Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog

I wanted to share with you a letter that I received from a friend and colleague. This past March I went to her school to show her and her colleagues ideas to enhance their current curriculum with technology. I am so proud of her accomplishments. If you were ever curious about how to enhance your current curriculum but you were not sure how to go about it, please read her letter. I hope that it will inspire and encourage you to try to integrate technology into some of your lessons or even to use technology as a tool to simplify some items in your classroom. If you are curious as to where to find music technology workshops, check out some of the TI:ME conferences and workshops in the summer.

“I’m beginning to feel more confident with my Mac now.  I found myself in a situation where my accompanist couldn’t make it to my school chorus rehearsals as often as I wanted.  I solved my problem with my Mac.  I input the piano accompaniments into Sibelius, then exported them in Garageband as midi files, and shared them to iTunes.  For rehearsal, I plugged my iPod into the classroom stereo and my kids sang along while I conducted with both hands free.  When our accompanist finally did make it to rehearsal, our time together was more fruitful since the choir was already familiar with the accompaniment.

Yesterday I recorded our concert with the microphone on my iPod.  After downloading the files into iTunes, I imported the file into Garageband.  Then I used Garageband to edit the recording into separate tracks and shared it back to iTunes.  My concert is now on my iPod in nice, neat files and I can burn it to CD to share with the band directors at my school.

I’m becoming more proficient with Sibelius.  I’ve used it to arrange some of my choral pieces.  I took the bridge section out of one piece and rewrote an Orff part for a student flutist.

I know that what I’ve been up to is very easy stuff, but I’m proud of it.  Thank you so much for inspiring me to learn to do these things.  My Mac really is changing the way I’m thinking about teaching and making my job easier.”