How to Inspire Creativity and Teach Content - Music video projects in under 3 hours

I've been doing more music in school the past two months and I'm finding it very encouraging. Obviously many students have a passion for it. Several of them are talented in that area and technology is making it easier than ever to create music even without a lot of skill.

For almost a year I have been testing and tweaking a process of creating simple songs and music videos based on classroom content. (Here's the post where I compiled all my music resources.)  The videos below highlight my latest attempt to present the basic idea.

I created a song and recorded it in UJam in about an hour. I finished a couple short videos in one to two more hours of total work time.  That time wasn't all in one setting, but I'm confident that with some focus and solid deadlines a group of students could make an original song and video in around three class periods.

This first video explains the process and contains all examples. Here's the breakdown of the video:

• Quick tips 0:38
• Writing the lyrics  0:54
• Recording the melody using GarageBand   1:21
• **Using UJam to make the music 2:33 - UJam is amazing!  Definitely watch this part if nothing else.  
• Recording the video with Video Star  4:53
• Editing the video in VideoStudio  5:54
• The example videos I created are at the end of the video, but also you can find them separately below.