Free and very easy to use for many ages, Helps kids with orchestration and understanding different music terms and styles"articulations, tempos etc." Also helps create a cultural awareness for different players of minority groups.
2. (http://www.classicsforkids.com/games/)- Free and easy to navigate, 5-8 grades. Kids can compose their own music through games and understand chord progressions, they also can learn about folk instruments. The teacher as well can create their own radio show for music education.
3. (http://www.dsokids.com/)- Free, easy to use and very organized set up. Pleasing to the eyes of children for sure. Definitely for all ages. They can research the life of composers and listen pieces. Kids can also listen to a massive list of instruments and read about their history.
1: www.classical.net
cost: free
This site would be a great resource for older students looking for information about composers, scores, buying an instrument, etc. Even for students in younger grades, this would not be a bad resource to offer parents
2. www.dsokids.com
cost: free
This resource for students of any age, with games and information about music theory, history, composers and instruments. The site is very easy to follow and has large icons to see and click on. With such a wide variety of activities this site would be fun to try to use in class (such a class game of Beethoven baseball) as well as offer it to students as out of class practice.
3. www.sfskids.org
cost:free
Along the same lines as the others, this site offers activities and information on a variety of musical topics. This site would best be used by advanced elementary as well as middle school students. This site is a bit harder to navigate and the formatting is more "hip" them dsokids.com. They offer a nice array of information along with a related activity. It seems like this website would be harder to use in class, unless there were computers kids could work on individually. However this would be another great out of class resource/activity for students.
1. http://www.musicedmagic.com/
This website is very impressive and free. There are many resources to choose from. All of the category tabs across the top of the page have useful links to information specifically for music educators. Under the ‘free downloads and sheet music’ tab you will be able to find a large amount of resources for band teachers, including practice incentive charts and scale sheets that can be posted on your site for those students who can’t seem to find their music. There are a few documents that would not necessarily used on a blog, but are useful for an elementary or high school band teacher (e.g. lesson plans, group travel planners, practice charts). The ‘music ed. resources’ tab has a composer database that would be useful to any music teacher. The database has a chronological list of composers names that are linked to u-tube videos showing a performance of the composers music. I find the material on this page suitable for grades four through twelve.
2. http://www.jamstudio.com/
This site would be a valuable addition to any teacher’s blog that is teaching class guitar. It is a free site that has an optional upgrade to a premium service. With a simple registration, the free version of Jam Studio will allow a student to create his or her own song with a virtual lead sheet. They will learn about and be able to experiment with different rhythms, cord structures and sequences while composing. The student can save their composition and email it to others. I found it simple to use and was composing in a matter of minutes with the tutorial video. There is a section on the site for educators where you can apply for a grant to get the full version of JamStudio in your classroom.
3. http://www.creatingmusic.com/
Morton Subotnick's Creating Music web page is a page that explores the creative side of a student of elementary general music. Kids can compose music, experiment with musical performance, and play music games and music puzzles. The software can be purchased for classroom use (about $40), but the games are available online for free. My favorite is the music ‘sketch pad’ without a musical staff. There is a blank page that students can create music by drawing vertically and horizontally with a pen and make their own music and to enable children to begin to create music without assistance from anyone else. The Creating Music software would be a great addition to an elementary general music teacher’s curriculum.
1. www.classmarker.com
This website is a resource for online tests. It seems to be directly geared towards professionals running a buisness, but it does include that educators can use this website. There is the option to use the website for free, and there is also a professional option, which costs $24.95 per year for educators. High school students would find this site clear, precise, and professional. Any students younger than high school would not find the layout of this website appealing. There are lots of help and FAQ tabs to make use of the website easy. Registration is simple as well.
2) www.musictheory.net
On a personal note, I use this website often, particularly for the staff paper generator. It offers lessons on a wide range of music-theory topics. These lessons would serve as a great supplement to any theory lesson. There is also an ear trainer for any aural skills class. The lessons are concise and simple, however the concepts would be over the heads of any student below high school. The lessons are summaries, so it is important for the teacher to note to the students that they are supplementary to the class lessons. This website is free.
3) www.classicsforkids.com
A free website aimed directly at younger children. The features on this website are seemingly endless, including games, composer biographies, and sound clips. Navigating this website, however, might prove difficult for younger students, so the teacher must explore this website on their own and decide specifically which feature to link the students to. This is a very interactive website.
1.) http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks2/music/piano/index.htm - This website is free! The setup is very minimal and easy--simply google "music keyboard," and click on the link entitled "Virtual Keyboard." This site could be used for almost any age group who is computer literate; they just have to click on the keys and listen for the pitches. This would be a great resource in a classroom that maybe had "biased funders," who, say, donated computers instead of pianos, or if you were in a situation where only the teacher had access to a computer and could pull this up to use.
