Week of Tech Tips for Music Educators! Tech Tip #3: Two Sites to Create Musical Dice and Stories
It is Day 3 of my series of tech tips. I hope that you are enjoying them!
Rhythm Dice
In my classroom, I have tactile manipulatives and digital manipulatives. I like to have both types so that I can provide multiple modalities for my learners. For my digital rhythm dice, I use the website: https://4four.io/rhythm/dice
https://4four.io/rhythm/dice
When you click on the settings, you can change how many dice you would like to use and which rhythms would fit your curriculum well. This is wonderful because you could also just choose rhythms that are found in a song that they are learning that week. Or a song found in a certain approach, like a folk song found in the Kodály approach. Each one needs six rhythms. If you choose less than six, the site will add more until there are six.
Sharing Them
Once you or your students have created the dice, you can display it on your screen where they come up to the interactive board or the device to roll the dice. If you click on the full-screen icon, you can make the site a focal point for your students. And if you click on the link 🔗, you can copy the link of the rhythm dice you created or you can copy the embed code link (this is not an iframe code) to embed the dice onto a site. The ℹinfo button gives you information on how to use the site.
Story Dice
Years ago I took Dr. Feierabend’s First Steps Certification with the amazing Dr. Missy Strong. She introduced me to this very hidden website: https://byrdseed.com/emoji2/ This site has simple emojis that the students can click on to create an arioso. An arioso is an improvised, made-up song that students create on the spot. When they click on this, it helps them sing a song by generating prompts. My young students love this site to create a song. Dave Birss also has a nice storytelling dice interactive website, but a couple of the pictures would not work in my classroom setting. I would suggest to check that site out before you use it with students.
Story Telling Dice App for iPad/iPhone
If you have an iOS device, you can download this free Story Dice app. Click on the three horizontal lines to change the settings. I like to use the Star Wars setting and four dice. I then click the horizontal lines again and shake the device. The app will roll the dice and the students can make up a song using the four pictures. Want to add a writing piece? Have your students write a sentence or some sight words that go along with their song. You can use a program like Seesaw to have them write and record their song.
Stay Tuned!
Come back tomorrow to check out another tech tip in this Week of Tech Tips for Music Educators!