Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog

This morning, my PreK and K had their annual Halloween Parade. This includes students coming to school dressed in their Halloween Costumes or as themselves, parade around the school driveway, and sing around 6 songs. We sang “I’m a Little Pumpkin,” “Halloween is Here,” “We Are Jack-o-Lanterns,” “Dem Bones (from Music K8),” “Yo Te Vi,” and Greg Gilpin’s “The Day After Halloween.” Just in case there were parents who could not attend, I used M-Audio’s MicroTrack II voice recorder during music class to record four of the songs and posted them on my website.

And, yes teachers dress up too. This year, since I am 15 weeks pregnant, I dressed up as “Baby Burns.” I wore pink footy pajamas, hung a pacifier around my neck, and wore a sign that read “Baby Burns.” PreK Olders thought that I was a bunny and my sign read “Bunny Burns.” PreK students’ innocence and honesty are two of the reasons why I adore teaching them music.

I hope that you enjoy their songs!

Over the past few weeks, my first graders have been experiencing dynamics, mainly forte, piano, getting louder, and getting softer, in various ways. I prepared the concept through singing songs loud and soft, performing loud and soft on instruments, and telling the story of Haydn’s Surprise symphony, in which they then listened to the excerpt and acted out the story. I presented the concept by introducing the terminology of forte and piano. We are now in the practice portion of this concept. We are going to be using Sibelius’s Groovy Shapes today to practice forte and piano. The lesson will also touch upon getting louder and getting softer.

Procedure: The school’s IT delivered the Smart Board to my classroom (yeah!) and I hooked up my laptop with Groovy Shapes on it. Before the lesson, I clicked on the Create mode and created a simple four-measure song with bass line tear drops, melody circles, and rhythm squares. I then put the song on the other four computers in the room. When the students entered the classroom, they first were excited to see the Smart Board hooked up (I have to sign it out way in advance). We sat down and sang our hello song and a few other class favorites…currently, Halloween songs. We reviewed forte and piano through singing. The students sat in the front of the Smart Board and I logged in as 1st grade and pressed the Explore button. We performed lesson four, music symbols, together with each student taking a turn to complete a task. I observed and noted which students were answering the musical questions correctly on the first try and which students needed a few tries to answer them correctly. (This will assist me later when I write their progress reports).

Once finished, I placed the students in groups and had them go to the 5 computers in the classroom. My four-measure song was on the screen. Each student was to add dynamics symbols to the bass line, melody, or rhythm square. During the next class, they will listen to their songs again answering the questions of which shapes are the loudest and which shapes are the softest. We will finish by having listened to all songs.

Classroom management suggestion: If your students are not working in groups well yet, and believe me, my students need practice with this, I give them each a marker. When they have a turn, they mark a check on a piece of paper. That way there is a record of all of the students taking turns and who had more or less turns.

This picture is what one of my first grade groups created yesterday during class. You can tell by the shapes that the large ones are forte and the small ones are piano.

As we finish this project next week, I will post their musical dynamic creations on my website on the 1st grade page. I hope that you will visit them and enjoy.

One item I like about being able to sing Halloween songs at my school is the songs that have the word oooo in them. When my elementary students sing oooo in reference to a ghost, they automatically sing in their head voices. It is a nice time for me to teach them the difference between their singing and speaking voices, and the difference between their head an chest voices. This lesson below assesses the students on their head voices and pitch using a recording device as the assessment tool. This lesson comes from my book published by Hal Leonard titled, Technology Integration in the Elementary Music Classroom.

Grade Level:
K-2

Teacher’s Technical Ability:
Intermediate

Objective:
The teacher will be able to use music technology to help assess whether his/her students are singing in tune.

When I read the MENC General Music Bulletin Boards, a concern that continuously appears is how to assess young children when you have to give them a grade and you see over 400+ students per week. This lesson is one way to achieve both.

