The Summer Olympics evoked deep emotions as I cheered on athletes. Inspired by the event, I enhanced a music lesson on Queen's "We Will Rock You" to cater to both advanced and novice students. The lesson includes teaching tools like manipulatives, melodic phrases, and dance breaks. Options for presenting the content include video, score, pitched, and unpitched instruments. Remember that you can use my YouTube channel or if the video is too busy, my Soundslice channel to turn off some of the busyness.
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Join me as I share a tech tip about using Soundslice, a versatile tool ideal for music education. Key points include customization options, transposition features, and benefits like focused learning and practice. Soundslice complements classroom use, offers advanced features, and allows exploration of artists' work. Consider checking out Midnight Music for helpful resources on creating content with Soundslice.
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YuStudio in MusicFirst Elementary Is an amazing web-based DAW that can score videos and notate music! Here is one of the first projects to have your elementary music students do with YuStudio!
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Have you ever been on YouTube and wished you could change not only the speed of the video but the pitch as well so that the song could play in a key that fits your students’ voices or instruments better? If the answer is yes, then look no further than the Transpose | Pitch Shifter - Browser Extension (Transpose ▲▼ pitch ▹ speed ▹ loop).
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This week’s play-along is a tribute to the upcoming Summer Olympics in Paris, France. It is titled “Boomwhacker and Percussion Instrument Play-Along to John Williams - Olympic Fanfare and Theme conducted by Gustavo Dudamel - Performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic with the help of the U.S. Army Band “Pershing’s Own” at the 2014 Walt Disney Concert Hall Gala”. It features many instruments and some complex rhythm patterns. The manipulatives feature fun facts about John and Gustavo, along with the score of the boomwhackers and percussion instruments.
You can view this on my YouTube Channel or my Soundslice Channel. The benefit of the latter is that you can alter the tempo, isolate the parts, change the key, mute certain parts, and more.
The manipulatives have the score along with fun facts about the music, composer, and conductor! They can be found on my Buy Me a Coffee Channel in the Extras Section.
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It's challenging to avoid the topic of AI in education these days, given its significant presence. Regardless of your personal stance on AI, it has become an integral part of our students' lives, including elementary students who likely interact with it in various ways. We've also incorporated AI into our own practices, such as using a track splitter to remove vocals or a website to edit photo backgrounds.
Considering the availability of Canva for Education as a free tool for K-12 educators, here are five AI Tools (or Magic Tools) found in Canva that educators can utilize to save time or enhance writing and other tasks.
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This summer, I have been getting into Coldplay’s music. I am not sure why I am so late to join on this bandwagon, but their music has evolved throughout the almost three decades that they have been making music and I am enjoying listening to their progression.
The rhythms included in the play-along are:
Quarter Note - Crotchet and rest
Eighth Note - Quaver
Half Note - Minim and rest
Whole Note - Semibreve and rest
Accents
Crescendo/decrescendo
Dynamics
Use this as retrieval practice for reading and performing rhythms, as a fun play-along to introduce a new concept, to welcome a new school year, or to celebrate that you all made it through a full week of school.
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Katie Argyle's Midnight Music has introduced the Digital Badge project. This initiative allows educators, especially music educators, to acquire digital badges (micro-credentials) for various essential tech skills in a convenient PD format. Each badge is verified, contains supporting evidence, and is designed for effortless sharing with administrators, colleagues, or prospective employers.
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Last week, Bryson Tarbet and his amazing team at thatmusicteacher.com hosted a free online summer professional development conference called the Elementary Music Summit. This event was tailored for elementary music educators, offering sessions focused on their specific needs. The event was sponsored by Musically Minted and Music is Elementary.
The summit showcased a lineup of workshops and sessions led by seasoned music teachers and industry experts. The primary objective was to equip attendees with practical teaching strategies, techniques, and classroom-ready resources. I was so honored to be a presenter at this great event!
Read more for key highlights, takeaways, and what is coming up soon!
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Today, I presented “Free Internet Resources for Elementary Music Educators” at thatmusicteacher.com free online Elementary Music Summit. Here is the wakelet I shared with the slides and all of the links from the session. If you joined or are catching the replay, thank you for being there. I hope that you found some new resources to use in your elementary music class!
