Coming this Fall, the MusicFirst Classroom will include ALL of the amazing Level One videos from MusicProfessor.com at no additional charge. MusicProfessor is an online library that contains hundreds of short videos that provide lessons so that students learn how to play an instrument at home at your own pace on any device. The videos are excellent and professionally produced, and I personally believe that it is a perfect resource for any band or orchestra director who may not have the time to provide individualized instruction to EVERY student.
Keep reading here…
After 4 years of work, thousands of pages of lessons plans, more than 1,000 interactive resources, and the tireless work of an amazing team of teachers and developers from our award-winning partners Charanga, I am so very proud to introduce you to a truly revolutionary music curriculum for Grades K-5 - MusicFirst Elementary, powered by Charanga. Unlike other online collections of resources that are targeted to the elementary music teacher, this is the first complete sequential K-5 music curriculum to hit the market in over a decade, and it is truly spectacular. The following provides an overview of what the curriculum includes, and most importantly, how you can preview it for yourself.
Keep reading here…
Downie - Ever wished you could save a video from the Internet? Search no more, Downie is what you're looking for. Easily download videos from thousands of different sites.
Other Rogue Amoeba apps that are indispensable for making content and wrangling audio: Audio Hijack, Loopback, and Soundsource. Check out their education discount.
AirServer app which lets you share an iOS screen to a computer
Podcast episode featuring maker of Audio Hijack, Farrago, Soundsource, and Loopback
Downie - Ever wished you could save a video from the Internet? Search no more, Downie is what you're looking for. Easily download videos from thousands of different sites.
Other Rogue Amoeba apps that are indispensable for making content and wrangling audio: Audio Hijack, Loopback, and Soundsource. Check out their education discount.
AirServer app which lets you share an iOS screen to a computer
Podcast episode featuring maker of Audio Hijack, Farrago, Soundsource, and Loopback
MusicFirst is putting on a Music Ed Tech Conference this summer. I strongly encourage you to check it out. It is completely free! There are a lot of great speakers including myself and past guest, Richard McCready.
Victor Wooten and Dr. Jeffrey A. Murdock are keynote speakers.
We are thrilled to announce the 2021 Music Ed Tech Conference: Renew, Refresh, Rebuild! This event is a completely free virtual conference held on Tuesday, July 20, 2021. It is open to all music teachers and features an incredible line-up of music educators from a wide variety of backgrounds, including two keynote speakers: Dr. Jeffrey A. Murdock (2021 GRAMMY™ Music Educator of the Year) and Victor Wooten (bassist and founding member of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones). Attendees will be able to attend breakout sessions focusing on specific content areas and strategies for using technology to strengthen and rebuild music programs in the 2021-22 school year and beyond.
My session is called What Do We Keep? I am going to talk about which technological practices from the past year are worth integrating into the future of teaching.
I pushed my tech to the fringes last school year, and I think it is worth investigating what new ideas are worth keeping, which should be quickly discarded, and which have the power to transform classroom environments. I will be talking about my experience through the lens of both traditional performance ensemble teaching and the general music classroom where kids are making music, crafting beats, and covering various styles of music. Click the link below to read more.
WHAT DO WE KEEP?
2:05 - 2:50 PM EST, July 20, 2021
Join band and general music teacher, Robby Burns, to reflect on which digital teaching practices are worth integrating into the new year. Find out how he has pushed his technology to the complete limits, using advanced organization tools and automations to speed up his logistical work, as well as digital collaboration tools to create rich and engaging assessments online.
I am pleased to be a guest on the MusicFirst podcast, Profiles in Teaching with Technology, this week.
I had a great conversation with Dr. Jim Frankle. We talked about my journey into music ed, catching an interest in technology, tips for teachers who are apprehensive about tech, what my school’s music program looks like (normally and during the past year). and my favorite uses for technology in the classroom.
Check it out below and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
*The following post first appeared on the NAfME Blog on April 19th, 2021.
Over the past year of remote and hybrid instruction, teachers have reimagined the tools, assignments, and methods that best engage their students. The need to engage my band students from a distance has challenged me to depend on cloud-based tools that still foster the development of their performance skills. The features of these cloud tools allow me to engage students in new ways by introducing interactive projects, collaboration with peers, and automated grading.
The ideas below will be featured in my presentation at the NAfME Eastern Division Conference this weekend. Register here to join me and the many exceptional presenters who will be sharing their ideas.
What is Cloud Software
Cloud software is a buzzword in the technology industry that is used to describe apps that run in a web browser. Examples of cloud-based music software include BandLab, Soundtrap, Noteflight, MusicFirst, and Flat for Education, to name a few. Because these offerings are web-based, they can run on nearly any computer with a web browser, as long as you have an internet connection. For this reason, they are more widely accessible to all students and can be integrated into an LMS (learning management software) like Canvas, Blackboard, and Google Classroom.
Here are some practical ideas for assignments in a performing ensemble using cloud software.
