My FHCDS colleague and grades 4-8 music educator, Maedean Kramer, recently had her 8th graders use MaKey MaKey (http:// www.makeymakey. com) to invent a musical instrument from everyday objects. MaKey MaKey Figure 9: MaKey MaKey hooked up to is an “invention kit Play-Doh to create music. for the 21st century. It turns everyday objects into touchpads and combines them with the Internet. It’s a simple invention kit for beginners and experts doing art, engineering, and everything in between” (Silver & Rosenbaum, 2012). From a music educator’s point of view, Figure 10: Piano keys made from MaKey MaKey is “baaluminum foil. sically a circuit board programmed to act like a game controller. You hook the circuit board using a USB cable to your computer, and it acts like an alternative keyboard. Using alligator clips, you connect to the board and then connect the electrical conducting materials to the other end. When the circuit is complete, you can use the software that MaKey MaKey has designed on their website to use with your new controller” (Dwinal, 2013). During the 8th grade music selective, the students used a variety of objects including fruit and vegetables, Play-Doh, aluminum foil, silverware and bowls, mason jars and ping-pong balls to produce sound. Maedean gave the students the skills to make a “musical room.” Using Figure 11: MaKey the MaKey MaKey website, the students MaKey software. used their objects to produce a five-note scale or a drum kit. In figure 9, students made a drum kit out of Play-Doh. Each student took turns creating a new shape or figurine to represent drum sound. In figure 10, a pair of 8th grade boys made a foot piano from aluminum foil, MaKey conductors, and MaKey software. One of the concerns that the students and Maedean discovered is that they wanted the MaKey software to have a larger range than five notes. Through a quick Google search, they found that some other students coded a piano with more notes on Scratch (http://www.scratch.mit.edu). During the next few classes, Maedean will invite her other general music classes to use the instruments to create music together.
TEMPO
Catie Dwinal, previously an elementary music educator who now works for Quaver Music, recently wrote a blog post where she used a 3D Doodler Pen and MaKey Makey to build a working musical instrument. Catie used her 3D doodler, styrofoam (for support), two pieces of 12-gauge Figure 12: Piano keys made from a 3D Doodler Pen. wire, aluminum foil, four small springs and her Makey Makey to create four large musical keys that can move and create sound. To read about this project in full and to download her student project book that goes along with it, you can scan the following two QR codes:
What About Time? How Do You Make The Time For This? In October, I presented these projects at the New Jersey Association of Independent Schools (NJAIS) Share-a-Thon. Many music and science educators were very impressed with the students’ works and asked great questions about the process. The most popular question was: how to do this in music class when there is so little time to teach? My response was that this process is constantly being refined. To get it to a point where everything works successfully in the lesson takes a couple of years to develop, as with many of our lessons and units. In addition, a music educator should begin with what is already in his/her curriculum. For example, if the music educator is working on solfege and singing in tune, then pitch would be a natural fit. The music educator could look at the science educator’s curriculum or have a quick discussion with him/her at lunch to see if they could collaborate for one lesson on pitch. Begin small, assess the process, and decide on which direction to take in the future with the curriculum. What about music standards and student growth objectives (SGO)? SGOs and the newest version of the national standards (http:// www.nationalartsstandards.org) are very hot topics these days in music education. Many music educators are required to address SGOs and standards in every lesson. In addition, music educators are also required to address core curriculum standards. Though this seems very challenging at first, projects like the ones mentioned above do accomplish the arts standards, SGOs, and address core curriculum standards while keeping the music curriculum intact. Whether your 42
JANUARY 2015