17. August 2006 by MrBall.

Here are the sites that the Youth choir are going to be exploring. If they have more they would like added they can leave the link in the comment box for others to find.

Opsound.org - Search through this open source music catalog for tunes that have an African sound.

Music Notes: Interactive

LostSounds.com Interesting use of everyday instruments to make some pretty cool music. Check out the html Sounds page to see and hear some of the cool instruments they are using.

Musical Mysteries: BBC Schools This is a fun musical mystery game where you need to find musical clues so you can solve the (you guessed it!) mystery.

ArtsAlive - The National Arts Center

DSO Kids (Dallas Symphony Orchestra)
SFS Kids - San Francisco Kid’s Site

Instruments
Games - Check out the interval game. Can you name a Major Six?

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15. August 2006 by MrBall.

Much of the music, activities, and crafts students are doing at Singspiration are based around Africa. Today we’re going to start building videos based on the theme of Arica. Here are some sites we will use to get the pictures and movies for our videos.

www.creativecommons.org/image With CreativeCommoons we will primarily be using Flickr.

www.google.com We will use the image search on google.com

Students can explore the regions of Africa courtesy of this PBS website. When we do our searches we’ll be using keywords like:
Africa, African, Elephant, Rainforest, Savanna or Lion. There are many other words that relate to Africa. If you can think of any try them out in the search engines.

I would like to see how many students are able to tell a story using the pictures they find. Not an easy task.

Tomorrow we will put music to the images. Hopefully we’ll have time to burn the CDs so that we can take the videos home.

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14. August 2006 by MrBall.

This afternoon at Singspiration I worked with some music teachers and choir conductors on different ways they could infuse technology into their daily practice. The topics we covered are included on the PowerPoint slide that is linked here.

Gerhard’s Music Links

http://choralnet.org/indexen.shtml
http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
http://www.rideaumusic.com/
http://www.jwpepper.com/catalog/welcome.jsp
http://www.handlo-music.com/
http://www.halleonard.com/
http://www.gladdemusic.com/
http://www.festival-singers.org.nz/download.htm
http://www.cypresschoral.com/
http://www.choralnet.org/
http://www.sbmp.com/
http://www.canasg.com/canasgnew2catalogue.htm
http://www.earthsongsmus.com/
http://www.banksmusicpublications.cwc.net/
http://www.albertachoralfederation.ca/

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13. August 2006 by MrBall.

This week I’ll be at the Singspiration music camp helping the campers to music videos with computers. To start with though we’re going to take a tour of some websites I’ve found that deal with music.

Musical Mysteries: BBC Schools This is a fun musical mystery game where you need to find musical clues so you can solve the (you guessed it!) mystery.

ArtsAlive - The National Arts Center

DSO Kids (Dallas Symphony Orchestra)
SFS Kids - San Francisco Kid’s Site

Music Notes: Interactive -
Instruments
Games - Check out the interval game. Can you name a Major Six?

LostSounds.com Interesting use of everyday instruments to make some pretty cool music. Check out the html Sounds page to see and hear some of the cool instruments they are using.

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1. August 2006 by MrBall.

Things are moving along very quickly today as I prepare to move into the Computing Sciences building at the U of A. I’ve started looking at ways I can plan my video game. Prensky’s sets out five priorities for teachers and trainers as they begin to build the tools they cannot find.
1. Motivation- I couldn’t agree more, the game must be fun!
2. Reflection- This is where the game becomes more than just a skill and drill fact practicer. This is where students personalize their knowledge.
3. Individualization- Planning for the many choices and possibilities that students may seek out will be a challenge. I think my post on gender difference fits into this category. Prensky makes a point of asking “Are there alternatives for those who may choose not to play?”
4. Creation- I need to move on to chapter 15 to learn more about his idea of creation.
5. Content- This should be an educator’s number one concern. Does it have a curriculum fit? I am paid by my school board to teach the curriculum. Content must be melded with motivation. So many of the edutainment games I have played with students have loads of content but are a complete snooze-fest! If I wanted my students to nap I would keep them in their desks and talk at them all day.

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