Materials/Equipment:
This lesson can be done with an Apple iPod that has recording capabilities. The iPod Classic or iPod Nano, and the previous generations of iPods, have the abilities to record with external recording devices, such as XtremeMac MicroMemo voice recorder or Griffin’s iTalk Pro. However, this lesson can also be done with M-Audio’s MicroTrack II, a professional two-channel mobile digital recorder. The MicroTrack comes with its own microphone, so there is no need to purchase an additional microphone. Finally, if you have a laptop with the freeware Audacity, you can place the laptop in the middle of the room, press record, and assess them.

In order to assess the students correctly, you will need to sit them in an assigned seating order. In addition, you will need a song that the students can sing into the recording device. For this lesson, I will use the traditional Halloween song, “Skin and Bones” to assess if the students can sing the line “Oo-oo-oo-oo” (mi-re-do-la) for this lesson. Please note that this is a song that I would use in my classroom. You can choose to use a song that best fits your curriculum.

Duration:
One class period (30 minutes)

Prior Knowledge and Skills:
The objective of this lesson is for the teacher to assess the students’ singing abilities. Therefore, the students need to be able to sing a song that they know well.

Procedure:
1.    Review singing the song together as a group.
2.    Sing the line,  “Oo-oo-oo-oo” together with the hand symbols for mi-re-do-la.
3.    Create movements to reinforce the melodic direction of the line, “Oo-oo-oo-oo.”
4.    Explain to the students that you will be recording the line, “Oo-oo-oo-oo” as each student will sing it as a solo.
5.    Demonstrate how to sing the line into the voice recorder. Press record and then hand it to the first student. If you have concerns with your students holding the recording device, you can place it in the middle of room to record the students.
6.    Have all students sing the verses together, with each individual student singing the line, “Oo-oo-oo-oo” into the voice recorder.
7.    When finished, you will have a recording of each student singing a solo line of the song.

Evaluation:
Now that you have a recording of all of your students singing a solo, you can listen to it from the iPod, MicroTrack II, or laptop by connecting it to a set of speakers. With the iPod or MicroTrack II, you can import it onto your computer and listen to it from there. Depending on your goals for your students, you can assess them on what best fits your curriculum. For this lesson, I have assessed them with the following rubric:

Singing the line “Oo-oo-oo-oo” on the correct pitches of mi-re-do-la.
Excellent:    The student can sing all of the proper pitches of mi-re-do-la in tune.
Good:    The student can sing 3 out of 4 proper pitches of mi-re-do-la in tune.
Fair:    The student can sing 1-2 out of 4 proper pitches of mi-re-do-la in tune.
Novice:    The student cannot sing any of the proper pitches of mi-re-do-la in tune.

Follow-up:
This assessment is a way for you to assess many students, especially at report card time.

Items to be Purchased:
The price of Apple’s iPod can vary depending on how many gigabytes (GB) you will want your iPod to have. Please note that teachers qualify for educator’s discounts, so please check Apple’s website for these discounts.
The XtremeMac MicroMemo microphone and the Griffin’s iTalk Pro for the iPod are relatively inexpensive. M-Audio’s MicroTrack II is costly for an elementary music budget, however, it does come with its own microphone and can be used to record performances, podcasts, music projects, etc.

 Congratulations to Dr. Rick Dammers (president of TI:ME NJ), Marjorie LoPresti (Secretary/Treasurer), and Joe Cantaffa (Vice President) for a wonderful conference! It was an honor to present a podcasting session for the elementary music teachers that attended.

The day began enthusiastically as Dr. James Frankel (past TI:ME NJ President, current TI:ME Vice President, and Managaing Director of SoundTree) presented the keynote address on New Tends in Music Technology. I adored the new keyboard controller, the Korg Nano, because it opens up numerous possibilities for economically adding keyboards to your school’s computer lab. I also loved seeing the newest addition to Morton’s Subotnick’s software line titled World of Music. I cannot wait to use this with my elementary students because it allows them to create music by drawing with a pencil and then changing the instrumentation to match the instruments found in various countries. Jim is one of those rare treasures: he can show you all of the tools you need to reach various students in your class because he now works in the corporate world so he has access to the newest items, however he has taught for the past 15+ years in music education so he can easily show and explain to you how these new tools will enhance your classroom.

