Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog

Today at Far Hills Country Day School, we had World Travel Day. The students were given passports and they would travel around the school to student-run stations. At each station, they would learn about a country, perform a dance from the country, make a craft, play instruments native to that country, and more. Some of the stations were France, China, Greece, and five countries in Latin America. One of the items that the students showed was google earth. This free, downloadable software “lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places, and share with others.” One of the nice aspects of it that can be utilized with one computer in a classroom with internet access, is that you can type in the address of your school and then type in the name of the country that you are studying in your music classroom, and google earth will “fly” you to the destination. In addition, the students can use google earth to see many aspects of that particular country. The students showing the country of France showed a variety of cities and tourist attractions in France with great detail.  It really makes the country come to life for your students. Think about the possibilities of how this could be utilized in your music classroom when you study music from various countries!