Music & Stories in the Classroom
With inexpensive (or even Free!...
Links
With inexpensive (or even Free!) software, and your existing computers, just about anyone can create music or record and edit voices or stories. The following web pages show some of the ways relevant tools are being used in educational settings. Projects like these can integrate research, writing, music, drama and a good dose of fun!
The Children's Music Web showcases material, created by and for children. It includes everything from "Pickleberry Pie" to "Rug Bugs".
Ms. Gorski's Drama Class at Pacific Collegiate School, a public charter secondary school in Santa Cruz, California, had a Radio Comedy by Teens for Teens page (no longer on the Internet). Using simple sound recording software and imaginative writing, they put together 30-60 second radio ads for fantasy products. We particularly liked The Money Maker Machine and wished it existed in real life.
Please view and listen to music at other K12IMC references. Just for starters, try "I Hear America Singing", by PBS -- wonderful historical vignettes as well as scores.
MERLOT is a portal for multi-media links. All of the resources take advantage of the multi-media capacities of the Web, especially opportunities for students' creation and publication of their own works. The links are also designed for advanced high school or college students.
PBS' 4 part series about the roots of American music contains links for a deeper explore of this subject. It contains some rare resources from the Library of Congress.
The Center for Digital Storytelling have assembled strategies for using the Web for personal expression with a musical background and visual effects.
The StoryCorps Initiative is intended to instruct and inspire Americans to record one another's stories in sound.
See Also
Annotation
Students enjoy music, movies and videos, of course. By encouraging creation within this media they will experience "ownership".
