PDA’s aren’t just for keeping track of your schedule. There are lots of applications (many of them free or relatively inexpensive) that you can add to your PDA to make it a really handy tool to have around. For the next few weeks I will be talking about some different applications that you can add to your PDA to make it work for you. (more…)
It used to be that music teachers needed to carry a lot of books with them. Now there is a high tech solution for that. It is called Music Pad Pro and was created by Freehand. About the size of a small laptop computer and only weighs about 4 lbs Music Pad Pro.
If you are like me, you buy a lot of books and music. These take up valuable space and most of the time you may never read them again. Now you can go online to your library website. The library websites are almost like going to amazon.com or one of the other online bookstores. There are descriptions of the books and even pictures of the covers.
Planning a podcast is not as hard as you might think. With an idea of the type of podcast you would like to do and a little planning, you can create an outline for your show in just a few minutes and be ready to broadcast on the world wide web! (more…)
Podcasts are becoming more and more popular. Most of them are free and they are a great way to share your knowledge and expertise with people everywhere. There are many other benefits as well. If your podcast is popular enough you may be able to charge a subscription fee to everyone who wants to download your podcast. If you have developed your own teaching materials or compositions you can promote these through your podcast. You may even reach some new students through your podcast.
There are lots of formats for podcasts. You could create a series of informative podcasts about your instrument, answer questions submitted live, perform your own music or share the music of your students (with their permission).
But, how do you create a podcast? There are lots of posts on the web that will tell you in great detail how to create a podcast step by step, but I’ve discovered a site that takes all of the hard work out of creating a podcast and makes it really simple. Its called TalkShoe. As an extra bonus, you can even produce a live talk cast. People can call in and ask you questions about the topic or subject you are discussing. TalkShoe will pay you a few cents for every live caller and download or your podcast. Its not much, but it can add up.
Simply go to www.talkshoe.com and register, you will need to download the talkshoe software. Then click create to get started. You will describe your new podcast and create a schedule. Next record the podcast. You can either do that live with the talkshoe software, or you can record the podcast with a software like Garageband (which comes standard with most Macs) or Audacity and upload the mp3 file to your talkshoe account.
Your podcast is then available to the listening audience at talkshoe.com, but with a few simple clicks you can list it on itunes, google, yahoo, newsgator and many more podcast listings. You can create an archive for your web page as well. There are easy to follow instructions on TalkShoe so I won’t reinvent the wheel.
Next week I will talk about how to plan your podcast.
A student in a class of mine inadvertently pushed me to discover one of my most useful teaching tools: a digital dictation machine, for recording music. I’ll tell you how I’ve come to use it for teaching, and also some teaching uses for it that I haven’t tapped into yet myself.
What happened in my class was that this particular student digitally recorded music I played while demonstrating during class, and then, knowing that some of the other students had not taped anything in class, he would help them out by emailing them copies of my playing.
He was considerate enough to send copies of his emails to me, and this is how I realized that there were several problems with this scenario. First, the recordings weren’t exactly the samples I would choose to send to my students. Second, when emailing the recordings, my student added text comments of his own which did not always highlight what I thought was important, or sometimes even misinterpreted what I had said in class.
The third concern is much more indirect, and reasonable people can differ about this one: there was no attribution in the recordings. In this digital age, we all deal with the fact that once information is out there on emails, it can go anywhere, forever. (This concern is not limited to digital information, of course. Not long ago, a student came to me asking if I’d ever heard the music on a sheet he showed me. I took a look, and lo and behold, the music was in my own handwriting! It had made the rounds without attribution over the course of a decade.)
My answer to the situation in my class was to offer recordings myself, with samples played the way I wanted them, and accompanied by appropriate text where necessary.
To do this, I had to find a convenient way to make the recordings, and came upon an amazing digital recorder made by (more…)
The internet is a veritable treasure trove of resources that music teachers can use to help them do their job better. During my most recent treasure hunting, I found a site that allows you to create online newsletters, an article search engine that finds and lets you read articles online, and a way to help your students find the music that you use in your studio.
Looking for an article to share with your students? You can look online at findarticles.com. Find Articles is a site that allows you to search magazine archives for words. Many of the articles are free and available to be read online. American Music Teacher Magazine and Music Educators National Conference have several helpful articles listed there.
If you’ve always wanted to create a monthly studio newsletter, but don’t have a lot of technical expertise or money to spend on postage, LetterPop is for you. It is a website that allows you to create your newsletter and distribute it entirely online. You can also print it out and give it to your students in person.
