I had a great opportunity to help with some music projects in a lower elementary Music class the past six weeks. We wrapped things up with a music video project about dreams.
I talked to the class briefly about why dreams matter to me. I told them how I had two big dreams as a teenager. I wanted to have a band and I wanted to make movies.
Both dreams came true, sort of. They didn't reach the scale I had envisioned some 30 years ago, but I do get to play music with my kids in church every week in our worship band and I get to make videos with students on my job.
So dreams definitely matter! I assured them their dreams might look different as they grow older, but the dreams in their mind now are there for a reason.
For the project the teacher and I had the students draw pictures of their dreams. I asked my daughter (16 years old) to write a simple chorus about dreams for the young students. I took her lyrics, fleshed out a couple lines and added the music.
We taught the song to the students and recorded them singing. I used GarageBand to add the rest of the arrangement and I edited everything together with Corel VideoStudio.
Here is the full video we finished with one class. I worked with them for three class periods and spent a good amount of time during the weekend putting this together.
Here's a song I wrote based on several thoughts I've posted elsewhere on the blog. It would be appropriate as a motivational song to start the day in an elementary classroom.
The main idea is that students can be learning for something big now, not just some date in the future. John Dewey said it this way: "Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living."
I put a few of my usual thoughts and sayings in there such as, "It's a great time to be alive." It brings to mind that we are connected and therefore on the edge of doing something meaningful. It has reference to passion, purpose and potential, the ingredients of a full life.
Also, the bridge of the song is based on my old "key to success":
Always do your best
at what's most important
whether you feel like it or not.
Crystal Owen performed the vocals. She is the music teacher I worked with on our Smart Jams math music video project. When we presented at the MACUL conference in March I asked her to sing this song with me.
The music for the recording was done mostly on my iPad using GarageBand. I recorded her vocal and my guitar part using Audacity.
I've been working on a book for a few months now. While finishing a chapter tonight, I was thinking of some things I have assigned over the years that students really enjoyed and that I also had fun making up, talking about or grading.
In no particular order, here's my list:
Self-reflection journals - I love to have students think about what they have learned or can learn from their own lives. Sometimes we delve into memories and sometimes we plan the future. The idea is to make school more purposeful by tying the content from the lesson to their lives. I believe all truly important learning has to start with a sense of purpose.
Reading interviews with artists - I like to have them look up the person behind their favorite entertainment and read an interview with the person. I am inspired by how my favorite artists think and I want the students to see that they do in fact think.
Similarly, quote assignments - Students love to find quotes they can relate to. I have them add the quote to pictures or incorporate them in their presentations in some way. You can also have students try to write their own "quote worthy" statements. We did one with six-word memoirs.
Writing scripts for videos - I don't recall anyone ever asking me what they were getting for a grade when they were writing a script or otherwise planning a video. It is an engaging activity. When assigned properly, it simply cannot be done well without deeply thinking about the subject matter. Here are my recent video assignments for high school students.
Writing songs - These assignments can be difficult for students, but they are rewarding for all involved when the work is completed. Be sure to check those final submissions for plagiarism! See this page for my work in this area.
Puzzles - It is getting harder and harder to make a good assignment out of these if the internet is within reach. If you make your own it's still possible to get students thinking about a good challenge, though. My favorite creations involved:
A long list of directions that took them throughout pages in their math books. Each step had them look up something that was used in the next step.
A triple puzzle I created that had scrambled words (usually content area words, but some teacher names or other school related things thrown in) that were also hidden in a word search. The third part of the puzzle was usually a quote or advice that was formed by entering circled letters from the scrambled word part. I made these with PuzzleMaker.com.
What advice would you give...? - I ask students to make comics or other creative works that could provide success tips to younger students. This makes it meaningful for them. I used to also give high school seniors a much loved assignment where they had to write letters filled with advice addressed to their past selves when they were freshmen. It is a good activity for teachers too!
Crystal and I started the Smart Jams music video project with the fifth graders this week. With so many other things going in the district and so much riding on this project I was more nervous that morning than I have been in years. The first sessions have gone very well, though.
The Smart Jams project requires students to make original, simple songs and videos about classroom content. In our case, we are focusing on math. I have been using a process to make the songs and videos in a reasonable amount of time. The work here was funded by a MACUL grant and it is my first attempt to do this with so many students at once.
Explaining the problem (students with low math scores) and showing them the sample videos we will make to address it, I introduced the project to the four different classes. I told them we have three goals:
Practice math during music
Practice creativity
Learn new technology
There was a lot of enthusiasm from the students when they realized the will be writing their own songs and recording them. They liked the examples we made and Crystal received a round of applause in a couple classes for her performance in our sample Perimeter and Area song.
