Best of Pandemic #Elmused Tech Episode 7: Play-Along Videos

Episode 7 features an item that has been around for a long time, but many of us explored it greatly when having to teach in various teaching scenarios throughout this pandemic. I am speaking of the play-along videos. These are videos that include a song, various rhythm, melodic, or body percussion patterns, and a moving conductor so that the students can watch and actively “play along” with the video. It is very similar to “follow the bouncy ball” karaoke videos.

YouTube Episode: https://youtu.be/Lacn-5FfRRE

The Benefits

There are many reasons these play-along videos have worked so well:

• You can find numerous videos to a variety of styles of music on YouTube.

• You can create your own with tools such as Canva (to create beautiful slides), a recording of a song, a presentation program (like PowerpoInt or Keynote), and a screen recording tool (such as Screencastify or Loom).

• You can utilize body percussion so the students can move in their spaces when socially distanced.

• You can utilize classroom instruments, virtual instruments that they can access on their devices, classroom objects like desks, or body percussion to actively make music. This was very beneficial since music class can have an enormous amount of restrictions when teaching in-person during the pandemic.

• You could assign this as an activity on a choice board for asynchronous atmospheres.

• You could implement this nicely into a concurrent or hybrid teaching scenario.

• You could also assign these videos on a google classroom, Seesaw, Schoology, or other learning management systems or platforms with the students using various tools to record themselves for a playing or movement assessment.

The Amount of Choices

• Katie’s Video Creation Course

• Elementary Groove Play-Alongs

• Katie’s podcast with Cameron

• Ukulaliens

• UkeStuff

• Music Class with Ms. Watson

• Dr. Missy Strong’s YouTube Channel

• Wentworth YouTube Channel

• Body Percussion Play-Along Videos

• Musication YouTube Channel

• Mr. Henry’s Music World

• Virtual Musical Minds YouTube Channel

• Katie’s Video Creation Course

• Elementary Groove Play-Alongs

Elementary Groove Play-Alongs

There are so many wonderful play-along videos available on YouTube for you to use in any teaching scenario. Some of the ones that I have seen and used:

• Elementary Groove Tracks – This channel is created by Cameron Moten, an elementary music educator. Cameron’s videos feature the arrow, but also him conducting as well. He explains his process to Katie Wardrobe on her podcast here.

• Ukulaliens – This channel is created by Rachel Webley and has many ukulele play-along videos. This past summer, I started teaching ukulele to students in our school’s Summer Adventure Experience and they loved the videos!

• ukeplayalongs – This is another channel that we loved for their wonderful ukulele play-along videos to current pop songs.

• Music Class with Ms. Watson – This channel is created by Abby Watson, an elementary music educator and the daughter of Dr. Scott Watson (music educator and popular composer for school band literature). I personally love Abby’s bucket drumming videos, but she has quite a variety of play-along and movement videos on her channel.

• Dr. Missy Strong – Her YouTube channel has two move-its that my students cannot get enough of! Accompanied by her son, check out Bright Suns (Oga’s Cantina) and Trombone Shorty: Hurricane Season.

• Jennifer Wentworth – Jennifer has two excellent body percussion play-alongs that my students adore! She also has many read-alouds which come in very handy on days when you need to rest your voice, or for any remote, concurrent, or asynchronous learning.

• Irene Smykowski – Irene has multiple body percussion videos to various popular songs for upper elementary students.

• Musication – It would not be accurate if I did not mention this wonderful channel as a source for play-along videos. Musication features numerous boomwhacker play-along videos that my students cannot get enough of. And you are not confined to boomwhackers. My upper elementary students have successfully used the videos for tone chimes as well.

• Mr. Henry’s Music World – I discovered this channel through Katie. He has a variety of videos for elementary music, including play-alongs and so much more.

• Visual Musical Minds – Nathan Walby’s channel is phenomenal. It is well-made and executed so you can grab a video and intuitively implement it into your teaching day and your curriculum. He also created the “The Everything File” where he explains how to use his free resource of play-along items so you can create your own videos.

• Video Creation Course – Katie ran an excellent course titled “Video Creation for Music Teachers” that covered how to create a play-along video in-depth.

How to Create a Play-Along Video

• Loom: Use System Audio

• Keynote Formatting Shapes

• Powerpoint Formatting Shapes

• Keynote: Moving the conducting box across the screen

• Powerpoint: Move the box across the screen

• Keynote: Adding a Soundtrack

• Powerpoint: Adding.a soundtrack

• Loom: Use System Audio

• Keynote Formatting Shapes

Keynote Formatting Shapes

Episode 7 goes into these steps in more detail.

• Choose your goal. Is it to practice a steady beat movement? To experience movement with form? To read and perform certain rhythm patterns as a part of the practice portion in the Kodály approach? To play as an ensemble like in the boomwhacker play-along videos?

• Choose the music. Does the music have a strong beat that you can feel well or does it have a lot of subdivisions in it? Are you going to use this in your classroom or publish it publicly where copyright will need to be addressed? Is the music an appropriate length?