Noteflight
Noteflight is a music notation tool that runs on the web. In recent years, Noteflight has expanded to offer Noteflight Learn, which allows teachers to take Noteflight content and assign it to students in their class, much like an LMS. In the past year, Noteflight has added a feature called SoundCheck which can take these assigned Noteflight scores, and assess student performance for note/rhythm/pitch accuracy.
Students can play these scores, practice to them at any speed, and loop tricky sections. When they are done recording themselves, Noteflight provides an accuracy score and a line beneath the notes which indicates pitch and note inaccuracies by the counter and color of the line.
You can make any Noteflight score into a Soundcheck-enabled assignment. If the score is linked to an assignment in your LMS, the student score will automatically go into your grade book. Because computers are not perfect, I prefer to go back and listen to my students who don't receive good scores on assignments, to make sure I agree with the automatic grade.
Generally, is better at assessing note accuracy than pitch, so I tend to use SoundCheck as a first step to ensuring students are prepared for their music. Finer qualities in the music like tone and articulation are best left to video assessments with more comprehensive rubrics.
Getting Existing Music Into Soundcheck
If you have music that outside of Noteflight that you want to turn into an assessment, some apps can help. I use an app called Sheet Music Scanner on my iPad to take pictures of paper sheet music and turn them into XML files. XML is a file format that can pass notation projects from one notation editor to another. Once the XML version is saved to my device, I can import it into Noteflight and then assign it to my students.
Notation editors like Sibelius and Dorico can export to XML. If you have already created a score in a professional editor, it is easy to turn into an assignment.
Flipgrid
If your LMS does not have a video recording feature built-in, you might want to check out Flipgrid. My LMS has a video feature, and I still use Flipgrid because it makes video recording whimsical and fun. The Flipgrid interface puts an active circle around your face when you have submitted a recent video (like an Instagram story). Students can add filters, emoji, text, and other effects to their final videos. Students can watch each other's videos, and leave video responses. It is like a mini social network for your class, with lots of control over the privacy settings.
Flipgrid also integrates into LMS software, so you can use it as an alternative to the basic video recorder if you wish.
Soundtrap
Soundtrap is a web-based DAW (digital audio workstation). I have heard it described as "if Google Docs and GarageBand had a baby." This is because it looks and functions like GarageBand, but runs on the web. Like Google's apps, it is also collaborative. This means that you can have two or more students editing the same project at the same time while discussing their progress in a chat.
Soundtrap is great for producing beats, songwriting, and all of the things you would expect to do with access to limitless software instruments, samples, and pre-made loops. But what I use it for in the band room is to teach chamber music.
If I have a flute trio, for example, I can provide the music to my students and then invite them all to a Soundtrap project. Each student can create their audio track and record their part to the metronome. They can all be doing this simultaneously. Once they click save, they can play it back and hear what they sound like alongside one another in a somewhat real-time experience.
A fun alternative to this is to give a small ensemble piece to a single student and have them overdub themselves playing each part. This can help them to better understand how the varying parts fit together and complement one another. In cases like this, I have reached out to the local high school and asked for student volunteers to play all of the parts to a metronome. I then take all of the high schooler's recordings and add them as tracks in a Soundtrap template so that my students can toggle each part on and off for reference while they are recording.
You can see an example of this around the 20-minute mark in the video below.
Conclusion
These cloud-based assignments empower all students to participate in engaged music-making, alone and in groups. Nailing down the accuracy with a metronome will do wonders for their sense of timing and internal pulse. With recording assignments in Noteflight and Soundtrap, my students will do numerous takes until they get it just right! I cannot speak highly enough of these tools, and I certainly plan to use the assignment ideas above even when we return to a fully in-person learning environment.
If a video of this process is more your speed, you can watch how some of it works below. I also have a podcast version of this post available here.
Technology trainer and speaker, Katie Wardrobe, joins the show to talk about producing technology training and resources for music teachers. (And way more)
I have been meaning to write about "what I have been doing for online learning" since the fall.
This has proven difficult for many reasons, mostly that there is a lot I have been doing and it is all interconnected.
Generally, my planning and technology use has fallen into two categories.
Tech that supports synchronous classes (via Zoom/Google Meet/etc.)
Tech that supports the asynchronous work (via LMS, cloud-based and student-facing software, etc.)
Fortunately, I was invited to present at two music conferences this year, MMEA and TMEA, and each of my accepted sessions has serendipitously aligned with each of those areas.
This presentation in the video above is an overview of the asynchronous part. In other words, how I am keeping my virtual instruction focused on playing instruments solo, through student-facing tools like Noteflight, Soundtrap, Flipgrid, and a handful of iOS utility apps.
These strategies were developed while I was teaching virtually but they can just as easily be used in a hybrid or in-person teaching model. I would argue that they are just as valuable in either of those environments.
This presentation was first given at TMEA on Saturday, February 14th, 2021.
