April 20

Website Worth Sharing: Google Experiments

Google encourages experimentation with their staff and other contributors. I found this collection called “Creatability” which incorporates music with visual arts and movement. I think the kids might have fun with some of these: https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/creatability

The Arts and Culture Experiments also look interesting: https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/arts-culture

Digital Wellbeing experiments would be good for older students: https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/digitalwellbeing

For the older students, it could be interesting to have them explore one of these and share with the class.

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December 18

Website Worth Sharing: Chrome Music Lab

If you teach music or science (or even math or art), please take a minute to visit the Chrome Music Lab website ( I don’t think you’ll be disappointed): https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Experiments which contains 13 “experiments”, each represented by a tile on the homepage. Each one allows students to experiment with music and sound. Music teachers will find a variety of activities available to project for whole class activities (a SMARTboard would be awesome for this) or individual exploration (grab a Chromebook cart and have some fun!) While most of the activities are “in the moment” and disappear when done, the Song Maker allows you to save and share your creation via a weblink. Students can turn their creations in through Google Classroom by posting the link to the assignment. Here is my song as an example: https://goo.gl/UmULf5

Science teachers- at first glance, this just looks like music activities, but check out the spectrogram (the modem option will bring back memories), sound waves, voice spinner, harmonics and oscillators.

For a more detailed explanation of each activity, see this blogpost by Eric Curts (if you’re on Twitter- be sure to check out the Tweets regarding how teachers are using this site- the link is at the bottom of the blog post).

https://www.controlaltachieve.com/2018/12/chrome-music-lab.html

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May 11

Website Worth Sharing: A Summary of Google Tools

This blog post at Control Alt Achieve highlights some of the useful tools Google has to offer. I’ve seen several of these, but Google is constantly stepping up their game so a few were new to me and may also be new to you.

http://www.controlaltachieve.com/2016/05/google-search-cards.html

A quick summary:

Teacher Tools: #1- Flip a Coin #2 Roll a Die and #3 Timer (No more fumbling for these tools or looking for a website that has them- these are as quick as a Google search and won’t fall on the floor.)

Math Teacher Tools- #’s 6-11- The online calculator is pretty handy for demonstration purposes- #s 16, 17, and 19 could be used for exploring graphs and data.

Primary Teachers- #12 Animal Sounds- Might be fun as a listening exercise- turn off the projector and just have them identify the sounds.

Anyone Helping Students Create a Project with Images: #14- The Public Domain option teaches kids to use images that are not copyright protected and helps them find some.

World Language Teachers: #15 for quick translation or practice speaking (see if it recognizes what they say)

Music Teacher: #18 Online Metronome (PE Teachers might also find a use for this)

Health Teachers #13 Calorie Counter and #20 Medical Conditions

Just for Fun: “Do a Barrel Roll” might be a fun signal to get their attention.

 

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March 28

Websites Worth Sharing: Recording Audio and Video for Google Classroom Assignments

World Language, Music and ELL Teachers,

I found a couple of nice videos that show how you can integrate an easy voice recording tool (Vocaroo) or video recording app (MoveNote) and Google Classroom to allow your students to record their voices (or musical instruments) and submit an audio  or video “assignment” using Google Classroom. The videos do a nice job of walking you through the process.

Using Vocaroo with Google Classroom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMFWg-Hflh4 (this tool is really easy to use and works well with Chromebooks)

Using MoveNote with Google Slides and Classroom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsDC_9odSc8

This one is more complex, but allows students to use the Chromebook video camera to record students speaking (or Signing- Megan!).  MoveNote is a Chrome app which students can add as an extension to their Chrome devices.

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September 22

Website Worth Sharing: National Jukebox

The Library of Congress has made a lot of historical music available on their website. The National Jukebox project is an archive of music from 1901-1925. You can use the options on the left to search for different artists, genres and time periods. They have also created some custom playlists of similar musical pieces. You can’t download the files, but can play them directly from the site.

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/

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