• Create the patterns. Are there resources already available for this part so that you do not need to recreate the wheel? Like Katie Wardrobe’s free notation files which also include a collection of 36 Free Guitar Chord Images and a collection of 22 Ukulele Chord Images? Or if you are a member of her community, the boomwhacker and body percussion files? Or Nathan’s everything file?

• Use the free educators version of Canva to create beautiful backgrounds for the notation, boomwhacker, ukulele chords, boomwhacker, etc slides.

• From here, I export the Canva file as individual .png files and bring them into Keynote or Powerpoint.

• Using the program’s shapes tool, I create a “conducting box” to go around the first beat.

  • Keynote: Shape>Square. Then click the Format tab to click Fill>No Fill. To change the weight of the border so that it is a thicker box, click Border>Line>10pt

  • Powerpoint: Insert>Shapes>Square. Then click on the screen to place the square. Then click on the Shape Format tab, click Shape Fill>No Fill. Then Outline>Weight>6pt

• Using the program’s animation tool, I use the “move” animation to move the box to the second beat. I continue until I have moved the box to the end of the measure. Each program is different, but I usually have the box moving at .5 or less per second so that it moves quickly with the music.

  • Keynote: Click on the box you created. Click the Animate tab. Then, click Action>Add an Effect>Move>.2s>click “Align to path” and then physically move the box to the next place on the screen. Next, click Add Action>Move>.2s>click “Align to path” and then physically move the box to the next place on the screen. Continue until you have all of the boxes you need for this slide. I do not add any slide transition animations if I know that the song has a quick tempo. Finally, test the slide to see if it worked.

  • Powerpoint: This is trickier for the version I am using on a Mac. Click the box you created. Click the Animations tab. Then click Path Animation>Lines. Then click Effect Options>Right. Then move the box to where it should end up (this might move the original box as well, so you will need to move it back). Then, change the timing to .5 seconds. Click Exit Effects>Disappear and change the “On Click” to “After Previous”. Copy and paste the box to the next place on the screen. You will need to add “Appear” to that box and change the “On Click” to “After Previous”. I did not find this to be intuitive on the version I am using on the Mac. This is probably much easier on another version of powerpoint where you can access a menu called More Motion Paths.

• If the pattern is going to be repeated multiple times, I copy and paste the box with the animations and place them on each slide with the same pattern.

• I continue until I have finished the conducting box on each slide.

• In Powerpoint or Keynote, I can add the soundtrack to the slideshow.

  • Keynote: Document>Audio

  • Powerpoint: Insert>Audio>Audio From File, then when the icon appears, click on the audio icon and Playback tab will appear. Click on “Play in Background”.

• I launch a screen recording tool such as Loom, Screencastify, or Screencast-o-matic. I make sure that the screen recording tool can source the audio, as Loom shows in its preferences menu. I turn off my microphone, click record, play the slide show in presentation mode, and move the box with the soundtrack.

• When I accomplish a recording that worked well, I will trim off any extra footage in the beginning or end of the video.

• When completed, I show my students.

What are some of your favorite play-along videos?

Best of Pandemic #Elmused Tech Episode 6: Free Tools

This past year, many items that are usually paid for, became free for us to use, especially during the lockdown. Some of them were Denise Gagne’s Musicplay Online and MusicFirst. As we started back to school in the States in August and September of 2020, many of us came back to budget cuts or even, teaching a whole new subject. As we now return to the classroom in 2021 (or a concurrent teaching scenario) we find ourselves using and needing free tools more often than not to accommodate the ever-changing learning environments.

There are amazing music education tools that have limited free editions or trial periods, but eventually, give you more bang for the buck with the paid versions. As mentioned above Musicplay Online, MusicFirst (MusicFirst Jr is for the younger grades), Quaver, Noteflight Learn, Soundtrap EDU, and others, fall into that category. Having tried and used all of the products mentioned, they are worth every penny for the elementary music educator who uses them in their classroom often and for supplementing the curriculum.

However, if you need free tools, here is a list that many elementary music educators used this year that can continue to be used in a more traditional elementary music classroom.

Quick Free Resources

• Wheel of Names – Add text, emojis, or pictures to create various wheels to use in your classroom.

  • Uses: You can use it to choose students, or add pictures for students to name notes. You can add pictures of rhythm patterns for whole class assessment. You can also use emojis to promote arioso singing or improvising short melodic phrases.

• Rhythm Randomizer – This site creates rhythm patterns in various meters and note values.

  • Uses: Use this site to assess various rhythm patterns. Or, use this site to take a quick screenshot of a rhythm pattern needed for your manipulative, or Google Slide, or Seesaw Activity, etc. You can change the settings so that your rhythm pattern can be set in various meters and note values.

• Note Image Generator – Bret Pimental created this site to capture pictures of notes on various staves.

  • Uses: This site is wonderful to collect quick pictures on a staff. When you use this site, you can download the pictures that you need and upload them to wheel of names.

• Solfasinger – This site is wonderful as it gives you a digitized solfege Curwen hand signs with a child singing the syllables. It also has moveable Do.

  • Uses: If you are teaching virtual, concurrent, or need a resource for the students to be able to access solfege, hand signs, and a recorded voice singing the syllables, then you can use this site to enhance your teaching or to share with your students.

