Ten Websites and Uses in the Elementary General Music Classroom: #10-6, Amy Burns

At the beginning of each calendar year, I blog about 10 items that are useful to the elementary general music classroom. Past posts have included ten technology tools for an elementary music concert and ten educational technology (edtech) tools to enhance an elementary general music classroom. This year, I chose to write about ten websites for the elementary general music classroom because most elementary music educators have access to at least one device that has internet access. In this article, I present numbers ten through six. The following items can enhance a classroom with one device, as well as an elementary music classroom with 1:1 devices, where each student has access to a device.

Many of us love paid websites to purchase lesson plans and manipulatives, such as Teachers Pay Teachers (teacherspayteachers.com), as they also offer discounts and free downloads from time to time. However, there are also some sites that have free lessons written by teachers for teachers. A few to note are: • Share My Lesson (sharemylesson.com) – Though not have as thorough of a database as Teachers Pay Teachers, they have free lessons written by educators for educators. When I apply the filters for K-2/Arts/Music, I find 498 lessons. • Smithsonian Folkways Lesson Plans (https:// folkways.si.edu/lesson-plans/smithsonian) - This site has lesson plans where one can browse the map to find world music curricular experiences from Smithsonian Folkways’ Network of Music Educators. All lessons can be downloaded in PDF format. • Carnegie Hall Music Educators Toolbox (https://www.carnegiehall.org/Education/Educators/ Music-Educators-Toolbox) - Another great resource for free lesson plans. As written on their website, “set of free online resources for music teachers includes lesson plans and activities, summative and formative assessments, video examples, and documented best practices. Designed to be effective and adaptable in a wide variety of music classrooms, the resources were developed through Carnegie Hall’s five-year residency in a New York City elementary/middle school.”

Three of the best resources for edtech are Richard Byrnes’s website, “Free Technology for Teachers”, Katie Wardrobe’s website, “Midnight Music”, and the Technology in Music Education (TI:ME) website. • Free Technology for Teachers (https://www. freetech4teachers.com/) - Richard has an amazing amount of free edtech resources for any educator. I love that you can type into the search tool for any type of music technology and you would search his database that goes back 12 years. Richard puts his heart and soul into his work. I adore reading his posts and newsletters. I learn a great deal from him and am thankful for this wonderful, free resource. • Midnight Music (https://midnightmusic.com. au/start-here/) - Katie is based in Australia and is brilliant when it comes to music technology. I have known her for years and she always amazes me to how well she knows music technology and edtech and how wonderfully she can showcase and teach it to music educators. Her website has numerous free resources, lessons, ideas, and webinars. There is also a paid subscription where the user can have access to all lessons, webinars, tutorials, and so much more. • TI:ME (ti-me.org) - TI:ME was established in 1995 for the purpose of assisting music educators with music technology. This mostly contained learning how to record and use notation software. In the past 25 years,

TI:ME has kept their mission intact of assisting music educators with integrating technology into their classrooms. They have numerous experts and a variety of resources set up through their organization.

These two websites are wonderful, free tools to use in your classroom. If you need an online tool to edit audio, conversion tools to PDFs, audio, and video, a quick voice and video recorder, and an archive extractor, 123apps. com can do all of those things. This is a fabulous, free tool to use on a laptop or a Chromebook, since it is based online.

Classroomscreen.com was developed by Laurens Koppers from the Netherlands. In his words, “I wanted to use a free and simple tool with all my favorite digiboard widgets to help my students focus more on their work. I could not find such a thing, so I decided to make it myself. And here it is!” This website is excellent. If you need a quick timer, random name chooser, exit poll, a traffic light, language widget to translate a webpage to 40+ languages, a sound level widget to test the levels of sounds in your classroom, or you miss some of those items that the SMART Notebook used to carry, then this website might be what you need.

Incredibox (incredibox.com) has been around for years. My students thoroughly enjoy this website to create music. In my classroom, I have used it for students to create a beatbox accompaniment to a name rap at the beginning of the school year. I have also had them write poetry where they used Incredibox to enhance their poetry. I have had them create music in guided forms where each group created the A, B or C Section and then we put them all together in one piece. Finally, I have used it have the students create a classroom rules rap where they chant it to an accompaniment they created in Incredibox.