I also enjoyed seeing Robin Hodson’s presentations on Groovy Music, Sibelius, and ProTools. Sibelius is now a part of the Avid family, which aso includes M-Audio, Avid, Pinnacle, and Digidesign.  It was great to see him score a movie in ProTools and to realize that a teacher could use this or a high school student could use this well in music class. It opens up numerous possiblities for high school music appreciation classes.

Rick ended the day with a roundtable discussion about music technology, which was inspiring. He put out some great ideas about TI:ME including the IT staff that are in schools and discussing data that collected from NJ music teachers about music technology.

There were some excellent presentations at this conference and again, I compliment Rick, Marjorie, and Joe for planning and setting up the day. I also thank Sibelius and SoundTree for sponsoring the conference.

For the handout and pdf of the powerpoint used in my session, please visit my website. For the podcast, and unfortunately my MicroTrack II only recorded 35 minutes of it because I might have bumped it and turned it off, you can go to my podcast site.

Tomorrow, I will be presenting Podcasting in the Elementary Music Classroom at the 3rd annual TI:ME NJ In-Service Day. My session will show participants how to podcast using three programs that could easily fit any elementary music budget: Audacity (freeware for PC and MAC), TrakAx (freeware for PC) and Apple’s GarageBand (MAC). We will explore various ways to utilize podcasts that will easily benefit the elementary music curriculum.

I am also looking forward to hearing Dr. James Frankel’s New Trends in Music Technology, Marjorie LoPresti’s WikiSpaces for School Music, Robin Hudson’s Using Sibelius and Groovy Music for composition in K-12 and Audio Recording with ProTools for Teachers, Joe Cantaffa’s Music Technology: On the Road with The RocknRoll Chorus, and ending with the roundtable discussion of A look in the Mirror & Next Steps.

It should be a great day! I thank Rick Dammers for inviting me to present, planning the day and all of the hectic details, and for hosting the day! I also thank SoundTree and Sibelius for sponsoring the day.

If you are attending, please stop by and say hi!

Every year, my Pre-Kindergarten (PreK) and Kindergarten parade around the blacktop on Halloween morning. Last year, we recorded the songs we sung (during music class) so that parents who could not attend could hear their singing. We used my iPod with the voice recorder attached to it. You can hear them in two places:

1. http://web.mac.com/awillisburns/Amy_M._Burns/Kindergarten/Entries/2008/3/3_Mad_About_Greece.html
2. http://www.amymburns.podomatic.com/

My students love to be recorded. When they successfully sing or perform an orffestration, they immediately ask me to record them. I have used my iPod voice recorder, or the Microtrack II, or the Blue microphone recording with GarageBand or Audacity, or the internal computer microphone with GarageBand or Audacity. Although they all produce different qualities, my elementary students love the immediacy of hearing their recorded performances.

I hope that you enjoy!

Image from http://floridaillustrator.blogspot.com/

There are six days left until the TI:ME NJ In-Service Day! The preliminary schedule has been posted and there are some terrific sessions planned. If you are interested in podcasting, I hope that you will attend my session titled “Podcasting in the Elementary Music Classroom.” Please come and join us!

If you have missed the last two TI:ME NJ In-Service days, then I highly recommend that you attend this one! The conference will be sponsored by Sibelius and SoundTree. Our keynote speaker is none other than our TI:ME NJ past-president, Dr. Jim Frankel! I have attended many of Jim’s sessions, and I can tell you that his sessions are well-researched, knowledgeable, fun (he is a funny guy!), professional, and absolutely excellent. Every time I attend one of his sessions on podcasting, internet resources, copyright, or other numerous technology sessions that he has held, I learn something new.

Our current TI:ME NJ President, Dr. Rick Dammers, is hosting our 3rd annual conference on Tuesday, October 21, 2008 from 8:30 am to 3:30 pm at the Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ. I thank Rick for keeping this annual conference active. It is a great and educational way to spend a day!