• Solfege Hand Signs – Ms. Lambert gives you a free pdf of solfege hand signs with the boomwhacker colors as barriers.

  • Uses: You can use these to print out and hang up in the classroom, or add to your virtual classroom. If you do not want the barrier, you can export the pdf file and crop out the barrier in each picture by exporting each picture from the pdf.

• Transpose ▲▼ pitch ▹ speed ▹ loop for videos – This Extension allows you to change the speed and pitch of YouTube videos or online videos.

  • Uses: You could find karaoke videos and change the pitch and speed of them to assist your students’ practices and rehearsals.

Free Virtual Instruments

• Playxylo – This site has been amazing this past year. The creators listen to music educators’ suggestions and improve their virtual xylophone often. It currently has diatonic, chromatic, and pentatonic scales, as well as xylophone, boomwhacker, and monotone colors.

  • Your students’ devices can be transformed into instruments for in-person learning with restrictions, in-person learning with limited instruments available to the students, concurrent learning, and remote learning.

• Bongo Cat – This site is so much fun.

  • Uses: Use it as a virtual instrument for your students since they all might have devices, or use it as a stress relief for yourself.

• Scratch – A free coding website.

  • Uses: Need a virtual instrument? Place the name in the search tool and see if someone has created one for you to use. Level this up by asking older students to code instruments for the younger students to use.

Free Tools for Creating Music

• Chrome Music Lab – At this point, this site is so well-known that it is now a “go to” for music educators and their students. There is so much that one can do to create music and for arts integration.

  • Uses: One can have students create their own music in Song Maker. Arts Integration can be achieved by using Ocsillators to integrate Science with Music and Kandinsky to integrate Art with Music. To see a music and art integrated project we did this year, click here. There is so much more that this site can do. Want to also integrate music making with math? Try Groove Pizza and talk about the angles that are used to create various drum grooves.

• Incredibox – “An oldie but goodie”, as I heard a music educator describe this site the other day. This site has four demo versions that you can use with your students for free. They can arrange the cartoon beatboxers to make music, as well as unlock some new grooves within the site.

  • Uses: I love to use this site with my students to integrate writing with music. My students will write a poem as a part of their poetry unit and then turn it into a rap that they use Incredibox to create the background accompaniment track. We have also created the classroom expectations and used this site to create the accompaniment when rapping those expectations.

• Beepbox – This site is a wonderful way for older elementary students to create music that can be shared and saved.

  • Uses: It is a wonderful tool to use to create video game music (especially ones from a few decades ago). This site can also promote creating music with guided form and instrumentation.

• Bandlab EDU – Bandlab EDU is a digital audio workstation (DAW) that is web-based and promotes collaboration as students can create music together while working on multiple devices. Soundtrap EDU and GarageBand are very similar as Soundtrap EDU is a web-based DAW that allows collaboration, but is not free. And GarageBand is a DAW, but only accessed with Apple devices and is not web-based.

  • Uses: Explore this tool to create accompaniments and record students’ performances for assessments and to create a virtual performance audio recording. Plus, if you can, create accounts for your older elementary students to make music together when they are not in the same class, grade, or school.

Miscellaneous

• Pear Deck – Pear Deck, and it’s Chrome Extension, can turn your Google Slide presentations into interactive student assessments, exit tickets, and more. It is similar to Nearpod, but Nearpod has more items. Both have free versions.

• Loom – Loom is a screen recording tool, much like Screencastify and Screencast-O-Matic. These screen recording tools can be used in our traditional classrooms as they are great ways to create play-along videos. By creating rhythm or melodic patterns in Canva, you can bring those patterns into Google Slides, Powerpoint, or Keynote, add the soundtrack to the slide show, place the slide show in present mode, and record yourself moving the conducting tool across the screen. From this, you are creating your own play-along videos that enhance your curriculum as opposed to using one on YouTube which might not follow the curriculum you teach.

• Wakelet – Wakelet is free and allows you to create a list of links to share with your students. If you are lacking any sort of Learning Management System like Google Classroom, Schoology, Seesaw, Canvas, or others, then Wakelet can help you share many of your items with your students in a safe way.

• Canva – Canva for educators is a game changer. To see more, check out Episode 2 of this series.

Virtual Performances/Assessment Tools

• Flipgrid – Flipgrid is free and can be a wonderful tool to capture assessments, capture videos of students performing, promote digital citizenship, and learn more about students, their interests, and how they pronounce their names.

• Seesaw – Seesaw is a game changer, especially for an elementary student. To check out more, click here.

• Easy Virtual Choir – Creating a virtual choir when you lack the tools or experience is challenging. Easy Virtual Choir is an alternative. You can upload the accompaniment track and have students privately login to record themselves with the accompaniment track. Once all have done that, Easy Virtual Choir creates the video for you so you do not need to access or learn a video editor. For some educators, this was a viable and successful alternative.

With our current teaching atmosphere in an ever-changing status, these free tools can be so beneficial for this coming year.