I told them we'll put the final products on YouTube. It is so clear that students are inspired into action and ideas flow when they know their work will reach a larger audience.
Each of the classes progressed at a different rate, but the general flow of the lesson so far has been:
Introduce the project - I let them know I need their help. I have to present about this at the MACUL conference in March, so I'm hoping for good things!
Talk about to write songs - We brainstormed some things that should be in a song about our school. In some classes we had students work in pairs to practice writing two or more lines for the song.
Take pre-tests - Two of the four classes were given a pre-test so we can determine if the extra time spent on math helped them.
Demonstrate the recording process - I wrote a version of a song using the ideas we gained in brainstorming. Crystal also wrote her version. We recorded her performing as a rap. I uploaded it to UJam.com so students could hear the music it generates and the different styles we can choose from. I then exported it as an mp3 and pulled it into the Video Star app on my iPad. We used that to make a video of the students dancing or generally having a great time to the music. We were done with that process within 20 minutes.
Group Warm-Up - Crystal and I assigned students to groups based on their math skills and other factors that she felt would make a good mix. To help students relate well to each other, I had them fill out a half-sheet paper as warm-up activity. It asked them questions about their musical interests and abilities.
It has been great seeing some students get so excited about performing. I look forward to starting the songwriting about math next week and we will record some groups singing or rapping by the end of the week.
Crystal and I both agreed the hardest part of them will be writing lyrics that rhyme and explain how to do the math. Most likely we will have them write drafts and we'll be putting a lot of time into polishing them up.
For now, here's a short clip of us playing the Area and Perimeter Song live as Crystal taught them the motions.
My wife helps at girls week at the local Christian camp. She wanted to offer my music video project (which I've written about extensively here) as an option for the interest groups. I think the project transitioned very well to that setting.
First I had my daughter make a song in the format we were planning, then my wife made one as well, just so she could see all the parts of the process.
Our outline was:
Do some reflection and read some Psalms to find an idea for your praise/worship chorus.
Pick one verse or short passage to read in the song.
Make up a melody and record it in GarageBand. (At camp this ended up being done in a hot van to block out background noise! Not ideal, but I thought the girls did a great job with it.)
Import the mp3 file into UJam.com and make adjustments until you're happy with it.
Download a few versions of it including just background music, one with vocals and one as instrumental.
Mix the various tracks in GarageBand.
Make the final video.
My wife made her video in Video Star for iPad (with help from me as the camera person and I added the title at the start in iMovie). It is an easy way to go. For my daughter's, we used still pictures and put them into a video using iMovie on the iPad.
At the camp, only one group selected the music video project. We ended up taking many pictures and video clips, so I compiled them on my home computer in the evenings. I also experimented with some drum loops in GarageBand on my daughter's Mac. I really liked what I could achieve between UJam and GarageBand on the computer.
Because of privacy concerns I won't show the girls' video, but I made a simple lyric video just so you could hear the final result.
My daughter's video: (This was the first time I could get her to sing! I liked her voice and I hope this will help draw her out of her shell.)
My wife's video:
The lyric video of the original song they created at camp:
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.
So much of my blog has been about creativity games, but I realized this week music has shown up now and then. It has always been a huge part of my personal life and recently I have seen how it can motivate students in school.
When it comes to infusing passion into a lesson, not much can compare to the effect music has on many students. Some of those who are hardest to reach are also deeply interested in music or musically inclined.
Technology has made it easier that ever for anyone to create something along the lines of a song or music video.
Here are a few thoughts and resources that I have posted previously.
The main idea behind these projects is to encourage learners to make something that involves passion and creative expression, publish it and learn from it so they can do better next time.
It's easy to spend a fortune on good equipment, but in all my efforts with recording I keep it simple. Even a mediocre musician like me can get a lot of mileage out of free online resources, Audacity for recording and Gsnap for pitch correction. You'll probably need a mic and headphones too, depending on how you plan to perform and record.
GarageBand for the iPad is amazing. For several months I thought of it as just a tool for sketching song ideas. Lately I have been using it to record short songs like some of those shown below. I use the iRig Mic Cast microphone and iRig guitar interface with it for recording.
My latest music video with students - Two middle school students wrote this song. I helped them record it and I edited the video using mostly video and pictures taken under their direction.
My example of a math music video - When I told students about my ideas, some were afraid to sing or perform on video. I made this video as an example to encourage them to take the step.
Scientific Method Rap - This is one example from my first effort to assign a music video project. The post is the best example here of what worked from start to finish in the classroom. I did about eight hours of work on this after the students finished, just to see what was possible and how much work it would take.
Another rap - This example also came out of the class project above, but without my additional editing.