2.) http://www.childrensmusic.org/ - This website is also free to view and mostly to use. It's easy to use, and has pictures, links, and videos. It's main purpose is to be used as a springboard to get links to other websites, such as Kids' Public Radio. I would use this for elementary-aged kids, and show them that there is music out there just for them!
3.) http://www.allmusic.com/ - this seems like a great website for older kids to use when they get curious about all kinds of music. This site features almost every kind of music available to us now, complete with a lengthy and thorough definition of that genre of music. This site is, I believe, free, even to listen to MP3 tracks from albums.
1. www.musictheory.net
This free website is also a freeware downloadable program. It is very easy to walk your students through the basic concepts of music theory such as scale writing and basic chord analysis. One of the unique features is the training tools like the ear training tool and note trainer. I use the note trainer a lot with my elementary students as an easy flash card system of practicing their note identification. The preferences are easy to change the clef for the correct instrument and setting the range of notes known.
2. www.rubistar.com
This is a free rubric writing website. It is very user friendly and easy to create rubrics for that can be used for grading projects or reviewing concerts. This could be used by students from fourth grade and above. I would incorporate the use of the website into creating the standards by which the class is to be graded on or have the students create a rubric to use for rehearsal and concert critiques.
3. Marine Band Kids Corner
www.marineband.usmc.mil/kids_corner/kids.htm
This is a great free site
It is focused toward various levels of students. The site is guided by John Phillip Sousa around with the President's Own around the white house. It gives not only historical information on sousa, the band and white house but other cool interesting facts about all three. I would use it as a resource when studying a unit on sousa's music or military bands. It also has a great listing of other children's resources at the end of the tour.
1) http://www.sfskids.org
This site is free to use and is simple to use. It focuses on introducing children to traditional orchestral instruments. It also has a bit of music theory incorporated. I would say that elementary students can use this site with their parents to look at all the different instruments. IF they begin to look at the theory, I would leave that to late elementary and middle school students. This site can be use in a classroom to complement a specific lesson. Such as harmony, rhythm or pitch.
2)jazzkids.com
Most of the activities on this site are free. Some require you to set up a free membership. I had some trouble getting some of the links to work. I might use this in the classroom if I was teaching a jazz lesson. This site also teaches other rhythms such as pop and latin.
3) teoria.com
This is a free website used to further develope music theory as well as aural skills. It is very easy to use. I would recommend this site to be used by an advanced musician. Students in the high school level should be able to benefit from this site. It compliments any music theory class or Interval training lesson.
1. http://www.funquizcards.com Is a free website where you can make up your own quizzes and polls for your blog or myspace page. It can be used for any age depending on what the information is you decided to use for the quizes. The only thing is you are only limited to nine questins.
2. classicalmusicgames.com is $29.95. This website has very fun and visual games for ages 5-9. They can see the instruments and play games with them. It also tests them to puzzules, rhythms, pitch matching in a fun way. This would be very good for young children because they are learning while having fun and creating music. It offers a free download but I would recommend purchasing to get the complete experience.
3. http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/. Is free and is a very professional way to make quizzes online for school or for your blog.You can personalize your own quiz with different colors. Email it and use it for your blog. You can also get an analyisis and discussions through this quiz. This can be used for high school or junior high age.
My teachable website will be a supplemental resource for teachers and students to learn about music in a fun, accessible way.
1)www.flashmusicgames.com - Free
Includes games for ear training, piano, drums, and guitar; good supplement material for beginning students. Any age can use this but lack of interesting graphics may make it better for older, beginning students.
2)www.sphinxkids.org - Free
Fun website with interactive games and videos – good for the younger kids. Linked to the Sphinx Organization’s Classical Connections with works to provide underserved populations with music education. Website geared towards minority populations so videos and information focused on minority groups.
3)www.musictechteacher.com - Free
This website is more for teachers – provides technical information for music teachers as well as a myriad of quizzes, games, information, software, links, and lesson plans for teachers to use in the music classroom.
I plan to use this in my own classroom in the future – it seems like a wonderful resource.
1. Address: musicedmagic.com
Cost: Free
Age group: High school
This site is a great resource for older children, especially those that take band or choir more seriously. The website is very easy to navigate, and has a plethora of resources for students, such as free mp3 downloads, musician tips of the day, videos, and product reviews. This could easily be incorporated into a lesson, by either having the students read one of the blog posts, download and print his or her favorite song from the database and bring it in for the class to sing, and so on.