Best of Pandemic #Elmused Tech Episode 5: Seesaw

Seesaw (web.seesaw.me) has been an amazing tool during the pandemic for music educators. Many of us used it before the pandemic, but when the lockdown occurred, numerous schools assigned Seesaw as a platform for #elmused to use to teach music. It consists of numerous tools to enhance advocacy, teaching, showcasing items, and so much more. Here are some examples of how Seesaw can continue to be used post-pandemic.

Advocacy

Seesaw has the capability of connecting the students’ journals with the students’ caregivers and families. It shows the families that music is more than concert preparation as you can add videos from class to their journals, showcase their assessments, their retrieval practices, and more. It delivers this all to the families’ mobile devices. And, you, the music educator, are the gatekeeper that allows what items can be posted for the families to see.

Seesaw Activities

There is a library of 100s to 1000s of lessons/activities that are made by educators for other educators to use. By performing a search, you can find many music activities filtered by grade level. These activities range the gamut from note reading to recording themselves singing.

Tools

Seesaw provides the students with various tools to help them respond to activities or to post to their journals using multiple modalities. These tools are recording audio, recording video, screen recording, adding links, adding pictures, taking notes via writing or audio, uploading videos/audio/pdfs/jpgs, and using a drawing tool that integrates the other tools into it. It gives the student a platform for them to reflect, express, and learn in a way that works well for them to succeed. It also helps you by giving your shyest student a safe place to record a solo. Plus, if you need recordings for virtual performances, Seesaw can be a tool to acquire those recordings.

Pricing

Seesaw is free+. You can begin with the free version and do all of what I stated above. To upgrade to Seesaw Plus (individual subscription) or Seesaw for Schools (where the school pays per student) gives you more activities to save, more classes to use it with, and allows you to keep track of the students’ progress.

Seesaw Courses

Seesaw is currently holding its annual conference, Seesaw Connect, from July 26-August 13. There are sessions available for all and mini-courses only available to Seesaw Learning Community (which involves becoming a Seesaw Pioneer, Ambassador, or Certified Educator). One of the sessions available for all is one I created titled, “Elementary Music + Seesaw = Success!”. Check it out today!

I am also running a Seesaw for Music Teachers Course through Midnight Music, which can be taken, asynchronously, at your own pace and timing.

“Best of Pandemic #Elmused Tech Episode 4: Bouncy Ball Videos”

Teaching during a pandemic made many music educators find different ways to assist with their student’s learning and practice. Having students being able to access videos where they can follow a bouncy ball, see ukulele fingerings, or see recorder fingerings as they practice is a very helpful tool for the students. Though this became a necessity for some of our music classes throughout the pandemic, this is also a great tool to continue to use after the pandemic. Since many music educators had to start using a Learning Management System (LMS), we can now continue to use that system to assign and share materials with our students.

What is a bouncy ball video?

A bouncy ball video is a video that has a “conductor” that bounces over words, rhythms, notes, etc, so that the participant can follow along with the music. It assists the participant with staying on the beat and not getting lost with the musical accompaniment. These videos can be used for following simple song lyrics, following rhythm patterns, following notated melodies, and more.

How do you create these types of videos?

In this week’s YouTube episode I show three ways to create these types of videos. The first way is with Seesaw. The second is with an iPad, and the third way is with Flipgrid. All three ways are free, but the second way requires an iPad to accomplish.

Seesaw

To create a bouncy call video in Seesaw, you could use the drawing tool.

1. Open Seesaw or create a free account

2. Launch +

3. Click on the drawing tools

4. Click the Text (T) tool to create the title.

5. Click the T tool again to create the lyrics. Create multiple text boxes so you can show the melodic direction of the song.

6. Click … to change the color of the background (optional).

7. Drag onto the screen a picture of a ball. If the ball does not have a transparent background, use remove.bg to remove the background.

8. Click on the 🎤 (microphone) tool and move the ball while you sing the song.

9. Click ✅ when finished.

10. You can now resize the video so you can delete the original background.

11. You can submit this to the post so the students and their caregivers can receive it and sing along at home.

12. Or, you can create an activity around the video, by doing this same process when making the activity. One suggestion is to create the video on one slide or for the multimedia example, and then give them the materials to make their own bouncy ball video. This way you can assess them.

iOS Assistive Touch Button

• I credit David Row for this idea.

• Make sure your settings on your iOS device have turned on the Assistive Touch button.

  • Go to Settings>Accessibility>AssistiveTouch>On

• Make sure your screen recording tool is able to be used. I move mine into the control center. Control Center>Screen Recording

• Find the lyrics by performing a search on a browser (Chrome or Safari).

• Activate the screen recording (make sure you hold down the microphone to turn it on), sing, and move the Assitive Touch button over the lyrics while you sing.

• When finished, the video saves to your camera roll and you can share it on an LMS.

Flipgrid

• I credit Katie Wardrobe for this idea.

• Flipgrid is free to use and you can create a video to share on other platforms or in the groups you create within the app.

• Click on “Shorts”.

• Click the Effects>Board> and choose a background. Slide the screen around so you and the brackground are next to each other on the screen.

• Click Effects>Photo and upload a lyrics sheet, a recorder composition, a melody, ukulele chord pictures, etc.

• Click Effects>Stickers and choose a sticker to be the conductor.

• Click the large circle to sing and move the conductor, or to play the recorder, or to play the ukulele, etc, as you record the video.