Kevin Honeycutt - Since I first came across Kevin's conference session in 2011 he has been an inspiration to me. I love how he inspires students to be creative and get their ideas out there.
Music Video for Tech PD - This is a song we had some fun with for a PD session. I was encouraging teachers to put some passion in their work and to do something new. This song was a result. It also serves as an example of what can be done using just the iPad for recording.
I worked with Andrea Thelen and her class this past marking period. The class is called SETS - Students Engaged in Technology and Science. This is a video project we assigned at the end of the course. The hope was to follow a process like I outlined in this post from last year about music creation in the classroom.
As it turned out, we almost ran out of time. I worked with the group of students to create the lyrics and we recorded a rough version in the very last days of the class. I took some time on spring break to spice it up on my own. Details of the process are below, but here's the final result.
It is not perfect, so I pose this as a challenge for other groups. Do something better!
Here's the Project Process:
First I had the students do this assignment to research and review the scientific method.
I didn't show them any examples of existing videos. Instead, I just asked them to write the lyrics for a rap after they did the above assignment. This group featured above turned in some great work, but I was disheartened to find a very similar version online! We had a talk about using online content in acceptable ways and how to give credit where it's due.
I then worked with them to write the lyrics shown in this final version.
Using my iPad with an iRig Mic Cast microphone, I recorded the students while they rapped. I made one simple track using the Smart Drums and then recorded their vocal part on a few other tracks as we accumulated takes. This took longer than I expected, but it was a great learning process for them as we had to tweak their lyrics to fit the beat. After class I took time to put the good takes in order.
The students then took the iPad while I worked on the same process with a second group. They used the free Video Star app to record their lip sync performance. They came back with one rough take. I told them to go do a few more. In the end they had four videos.
I should note that Video Star is a great, fun app for adding effects to a lip sync performance. But I was glad that three of the four takes that these students gave me did not use the video effects. Instead, they just used the app as a means of syncing their performance with the song. I suggest that because it's better for a polished video to add the best effects during post-production.
The videos that the students made at that point were acceptable for purposes of the class. We were out of time anyway, so I did not have a chance to take them through the editing process.
Since it is spring break, though, I had a lot of time to play around with it on my own. I did the following:
I created a few background tracks using options using UJam. That site makes it easy to try the options, download an mp3 and then try another version. I made two that I liked based on their hip hop styles. One important point to note is that UJam was a great seller for this project. The students liked how it immediately spruced up a vocal track. I was disappointed we didn't have more time to use this in class, so I hope to start the project earlier in the marking period next time.
I combined, rearranged and mixed the vocals and UJam track using my old version of Music Creator. While I did put in some effects from that program, mostly I choose it over Audacity only because it lets me easily cut the tracks right at the measures. This makes it extremely easy to move parts around and repeat them.
I then combined the parts from their video performances with my audio track using Corel VideoStudio. I love the program, but see the details I wrote about the good and the one big negative I had. I really enjoy video editing, so I had fun with this. I have to admit it took several hours just to make this short video, though, and it is not realistic that our students would have created something this complex within the usual time limits of our classes. I hope to get them there someday though!
Doing this project with this group was my dream project this marking period. I was hoping to give them something to make the class very memorable. Since it was rushed and we worked around other distractions, I'm not sure I achieved it. I did build a couple important relationships, though, and I set the groundwork to do much better the next time around.
I have always said that nothing provides an option for more content and important skills at a variety of levels like a good video project. Though it can complicate an already complex process, I'll go further and say that a good music video project adds several other advantages to the mix. Not the least of which is that the students who are hardest to hook often have a love and talent for music.
I have played and written a lot of music in my life that would not have been possible without technology. I'm not a great musician, but technology can fill in the gaps and make a rewarding experience for me and others.
Here are a few free tools I've been using lately that could be used for fun classroom activities. For one, imagine students turning short poems into songs or raps and then using them as their favorite ringtones. They can also make for great background music in videos and podcasts.
Audacity - I'm sure almost everyone has heard of this free audio recording tool. It's not perfect, but excellent for almost all recording needs in the classroom.
Gsnap - This is my best find of the summer. It offers many of the benefits of the famous (and pricey) Auto-Tune pitch correction software, but Gsnap is free. I'm not a vocalist, but this helps me make sketches of my songs that I'm not embarrassed to play for the people who can perform them correctly. It works with Audacity 1.3, so you have to download that version if you want to use the two together. Supposedly you can get it to do the robotic voice effects popular in many songs, but so far I have only achieved a more natural correction, which is all I need anyway.
And this one is unfortunately dead now... Roc - This is the music creation tool at Aviary. It can be used to easily make basic beats and loops. Check out all of Aviary's tools for great graphics tools too. I didn't have much luck with Myna, the audio recording tool.