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I’m popping in this evening to let you know that my presentation, “Free Internet Resources for Elementary Music Teachers,” is going live at 12 noon ET, where I’m talking all about Free Internet Resources for Elementary Music Educators for the Elementary Music Summit®!
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I'm excited to announce that the Elementary Music Summit® begins tomorrow! This fantastic event offers insights from 25 inspiring speakers who will share valuable skills and strategies for making this school year your best one yet. Who wouldn't want that?
I'll be speaking on Wednesday, July 10, at noon about "Free Internet Resources" alongside other experts like Stephanie Leavell, Ashley Cuthbertson, Bryson Tarbet, and more!
Each presentation will be available to you for 24 hours, but you can also get an entire year’s access (along with some other amazing bonuses) by grabbing the All-Access Pass.
If you have any questions at all about the summit or the All-Access Pass, leave a comment below.
Get your free ticket to the Elementary Music Summit®
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If you've ever found yourself in a professional development session completely unrelated to teaching elementary music, you're not alone – those can be quite challenging, right?
PD For Elementary Music Educators!
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This play-along video was created for two pitched C instruments. In my elementary music classroom, that would be recorders and metallophones. However, you could use either pitched instruments like bells, xylophones, flutes, ukuleles, possibly boomwhackers, virtual instruments, or other instruments your students can access. For practicing purposes, isolate one of the parts and also highlight the middle to work on the passage that has different notes than the other passages.
Though this video is also on my YouTube channel, it works much better on this SoundSlice channel (https://www.soundslice.com/slices/tmKzc/) as you can make the screen less busy by only showing the video or isolating the parts.
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Fourth of July
Today's #techtiptuesday celebrates the Fourth of July. For the past three years, when the school year ended, I would teach in our school's summer elementary program. When this occurred, I devised weekly lessons around themes. Since the Fourth of July is occurring next week, here is a quick lesson you can use in your future class or your summer music camp from MusicFirst Elementary (and the fun video of Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” with the world record of 189 piccolos!
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This past weekend officially started my summer projects! I love setting summer goals. Will I meet most of them? Probably not, unless the goal is to avoid the other goals I set! 🤣
However, my summer goals for this summer are:
Spend time with my family.
Relax and sleep more.
Read one or two books about music and teaching.
Go to Broadway and see a couple of shows at discounted rates.
Create some classroom instrument arrangements for play-along videos.
Work for Midnight Music and MusicFirst Elementary.
Work every day on Duolingo learning Spanish.
Exercise daily.
Clean out more of the basement for my girls to use.
Powerwash the house and stain the deck.
Go on vacation!!
These are in no particular order. Last night, I started #4 and saw The Outsiders, which was amazing! And today, I am working on #5: Create some classroom instrument arrangements for play-along videos. This play-along includes recorders, boomwhackers, classroom instruments, xylophones, metallophones, and sound effects (I used Star Wars sound effects in Flat!). These can be substituted for any instruments you have access to.
Tip: If the video is too busy, use the Soundslice link to change the view of the video.
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Today's #techtiptuesday shows you ways you can use the Musical Games found in the Supplementary Tab of MusicFirst Elementary. When you click on Musical Games you will find that it is separated into four categories:
Haven’t tried MusicFirst Elementary? Check out the link in the description to try it for free for 30 days.
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As I explore the weekly resources provided by Jim Frankel’s course titled “AI in the Music Classroom”, I am uncovering many ways to incorporate AI in the elementary music classroom, reminding me of how we previously integrated tools like Digital Audio Workstations (DAW), notation programs, and web-based music creation platforms to enhance the musical experience for all students, especially when traditional methods were not available.
Check out these five by reading the post or watching the video. Like my resources? Please consider buying me a coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech.
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Today's #techtiptuesday comes from the many new users we have received recently. Here are five ways to begin with MusicFirst Elementary!
#5 Lesson Plans/Curriculum Maps/Scope and Sequence
#4 Sheet Music
#3 Supplementary Tab
#2 Creative Tools - Music Explorer and YuStudio
#1 Interactive Lessons
And There's More!
Take a look at my YouTube channel, where I have a MusicFirst Elementary Playlist with in-depth videos and a #techtiptuesday playlist with videos like this one that give you quick tips and ideas on how to use MusicFirst Elementary in your music class today!
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