• When finished, you can record another part of the video or choose the thumbnail and save.

• You can share this with one of your Flipgrid groups, or download it to share with any of your LMS, or upload it to your YouTube channel to share with students as an unlisted link (or to place that YouTube link into viewpure to create a link with no advertisements, comments, or “next up” videos).

Check back next week for Episode 5 of The Best of Pandemic #Elmused Tech!

“Best of the Pandemic #Elmused Tech” Episode 3: Book Creator

One of the most fun and cross-curricular activities that we performed this past year, and in previous years, was creating new verses for the traditional song, Down by the Bay, using Book Creator. If you are not familiar with this song, it is a traditional call-and-response song where the leader sings the call and the group echos the same call as the response. Each verse involves rhyming words like, “Did you ever see a bat dancing with a rat? Down by the bay!” From what I could research, this song was made popular by Raffi, a Canadian singer-lyricist and author of Armenian descent born in Egypt.

Creative and Assessment Activity Using Book Creator

Introduce Song:

This song is one of my students’ favorites to sing. Even when we had restrictions on singing in-person from the pandemic, we could still hum and think up new verses to the song. To introduce this song, I first start with Dr. Feierabend’s First Steps in Music process by beginning with Pitch Explorations. After that, I will begin singing the song and they echo. In the next lesson, I will sing the song with the Raffi book so they can now see the visualizations of the rhyming words.

Add Creativity and Solo Opportunities:

In the next lesson, I will still be the leader, but I will have them create new verses that we sing together. After that lesson, I will choose those who volunteer to be the leader and have them create their own verses that we echo.

Add Assessment Activities:

Now that we have sung the song over multiple lessons, I will create an assessment activity to assess their solo singing. I want to utilize multiple modalities when using retrieval practice and assessments. Therefore, I will use a Seesaw activity for them to sing a solo. In this Seesaw activity, I have used consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) and consonant-consonant-vowel-consonant (CCVC) words for the students to create new verses. They just drag the picture of the word into the box and record themselves singing the new verse. The word is also included with the picture for my readers. With the students using Seesaw to record, they are finding a comfortable scenario for them to solo, as opposed to making them solo in front of the class or in front of me.

Though I created the activity in Seesaw, I also included a forced copy in Google Slides. The difference is that they have to have an extension, like the Mote extension, to be able to record their voices in the slides.

Cross-Curricular Connections

Once assessed, we turn the song into our own creative ebook. We first start with the students drawing and writing their new verses. I will then take pictures of each of the student’s work. I launch Book Creator so that I can add their artwork into the ebook.

Book Creator is an intuitive tool for creating amazing digital books using the web-based or the iOS version. Students and teachers can use Book Creator to make ebooks, manipulatives, resources, and more. It is free to use when creating 40 books contained in 1 library. When you want to create more, you can subscribe to their monthly or annual service. Students can access Book Creator through a library that the teacher creates. They can log in via their school email addresses or a QR code for students with no email addresses.

For this activity, I displayed Book Creator onto a large screen and had each student come up to my device to record themselves singing into the ebook. The process was as follows:

1. Create an account at bookcreator.com

2. Click “+ New Book”

3. You can begin with a blank book or choose a template

4. For the cover, you can have Book Creator find images for you by trashing the image it might have given you in the template. Then click on the image icon (or the + menu and scroll down to import) and place the keywords in the search bar. Book Creator can search images that are, “Images from Pixabay are free to use and modify.” The students can use this search tool built inside of Book Creator as well, and you can teach them how to cite the image.

5. To upload the students’ pictures, you can also use the + menu and scroll down to import and upload the picture, or use the + menu and scroll down to camera. You can now take a picture or a video that will appear on the page.

6. To record the students’ voices, you can click the + menu and scroll down to “Record” (or “Add Sound” in the iOS version). The students can then record directly onto the page of the book.

   1. For students who are shy to sing a solo in front of the class, you can also upload the recording onto the page by using the upload tool (or the “Files” tool on the iOS version).

7. By using the “i” tool, you can change the look and design of each page, font, etc.

8. To share your ebook, you have some choices. In the web-based version, you can share the ebook by publishing it online and sharing the link, printing, or downloading as an ebook. In the iOS version, you can export as an ePub, as a PDF, as a video, or you can publish online. Since I have a teacher account, publishing online and sharing the link is the most universal way for parents and caregivers to see the students’ ebooks. When I do this, I make sure that no pictures of the students appear as well as they only use their first names. If I cannot publish the ebook online, then I will export it as a video (iOS version) or use a screen recording tool like Loom to create a video of the book (web-based version) so that the parents and caregivers can see and hear the book being read to them.

9. Book Creator does have the ability to read the book to the students. Book Creator (web-based) also does have the option of text to speech in 120 different languages, as well as having your book read to you in multiple languages (depending on which device you’re using).

Finally, Book Creator allows you to share libraries. For example, my third graders created an ebook that included their originally composed state song, a reflection, and an instrument they created to perform their original state song. I shared their library link and the students were then able to experience each classmate’s state ebook.