This website is well organized and easy to use. You create a basic account and login to create your newsletter. Then all you have to do is select your template, enter text and upload and insert pictures. There are a lot of great templates that you can use to create your newsletter. They are organized by category, so you can choose one to fit the occasion. It even has holiday specific templates. Basic Membership allows you to have 25 contacts for free. You can upgrade your account to allow you to have more features and send the newsletter to more people. If your students do not wish to receive the email there is an opt out link included in each email. You can store your newsletters online as well. They will be adding an invite feature soon, so you can email all of the music directors in your area and invite them to join your newsletter mailing list.
Many teachers have a list of books that they use in their studio, but how about an online list that students can simply click on to order the music? Sheet Music Plus has an affiliate program for teachers that allows you to create your own store online. (As a plus you earn a percentage of the sales that occur through your store.) You create a list of music that you use in your studio using their store creator page and select the type of links that you would like. You can create multiple pages for different instruments or levels that you teach. Then simply paste the html code that is created for you into your website. You can paste it onto a separate page and link to it from your Music Teachers Helper Links page.
For a while now notebooks or binders (that a student brings with them) have been the best way to plan and track lessons. The one problem with this system is that the student has to remember to bring the notebook with them to the lesson. If they forget, then there is no back-up. However, it takes extra time to update both your notes and their notebook. That is until now.
nFinity has created an inexpensive program called Quick Voice which allows the user to record voice memos on their computer. The voice memos can then be sent as emails, mp3 files or saved on the desktop as a sticky. It is available for both Mac and PC users for about $25. For private lesson teachers this is a great tool! Simply hit the record button at the end of the lesson when you recap the lesson for your student and you will have a file that can be saved as an audio sticky in a file. You can then review or type lesson notes from the recording later. You can enter the lesson notes on Music Teachers Helper and automatically email the notes to the student or parent. The files can also be saved as a Quick Time movie or MP3 file that can then be saved on your file area on Music Teachers Helper for the student to access when the log in or emailed to the student as a reminder of what they need to work on… in case their notebook comes up missing.
For more information about this software visit
http://www.quick-voice.com/
Of the many educational music games out there, some are free online games that kids and adults can enjoy. Some help with eartraining, some teach about instruments, rhythms and more.
One page I ran across recently was on About.com’s Classics for Kids site, offering 4 simple games, including one to name notes, one to imitate rhythms, another to teach information about the lives and works of composers, and one to allow kids to compose a simple tune. (Links from this page will lead you to many other music education sites of interest, quite apart from games.)
The New York Philharmonic has some fun and sophisticated music games and learning sites, including a game room with about a dozen games, a chance to compose, learn about instruments, and even make your own.
Less sophisticated but well worth a visit is a Flash Music Games site which offers a large array of ear training games, piano and guitar games. For example, one ear training game called Noteshooter sounds a note each time a treble clef floats from the bottom of the screen towards the top; the player uses arrow keys to identify the name of the note, by maneuvering the clef so it passes over the right letter. After you get one note correct (by luck, or by matching the note on an instrument–or if you have perfect pitch!), you can then listen and identify the relative pitches of subsequent notes as they come through.
Another game is called Trichords, a memory game where you match two cards, but in this case, clicking a card plays a triad of some kind, and you have to match the sounds of pairs of triads to win the game.
How you might use these games in working with students is up to you (and perhaps you could add a comment to share with us any suggestions you have for using computer music games in teaching), but games like these are certainly food for thought.
Thanks to Toby and Tina for comments this week on Collecting the Benjamins (about collecting student payments), and to Steven for comments on last week’s survey of sites connecting students and teachers. I agree with Steven that ads vary from day to day and place to place, so I have revised one survey listing which was based entirely on ads. (By the way, I take responsibility for all my own comments in this blog!)
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A very up-to-date downeast Maine minister, whom I interviewed for his daring World War II experiences, introduced me to Audacity–a free music program that can provide some very nice benefits for music teachers.
(Note that Audacity is not at audacity.com; it is at this link, in case you’d like to check it out. The download is free, and available for Windows, Mac, Linux and other systems. It is open-source, much like Linux and Mozilla.)
With Audacity, you can record anything your computer can play–from a CD, a website, a microphone, anything–into a sound file of its own, which you can then manipulate in a ridiculous number of ways.
For example, you can slow any portion of the recording down without changing the pitch–great for transcribing tricky passages. You can also (more…)