2. Address: creatingmusic.com
Cost: Free
Age Gruop: Elementary
This website is a lot of fun to play with. For a general music classroom, this is a perfect tool to incorporate into a lesson. There are a lot of different activities the child can do, such as sketching his or her own composition, listening to examples of pitch contours, or composing 3-8 note melodies and seeing if he or she can then aurally distinguish the original. It is very easy to use, and beginners to music would have fun and learn at the same time.
3. Address: musictechteacher.com /musicquizzes.htm
Cost: Free
Age Group: Middle School - High School
Whether or not one chooses to use this website for it's quizzes or not, this site presents a ton of musical information that would certainly be useful to a large age group. For example, if I were teaching a lesson on learning the notes on the piano (or anything dealing with note names), there is a quiz that spells out words by putting x's on certain keys of the piano. The student then has to choose which word is being spelled from a group of three. The array of quizzes here is very wide, and immensely useful to an educator!
1. http://4teachers.org/ This site helps teachers locate and create ready-to-use Web lessons, quizzes, rubrics and classroom calendars. There are also tools for student use. The resources are free, but the website asks for donations.
2. http://www.loc.gov/teachers/ This is through the library of congress. It is a free resource designed to help students with research.
3.http://www.childrensmusicworkshop.com/musictheory/index.html
This is a free resource, designed to help children with music theory outside the class room.
1. http://4teachers.org/ This site helps teachers locate and create ready-to-use Web lessons, quizzes, rubrics and classroom calendars. There are also tools for student use. The resources are free, but the website asks for donations.
2. http://www.loc.gov/teachers/ This is through the library of congress. It is a free resource designed to help students with research.
3.http://www.childrensmusicworkshop.com/musictheory/index.html
This is a free resource, designed to help children with music theory outside the class room.
www.musictheory.net
This is a free site that has tons of easy to use lessons and trainers. This site has enough different resources that can be used with a wide variety of kids starting with middle school and up. Younger kids can benefit from using note trainers and lessons teaching rhythm, meter, or basic knowledge of the staff. Older kids can use the ear trainer or roman numeral analysis lessons. Any of these lessons would work well as supplemental work kids can do on their own at home for extra practice.
www.creatingmusic.com
This is another free site that has a lot to offer. It is aimed more towards younger kids just starting in a music ensemble or kids in a general music class. They can “sketch” their own compositions and have them played back for them, or they can look at masterworks while listening to recordings. It also has a few basic lessons which can be used to reinforce what was taught in class. This site is a fun place to play around for younger kids and reinforce musical concepts and ideas.
www.musicedmagic.com
This site is great for the teacher to use for resources. I particularly like that you can download sheet music for a lot of songs. This does involve installing a sibelius plug-in, but that was easy. It also has some downloadable worksheet to teach scales, the sound pyramid, and other concepts. It has practice records and critique sheets that can be downloaded too. This site has a lot to offer and even has videos gathered for things from music recording to instrument maintenance and repair.
1) dsokids.com
This site is an educational site created by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. It has information about composers, listening excerpts from many composers, and games for kids. It is a very easy to use website and even though it is designed for elementary age children I had fun playing around on the site.
2) creatingmusic.com
This was also a very fun site, but instead of giving kids information about composers it lets them actually create their own music. There is a sketch pad tool that allows a child to draw a melody and have it played back. There is also a feature that let's you use your typing keyboard as a piano which is a lot of fun to play around with. Although the games on the website are free, software for the classroom is available for $40.
3) musictheory.net
This is a free site that offers help with all things music theory. It has pre-designed lessons that cover a variety of topics ranging from basic theory to advanced concepts. This is a very useful site that I think would be appropriate for advanced middle school students and older.
Site address http://www.musicteachersblog.com/
This is a free, easy to use resource made by other fellow music educators. It is accessible and includes a variety of resources, including current, relevant articles about music education. This site seems most accessible to an older set of students, as it has many philosophical musings. I would use this in the context of a more experienced group of musicians.
Site address: http://www.boopadoo.net/
This is a free, easy to use website that includes a variety of decorations and links associated with younger children. I would use this simply as another exciting visual aid, as it has many pictures and bright colors.
Site address: http://www.craftymusicteachers.com/
This website is a resource for teachers. It is geared towards music teachers who are interested in learning new ways to teach lessons to their classes. It includes instructions on activities such as making your own instruments.
1. www.classicforkids.com
The cost of this website is free. The website is a very easy to use, children-friendly formatted one that outlines the history of composers. It also has it's own listening radio show where the kids take a quiz afterwards. I would think that the appropriate age group for this website would be elementary to middle school children. I would incorporate this website into the lesson to show kids how to search for history of composers or if the radio show lesson seems interesting I could have the kids listen to the radio show and take the quiz afterwards.