Book Creator is another great tool to continue to use when our teaching scenarios have stabilized. It is a tech tool that can offer wonderful ways to share work, level up learning, and for students to experience being an author and publisher.

Resources:

Book Creator – https://bookcreator.com/

YouTube Episode – https://youtu.be/Ay7pyWSl0CI

Down by the Bay – https://supersimple.com/song/down-by-the-bay/ and https://www.amazon.com/Down-Bay-Raffi-Songs-Read/dp/0517566451

Dr. Feierabend’s First Steps in Music – https://www.feierabendmusic.org/first-steps-in-music-for-preschool-and-beyond/

Seesaw Activity for Down by the Bay – https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_activity?share_token=LdnRzi7bScWCBi5yp3oOAQ&prompt_id=prompt.5a2e1d05-755e-4bcb-b3c6-e23c8adedc37

Google Slides Forced Copy of Down by the Bay – https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1B5VGxy9kdvPoRFw6hQDY1uAiZyZuK8k9OGTCA7SPYwo/copy

Mote Extension – https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mote-voice-notes-feedback/ajphlblkfpppdpkgokiejbjfohfohhmk?hl=en-US

Loom – https://www.loom.com/education

“Best of the Pandemic #Elmused Tech” Episode 2: “Once you go Canva, you never go back!”

These exact words, “Once you go Canva, you never go back!” were stated by a Midnight Music Community member about the graphic design program, Canva. I 100% agree with the statement as Canva is intuitive to use, updates often, and improves often, is free for educators*, and creates amazing visuals, manipulatives, activities, and more. For those of us like me, where your ability goes to the extent of being able to create likable stick figures for your manipulatives, Canva gives you a blank canvas or templates and numerous artistic tools that you can use in an educational setting. They make your simple manipulatives look like beautiful pieces of art!

Canva + Seesaw = Beauty!

Using Canva to create the background images for your Seesaw activities (or other platforms like Google Slides, Keynote, PowerPoint, etc) makes it nicer for you because you do not have to create it all in Seesaw. You can add the moveable items in Seesaw when you have created the background image in Canva. Also, by doing so, you can use that image in other programs whereas, if you create it from scratch in Seesaw, it is not always usable in or quick to download to other programs.

To create some background images for a Seesaw Activity, here is a step-by-step process for a call-and-response assessment activity using the song “No More Pie.” Here is a version of the song found at Beth’s Notes: https://www.bethsnotesplus.com/2014/01/call-and-response-songs.html

This song is a traditional folk song. I did adapt it for two reasons. 1) I took out the trainwreck verse as I teach in a town where much of the population commutes via train and there have been trainwrecks on the lines. I wanted to be thoughtful of that and took that line out. If you want to keep the line in, use the process below to create and add it to the activity. 2) I changed “Bread’s too brown” to “Bread has a frown” for professional reasons. You, again, can use the process below to change it back to the original version.

Figure 3

Canva to Seesaw Activity: Process

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 4

1. Launch Canva*

2. Choose “Create a Design” —> Presentation (see fig 1)

3. On the right side, click on “Photos” and put in the search bar, “empty pie” (see fig 2)

4. When you find a picture that you like, you can click on it and Canva will add it into the slide, where you can resize it and crop it. Or, you can click and drag it until you see it take up the entire slide (see fig 3).

5. Do this same step for the rest of the phrases of the song.

6. For the speech bubble, click on the “Elements” and place “speech bubble” in the search bar. The elements are where you will find your shapes, your lines, many cartoon-type images with transparent backgrounds, and so much more.

7. To place text on the slide, for example, the directions or lyrics, click on the “Text” tool and choose a text template that works best for you. You can always change it as you work on the activity.

8. To create the icons that you see in the speech bubble (see fig 4), I took screenshots of those tools from Seesaw and removed the background to make them transparent (see tips below).

Adding the Canva Slides to a Seesaw Activity

Figure 5

To bring the Canva slides you created to the song, “No More Pie”, click the download button (which is an underlined arrow ↓) and scroll down to “Download”. Since you want to download all 16 pages of the song and you do not need the backgrounds to be transparent, the png file that it is defaulting to will work well. However, Canva does give educators the option to download with transparent backgrounds, download certain pages instead of all of them, choose the file format (png will be of a higher quality than jpg), and compress the file or save the settings (see fig 5).

Once you have downloaded the pages, you can do the following:

Figure 6

Figure 7

1. The file downloaded from Canva is a zip file. Click on it to open up the folder with the 16 separate png files.

2. Launch Seesaw (Seesaw has a free account or a paid subscription).

3. Assuming you have set up a class, click the green + button and scroll down to “Assign Activity” (see fig 6).

4. Click “Create New Activity”.

5. Click “Add Template for Student Responses”. This will be where the students record their responses in the call and response song.

6. Click “Upload” (see fig 7).

7. Highlight the first 10 files in the Canva folder that you downloaded and drag them onto the screen. Seesaw will allow the subscribers to upload 10 png files at one time. They will create 10 slides and all of the images will be locked onto the screen. Since this activity will have 16 slides, you can manually and individually add the final six png files to each slide (see fig 8). Seesaw currently cannot exceed 20 slides in an activity for paid subscribers. The free version will only allow 1 slide per activity.

