I don’t mean to advertise for a specific product here but thought I’d share info with you about a new mp3 player that has surprised me. It suits me better than any mp3 player I’ve tried, and hopefully this will spark your thoughts to investigate this and other possibilities for keeping your own music in mind and sharing it with students.
For a year, I had an mp3 player which was good but then the video screen failed. It was going to cost almost as much to fix it as to get a new one, and I had hesitations about replacing it because I really didn’t use it very much.
I soon found out why I didn’t use the old one much, when I got my new one for $50–a Creative Zen Stone Plus.
[Here's a link if you're interested: Stone Plus player
The big difference for me was that it has a tiny speaker in it, and the sound is pretty good, too. I discovered that I never liked using earphones. With this player, I can play it any time, anywhere, for any length of time. I can play a tune for a student, or let it play in my shirt pocket at the airport so I have my own favorite background music following me around instead of whatever background music the airport consultants think I ought to be hearing. A few times people have wondered if someone’s cell phone was ringing! Mostly, with all the background music and ringtones floating around us all the time, nobody cares where the music comes from or what it is.
The biggest musical plus for me is that it keeps me listening to the music I want to be hearing and thinking about, instead of my filtering out all the other stuff that comes my way whether I like it or not.
The player also plays radio and can record, though I haven’t explored these options too much. I mentioned in an earlier posting about the small digital recorder I use for emailing recordings to students so I haven’t used this gadget for teaching, other than to play a bit of music for some students when the topic came up.
I had a gig coming up where I needed to accompany some singers with a melody–I was able to put it on my player and play it for two of us through the speaker to remind us how the melody went before doing the show. It was way simpler than getting out some earphones and cuing it up and sharing the tune, or finding a speaker to use. The thing can fit on a keychain, too.
Again, I don’t mean to be advertising for the Stone Plus, but I’m pretty happy with it, and welcome your comments about this or other similar gadgets that you find useful.