To register for the conference, please send the following information to dammers@rowan.edu

Name:

School Name & Address:

School Phone:

Home Address:

Home Phone:

Preferred Email Address:

Registration for TI:ME Members is $25, and Non-Member registration is $40. Please make all checks payable to “Rowan University”. Payment should be mailed to NJ TI:ME, c/o Rick Dammers, Wilson Hall- Rowan University, 201 Mullica Hill Road, Glassboro, NJ 08028.

The schedule of the conference will be available shortly.

Hope to see you there!

Podcasting is a hot topic in education. Each school year, I am finding more podcasts to subscribe to, to listen to, to download, etc., that I thought that I would share with you just a few of my favorites:

1. Radio WillowWeb: Willowdale Elementary has been podcasting and blogging for years. Their podcasts are wonderfully educational and excellent examples of podcasts created by students for students. OK, they are not musically-based, but they are one of the original podcasters and they are good to listen to.
2.  Classics for Kids Podcast: There are some great podcasts about composers on this site. It is a nice way to enhance a music unit on composers.
3. Dr. Frankel’s Podcast Page: Dr. Jim Frankel, director of SoundTree and was a middle school music educator for 15 years, is one of the lead experts in the field of education and music technology. Everytime he presents a session, he pocasts them on his podomatic site. Definitely worth checking out!
4. MusTech.net’s Technological and Musings Show: These podcasts are an amazing wealth of music and technology knowledge from Joe Pisano. As Joe writes, “Mustech.net podcasts are some of the very best on the web about music and technology subjects you love!”
5. Scott Watson’s What Music Means to Me: Scott is an educator, clinician, author, and composer. I have had the pleasure of attending Scott’s music technology workshops and my students have had the pleasure of performing his music. His insights into music are worth listening to. You will definitely get a lot out of his podcasts.
6. I am a proud teacher who likes to promote her students’podcasts: Click on Kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 2, or Grade 3 to listen to some of my students’ podcasts. I hope that you enjoy them.

What are some of your favorite podcasts?

I posted this last week, but I just wanted to post it again because I am going to send the grant in very soon and if you wanted to be apart of it, please email me at awillis2@aol.com asap.

Original Post:

Since 2000, Finale has offered a freeware titled Finale NotePad, which was a very watered-down version of Finale. As an elementary music educator, I adored this application because its limitations were excellent for my elementary students. For example, I used Finale NotePad 2005 to successfully prove my research project where 2nd graders in the experimental group 2 who composed using Finale NotePad learned and retained more about basic musical skills than the 2nd graders in the experimental group 1 who composed using traditional manuscript paper and pencil. Last year, my 3rd graders used Finale NotePad 2008 to compose a song about the state that they were studying for their 50 States Fair. All of these projects and others were done using the freeware Finale NotePad.

Unfortunately, MakeMusic decided to charge $9.95 for Finale NotePad 2009 so that they could add more features that users were requesting such as an all-new Expression Tool and the ability to import/export MusicXML files. Currently, you can no longer find the older versions of the freeware on their site. I do understand why MakeMusic chose to do this, and it is a great program for only $9.95. However, the two huge benefits to Finale NotePad was that you could put it on any computer in the school and your students could use it at anytime of the day and feel success using it because it was easy-to-use and it was free. That meant that when my 2nd or 3rd graders had free choice in their daily classrooms, they could go to the classroom computer and launch Finale NotePad. It also meant that I could sign out time in the computer lab and Finale NotePad would be on every computer for each student to use.

I am saddened by MakeMusic’s decision to discontinue their freeware and begin charging for the product. I am especially saddened for those financially struggling school districts where $9.95 for a software program to be placed on each computer would be difficult to accommodate. I was enlightened to read Joe Pisano’s post about the freeware MuseScore because if you are a PC user or your school has PCs, then you have an excellent composition freeware to replace your Finale NotePad. Unfortunately, it is not compatible for a MAC yet.

How do you feel about this? Will this make a difference in your music classroom if you had been using a notation program? I look forward to reading your comments.