Figure 8

Once all of the png files were separate slides, I added the arrows from Seesaw’s shape tools (click … and “Shapes”). I linked the arrows so that they would advance to the next slides. This is done by clicking on the object, like the arrow, click the …, click “link”, click “Link to Page”, and then click “Next”. This will make your arrow advance to the next slide when clicked. I added a house on the last slide using the shape tools so that when you click the house, it brings you back to the first slide.

To Add the Audio

There are two ways to add the audio:

Figure 9

1. Click the … on the right side, scroll over to “Record Voice” and sing the calls onto the slides.

2. Use a free digital audio workstation like Soundtrap, Bandlab, GarageBand, etc, and create a track to record yourself singing the call. I created a track for each call and downloaded them individually. I then uploaded them onto each page by clicking the … on the right side, scroll over to “Upload Audio”, and find the audio file on my device or the cloud.

3. Both ways will produce a text box with the word “Listen” automatically added to the audio file. You can replace “Listen” with different words like “Call” or for this activity, I left it blank and placed it over the lyrics (see fig 9).

Figure 10

Finally, Click the ✅ to save the template for responses. I then add the instructions using emoji icons or the Seesaw Shortcut List, sometimes add a multimedia example, which is a video showing how to perform the activity that I created with the free version of Loom, and record myself stating the instructions. I will finish up with the Teacher’s Notes to explain the age level for the activity and some of the tips to help it be successful in the classroom (see fig 10).

Google Slides Activity

Figure 11

To create this in Google Slides, download the Canva slides as you did in Seesaw. Launch Google Slides and add them as background images by using a blank slide, clicking “Background”, then “Choose Image”, and finding the image on your device or in Google Drive, and finishing by clicking “Done” (see fig 11).

To add the arrows, click on the shapes tool, scroll down to “Arrows”, and find the arrow pointing to the right. Make the arrow black by finding the “Fill color” tool and choosing black. To link the arrow to the next slide, click on the arrow, then click on the link icon at the top of the menu, click on “Slides in this presentation”, click on “Next Slide”, and click on “Apply”.

To change the directions on the first slide, I use the shapes tool to create a box. I place the box over the original Seesaw directions. I then double-click on the box, which turns it into a text box. I write new instructions that are geared for Google Slides.

Figure 12

To add the audio, take the downloaded audio files and add them to a folder in your Google Drive. Click on the “Insert” menu in Google Slides and scroll down to “Audio”. Find the file in Google Drive and click on it. It is now inserted into the slide and I then move it next to the lyrics (see figures 12 and 13). I also add audio of me reading the instructions onto the first slide.

Figure 13

To Have Students Sing the Response

You can perform this activity live, but you still want to be able to have them record their responses. You can do this by assigning the google slide deck into their google classroom so that they each receive a copy, or share the file with them as a forced copy (change the end of the shared link from “edit” to “copy”). Use the extension Mote, found at https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mote-voice-notes-feedback/ajphlblkfpppdpkgokiejbjfohfohhmk?hl=en-US, so that the students can record themselves singing the responses and adding them to the slide (see fig 14).

Figure 14

Canva Tips

Here are some tips to assist you when using Canva in this way:

• Remove the background of a picture: In the educators version of Canva, you can click on a picture, click on effects, and then click on “Background Remover”.

• If you cannot remove the background in Canva, then upload the image to remove.bg and download the image with the removed background and upload it to Canva.

• When you export your slides from Canva, there is the opportunity there to click the “Transparent Background” box. This will download your slides as individual png files with transparent backgrounds. If this option is not available in your Canva app, use remove.bg to make the backgrounds transparent.

• There is an option to add Audio to your Canva slides. However, currently, it is like adding a soundtrack. Therefore, when I explored this option, it added one sound file to play across all slides. For this activity, using the audio option was not ideal.

• Canva can integrate other apps into its program such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Bitmoji, to name a few. Therefore, you can quickly and easily add your Bitmoji to any of your Canva designs. You can also access your photos and videos from Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram directly into your Canva slides.

Want to Learn More About How to Use Canva and Seesaw?

Midnight Music is currently hosting two PD, self-paced courses over the next two months:

• Create Beautiful Teaching Resources – with Canva –

An online course for teachers who want to create amazing teaching resources for their classroom – fast.

This course will show you how to use Canva (a fantastic, FREE online design tool) to make posters, worksheets, images, short videos, social media posts, clipart, gifs, and more!

• Seesaw for Music Educators –

An online course for teachers who want to learn how to create interactive music activities and manage student work effectively.

Check back next week for another episode of “Best of the Pandemic #Elmused Tech”, which can be found on my YouTube channel with the thorough blog post found here.