2. www.dsokids.com
The cost of this website is free! The website is very kid friendly as well. It has listening, composer history options that the children can read. The website is definitely elementary age children. This website could also very well be used the same way the first one would be. Especially the section on 'how to make your own instrument'.
3. www.quibblo.com
The use of this website is free.
This website is user friendly. You do have to sign up and become a member in order to be able to create a quiz for the classroom though. I would probably use this website for either middle school to high school age students to take a quiz for them to take based off whatever subject(s) we're covering.
1. (http://www.keynotesmagazine.com/article/?uid=43)
Cost: free
This is an article which I believe perfectly outlines many of the problems begining clarinet players have. Although this is written as a guideline for instructors, I believe it would also be a worthwhile endeavor for students to read as well to double check their own playing and be aware of these common misconceptions that may hurt their playing.
2. (http://www.smartmusic.com/)
Cost: $30 for a year's subscription
This is an incredible tool which I have used since high school. In this program students can not only play along with "smart" accompaniment which follows them, but can also open up a multitude of works for band which include on screen sheet music. Along with many other features, something I find to be an incredible tool which is offered here is that students can record themselves reading this on screen music and the program will tell the student where they played wrong notes or false entrances which can significantly help a student with their practice habits.
3. (http://www.good-ear.com/servlet/EarTrainer)
Cost: Free
This site offers a means for students to practice ear training from simple intervals to complex chords. It keeps track of your correct and incorrect answers and although I would like to see a way for the teacher to be able to see the students progress, it seems to at least be a beneficial tool for students to grasp a basic concept of ear training.
1. worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com
This website is so colorful and alive in the sense that it takes you on a virtual tour of music that is being made all around the world right now. There are so many resources here, it is hard to believe it is free. So many times in music we study music of the dead guys – how cool to see a site that is geared towards today. I would put a link to my teachable website to National Geographic and use it as a resource for implementing world music curriculum ideas. You could also post a link to the ‘video of the day’ and ask students to view and post comments daily or weekly. I would have to check that everything meets appropriate standards, but the site is just so effective for exploring world music. This site would appeal to middle and high school students due to its current nature.
2. www.cso.org
The CSO offers this great site called Dream Out Loud, which shares the stories of four orchestra musicians. They have pictures of each musician, a video in which they discuss how they got started and the challenged they faced. Within each video they include an interview, pictures, and clips of each musician playing. Not only is the website free to use, the CSO will send any educator in Illinois a packet which includes posters, printed profiles, and suggestions on how to use them in the classroom free of charge. I would include this website as a link on my teachable website as an opportunity for students to connect with lie musicians. You could also develop a lesson plan in which they create a virtual evening at the CSO, where they pick out a concert to attend, choose seats, and describe why they would like to hear the music on that concert. This site would be a perfect companion to instrumental recruitment in grades 3-6.
3. www.classicsforkids.org
This website provides a free and easy way to introduce basic music theory concepts and composer stories. As a teacher it would be easy to help students navigate their way around this site. The ‘compose your own music’ feature is suitable for primary grades just learning to write music. The dictionary is my favorite feature of this website. In addition to providing definitions, it plays musical examples to reinforce the concept. I would put a link from my teachable website to the dictionary as a resource for students. The ‘make your own radio show’ feature was really creative. I would use this as a project with grades 5-8 as a connection to performance and technology.
There is an awesome website called Carnegie Hall Lisening Adventures. It is free and it is already set up. It is very easy to access to start the Dvorak's New World Symphony section. For Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, you need a password and I got stuck. The ages are from 6 to 12. The students are able to listen to and view the animated vesion of Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 and Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. It also features interesting historical background. I could definitely show this to the class as we study these great compositions.
Midisaurus Suppliment: Composers is $45. compatible with Windows and Mcintosh, for ages 4-11. COMPOSERS covers musical forms and famous comosers such as Bach, Handel,Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and more. As I am doing a series on the composers,I could easily go over the aforementioned topics.
sfkids.org is free. It's from the San Fransisco Symphony. It's already set up. I would guess the ages appropriate would be upper elementary grades and up. It features Instruments of the orchestra, but the sound was electronical. I loved the Radio: where you click on different "stations' and get the decription and musical excerpts of popular classical tunes such as Flight of the Bumbleebee and Brandenburg Suite. I could definitely use these as I teach on composers. By the way,I came upon this through a website called mtna/org/resources/websitesforkids. They have terrific websites related to music and kids.
I am appreciating how our professor is having us do these assignments which actually prepare and help us with the big website assignment. The project looked formidable before but I am getting excited about it now.
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