Currently, Incredibox has four versions or musical styles that you can access online. There are seven versions/musical styles that can be accessed through the paid apps available for iOS, Google Play, Amazon, Mac App Store, and Microsoft. Incredibox is updated so it no longer requires Flash. It does require your school to allow you to disable the ad blocker that is probably installed on most devices. In addition, if you want the version with the cartoon beatboxers with the shirts, then that can only be accessed through the flash based version found here: https://www.incredibox.com/flash. It is also good to note that flash will be discontinued at the end of 2020.

In March of 2016, Google launched Chrome Music Lab (https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/) to support the National Association for Music Education’s (NAfME) initiative of Music in Our Schools Month® (MIOSM). As stated on the Chrome Music Lab’s website, many teachers use this website as a tool to explore music and to connect music with science, art, math, and more (Google, 2018).

Chrome Music Lab consists of thirteen musical activities and explorations that can be done in a 1:1 classroom, as well as a teacher projecting the website onto a screen and having students participate by taking turns creating, making, and exploring music. The requirements to use this website is a device that has the Chrome web browser. I would also suggest a decent pair of speakers and of course, a projector, if you are using this in a one-device classroom. If you are utilizing this in a 1:1 classroom, I would suggest headphones or to space the students around the room so that they can focus on their music

creations. However, students in a group or at a station can also wonderfully use these activities so that students can collaborate together to create and make music. Some highlights from Chrome Music Lab are: • Rhythm – This helps students visualize and experiment with meters of 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. • Sound Waves – The exploration and visualization of sound waves moving through air molecules. This is a great way to incorporate STEAM into the music classroom by having students test sound using the keyboard attached to explore long, short, high, and low sounds. • Kadinsky – This app turns anything you draw into sound. This is a great way to integrate art in to music, as well as having students reflect on how they thought their drawings would sound when the app plays them. • Song Maker – In this app, you and your students can build a song or recreate one. I have used this to also show beat subdivisions and to have students “name that tune” where I input a simple melody they have been singing in class. Once finished, the song can be shared via a link, which can then be placed on their learning journals such as Seesaw, or on a school website.

There are other apps in the music lab for you and your students to create and explore music.

In the next issue of Tempo, I will present numbers five through one. If you want to watch a webinar on utilizing these ten websites in the elementary music classroom, please visit amymburns.com/webinars. If you write a summary about the webinar, answer the question at the end of the webinar, and send it to me at amywillisburns@ gmail.com, I will send you a PD certificate. I hope that these first five websites inspire you to try one in your elementary music classroom today!

Amy M. Burns (aburns@fhcds.org) has taught PreKgrade 4 general music for over 20 years at Far Hills Country Day School. She has authored three books on how to integrate tech into the elementary music classroom. She has presented many sessions on the topic, including four keynote addresses in Texas, Indiana, Saint Maarten, and Australia. She is the recipient of the TI:ME Teacher of the Year, NJ Master Music Teacher, Governor’s Leader in Arts Education, and the NJ Nonpublic School Teacher of the Year Awards.

Here's your chance to conduct some of New Jersey's finest young choral musicians.

Current NAfME members in good standing. New Jersey Choral Educators.

1) Submit a video of your Choral Conducting not to exceed 12 minutes or FIVE Selections (Please include a list of these selections). For suggested Conducting example choices, please consult the NJ-ACDA High School Required Repertoire list on the All-State Choir Audition Page of www.NJMEA.org

2) A Proposed Mixed or Treble Chorus program not to exceed 35 minutes of music. Find Past NJ All State MIXED Chorus programs at www.rhschoirs.net

3) Your resume and a letter of intent which states why you feel you are the best candidate for this position.

Helen Stanley, Selection Committee Chairperson 540 West Avenue, Pitman, NJ 08071 Or submit your video and material via email hstanley326@comcast.net

Please use your best judgment when submitting materials for consideration. Do NOT include CD’s or MP3’s only send DVDs, Flash Drives, or digital videos files. Please TYPE all materials – letter of intent, program and resume.

We need to see you conduct, so make sure your video includes considerable evidence of your conducting! The panel cannot assess your conducting if your group is filmed from the rear of an auditorium and all that is seen is your back! Please submit a video with no more than FIVE varied selections; no more than 12 minutes in length. You may submit work representative of different ensembles in your school, but NO MORE THAN FIVE selections.

Also, the choir performances you use may be your own school choir, but you can also use material from an Honor Choir or Community Choir that you have conducted.