Resources

• Midnight Music Community – midnightmusic.com.au

• Canva – https://www.canva.com/

• Canva for Educators – canva.com/education

• Beth’s Notes “No More Pie” – https://www.bethsnotesplus.com/2014/01/call-and-response-songs.html

• Seesaw – https://app.seesaw.me

• Seesaw Shortcut List for Icons- https://help.seesaw.me/hc/en-us/articles/115005120583-How-do-I-use-Seesaw-icon-shortcuts-in-activities-instructions-

• Mote Extension – https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mote-voice-notes-feedback/ajphlblkfpppdpkgokiejbjfohfohhmk?hl=en-US

• Amy’s YouTube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdoSkMqMVUzTsiWdj3HN5Ug

• PD: Creating Beautiful Teaching Resources – https://midnightmusic.com.au/cbtr-enroll/

• PD: Seesaw for Music Educators – https://midnightmusic.com.au/seesaw/

• Google Slides Activity of No More Pie: https://docs.google.com/presentation/u/1/d/1Fhbd9YkvPtt5R-d-1YHJI51XNuyD0wtlhkqx6AeV6SM/copy

• Seesaw Activity of No More Pie – https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_activity?share_token=k0Yx-NKxSSiS_01UzsAmLQ&prompt_id=prompt.4d1cf9bf-be79-43e4-9d7c-5bd7781bd4d8

* Canva has a free version seen here on their website. They also have a free educators version that you can apply to use that has more visuals and effects.

“Best of the Pandemic #Elmused Tech” Episode 1: Kindergarten and Grade 1 Assessment-Five Voices

“Best of the Pandemic #Elmused Tech” Episode 1: Kindergarten and Grade 1 Assessment-Five Voices

his week’s YouTube episode explored assessing the five voices of young students. In a variety of standards or Grade Level Objectives (GLOs) or Student Learning Objectives (SLOs), many music educators have to prove that the students are learning in music class. This can be done with data-driven assessment tools like pre- and post-tests. However, if your students are young readers, and written forms of pre- and post-testing would not be ideal, how can we use the technology we acquired and learned from teaching during a pandemic, for assessing young learners?

One way is to use the learning management systems (LMS) or digital tools the school had you use this past year to create the assessment. This way, when you need to collect the assessment, it is stored all in one place and you can retrieve it at any time. Plus, many of these tools allow you to format and organize them in ways so that you can quickly present the data to administrators.

Here are two ways to collect data about the students’ knowledge of the five voices: speaking, singing, calling, whispering, and inner voices. This can be done at the beginning of the year and then done again at the end of the year to be able to see and record the learning data.

Seesaw Activity

If your students are using Seesaw, then you can assign the activity to the students. This activity has pre-recorded instructions and examples so that you do not need to recreate the wheel. However, you can make a copy of the activity and add your own voice to the instructions and examples. To create this activity:

1. Launch Seesaw and login

2. Click +

3. Click “Assign Activity”

4. Click “Create New Activity”

5. I then add the student template.

6. I use Canva to create the template so that it looks good and pleasing to the eye. In Seesaw, I added the words, “Speaking, Singing, Whispering, Calling, and Inner Voice”. I did this separately so that I could add the audio to the word.

7. I can record up to 20 audio examples onto one slide in an activity. When I do this, I can record directly by clicking on the … and the 🔈 and record directly into the slide. I can also use a free online digital audio workstation like Soundtrap and record myself singing and speaking. I then can download the audio and upload it to Seesaw. I like doing it this way because if you are using the web-based version of Seesaw, and you record directly into the program, you hear the clicks from turning on and off the microphone.

8. Once finished, I like to place my bitmoji onto the slide and use the shapes tool in Seesaw to create a speech bubble. That is where I will write the instructions.

9. I click the green check to save the activity template. I then add the same instructions to the “student instructions” box and name the activity.

10. I click save and I can assign the activity by assigning it to a class or by sharing the student link to their LMS.

Google Slides

The process is similar as I download the Canva slide and upload it to google slides as a background. I take the audio files I created in Soundtrap and add them to my google drive. I then click “Insert” and scroll down to “Audio”. From there, I choose the audio files I need for the file.

Since there is no drawing tool in google slides, we use the line tool to match the voice with the word.

Everything is set up for young readers to be successful as they can click the audio tools to listen to the instructions, to hear the word of the voice, and to hear the example of the voice. I would highly suggest exampling the activity first with using the “Sample Student” in Seesaw or creating the forced copy in Google Drive.

Tip: Since sharing audio files within google slides can be a slippery slope, I have included the folder with the audio files in the shared links below.

Come back soon!!!

Check back each week during the months of June-August as I will be giving quick PD tips on how to take the “Best of the Pandemic Tech” and use it practically and intuitively in your teaching scenario for this upcoming or current school year.

Links:

• YouTube Episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdoSkMqMVUzTsiWdj3HN5Ug

• Seesaw Activity: https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_activity?share_token=81ch5Pu_T2-UYpN6dqLFYQ&prompt_id=prompt.03abfe3c-15ee-474d-ac2b-85bc6dc453c1

• Google Slides Forced Copy: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1SVbmaLRDJbxJIl2y8IMWWd4PncxMP4eRjS7HOf0BLNE/copy

• Google Slides Audio Files: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KMn0rrbld6EVQVYR9SjKcwWCdsBVnZaF?usp=sharing

• Seesaw for #Elmused Self-Paced Course: https://midnightmusic.com.au/seesaw/

• Create Beautiful Teaching Resources with Canva Course: https://midnightmusic.com.au/cbtr-enroll/