Instructify

BY KEVIN HODGSON

Sometimes, the tools we stumble upon are just a way to add a little fun into the classroom. I’d put Font de Music into that category. Here, the site takes a small piece of writing — a short sentence seems to be about the limit — and adds a musical backing track, then makes the letters do a little dance to the music. You have some limited options, such as font style, and musical theme, and font color. Other than that, though, you can just sit back and watch your words get jiggy with it on the screen. If you’d like to invite others to your literary dance party, the site generates a link you can share. I did not find an embed code, though, which would be even more helpful.

You might use this site to spice up some lessons around vocabulary — what “mood” would you choose for an individual word? Or, if students were to create one of these musical pieces around their name, what decisions would they make around choice of font, color and music? It’s a simple, fun site with some possibilities for examining how multimedia and text influences our thinking around design choices.

Font de Music

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Turn your words into songs with Let Them Sing It for You

BY KEVIN HODGSON

You may have heard about text-to-speech programs, but how about text-to-song? Let Them Sing It for You is a site that turns user text into a song montage. Sure, it’s odd and entertaining, but this site may provide another way to get students excited about poetry and writing. Just copy or write a poem or short story into the box and let the site do its work. Then, play your words as a song (and see if you can guess the artists you hear singing your words).

I can’t say exactly how the site works, but it appears to match up words with lyrics in popular songs, pulling out snippets of pop songs (In my sample, I think I heard Lady GaGa, Chris Brown and even Chris Isaak). The result is an amusing musical mash-up. The site allows you to listen and then send a link via email, but there does not seem to be an option for downloading or embedding (perhaps that runs afoul of copyright law).

Let Them Sing It for You

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History for Music Lovers teaches historical events in song

Scientific lectures + music + Auto-Tune = The Symphony of Science

They Might Be Giants “Here Comes Science” — Catchy tunes, catchy concepts

Math and music collide

BY KEVIN HODGSON

These two teachers are on to something. In the age of video parodies, History for Music Lovers on YouTube is a place to learn and to laugh. Listen in as the lyrics to popular songs (current and old) are transformed from karaoke into focused history lessons with a humorous twist. Topics as diverse as The Black Plague (sung to Gwen Stefani), the French Revolution (Lady Gaga), Men of the Renaissance (The Violent Femmes) and The Crusades (Billy Idol) are featured in this collection of homemade videos by teachers Amy Burvall and Herb Mahelona, from a school in Oauhu, Hawaii.

I imagine you could easily get the attention of every high school student in the classroom with a few of these videos, and why not turn the tables by letting students then write and produce their own history music videos.

Just be ready to help with the singing.

History for Music Lovers

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Scientific lectures + music + Auto-Tune = The Symphony of Science

They Might Be Giants “Here Comes Science” — Catchy tunes, catchy concepts

Math and music collide

BY KEVIN HODGSON

Music and science come together in a refreshing way with the Symphony of Science, as video clips from the old PBS show, Cosmos,  and other assorted public lectures are transformed into music videos. John Boswell, the site’s curator, explains at the site that his intention is to merge the two mediums together.

“The goal of the project is to bring scientific knowledge and philosophy to the public, in a novel way, through the medium of music. Science and music are two passions of mine that I aim to combine, in a way that is intended to bring a meaningful message to listeners, while simultaneously providing an enjoyable musical experience.” — John Boswell

Using a variation of the auto-tune software (just turn on the radio these days and you can hear it in just about every pop song), Boswell recreates the video lectures by scientists such as Carl Sagan into interesting musical takes on science. Boswell also has links for downloading the video and audio tracks, and provides a transcript of the “lyrics” as well.

For high school or college students studying Astronomy, the Symphony of Science site might provide a nice alternative. Just imagine students walking out of school, with Carl Sagan in their ears instead of Lady Gaga. Or consider how students themselves might transform lectures into music videos themselves, taking ownership in the mash-up process.

The Symphony of Science.

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Add The Biochemists’ Songbook to your .mp3 collection

BY KEVIN HODGSON

You have work past the crackle, static, and white noise of the recordings, but RadioLovers is a website that has archived old radio shows from the pre-television days. Bob Hope, Groucho Marx, and Laurel and Hardy are just a few among the classic voices kept alive at this site, which features free downloads of the files in MP3 format. RadioLovers features comedies, mysteries, science fiction, and even music programs.

If you are doing a unit around media literacy, this site might even be helpful in showing how entertainment has often been commercialized. Listen to the openings of some of these programs and you realize that the first few minutes are often used to showcase the show’s sponsors. You could easily draw some parallels to the use of product placement in various movies and television shows these days.

For students interested in podcasting, these old radio shows are valuable for learning about pacing of story, voice inflection, and the use of sound effects (which is not often a topic covered in a traditional writing class, is it?)

On the issue of copyrights, the site discloses that it believes the radio shows are now in the public domain and no longer protected. Whether that would hold up in a court of law remains to be seen (or not). Even so, these files give a glimpse of entertainment from times when writing, sound effects, and voice were the prevailing means for delivering a stories to a large audience.

RadioLovers

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Glance at technology’s past at Vintage Technology

BY KEVIN HODGSON

10.10.10 is almost here. Are you ready? A project known as “One Day on Earth” seeks to document the ways in which people live and work and play on a single day when our calendar points to the 10th day of the 10th month of the 10th year in the millennium. Sure, it’s sort of odd but it’s a hook that opens up a possibility for creativity for students early in the school year.

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BY REBECCAH HAINES

Have you ever heard a class of 6th graders spontaneously singing along to a song about the sun? Well, I have, and I have to say, it is pretty wonderful. And a little hilarious. You might ask, what kind of magical song could compete with all the popular music out there? “Why does the sun shine?” by They Might Be Giants, actually an old song, on a relatively new CD by the band, is what fits the bill.

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BY AARON FOWLES

I imagine that most people reading this are familiar with Last.fm, an online streaming music site. I taught ESL social studies last year with a focus on geography, and while my students were working on a project about Poland, I had the idea to play some music from that country.

Somehow, it worked. Rather than choosing jazz, as highlighted in the screenshot, I just entered the word Polish and let last.fm do the rest. My students were immediately immersed in the aural spectrum of a country of which they had no immediate knowledge. Talk about meaningful.  “What are they saying?”  “They like hip-hop, too?”  “What’s this music about,” my students kept clamoring. Yes, clamoring.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

I’m convinced there’s a songwriter in everyone, if only we could lower the hurdles for creating the music to go with our songs. Not everyone has the dedication to put in years of practice to learn an instrument well enough to write a song on it. But what if we could lower that hurdle a bit? JamStudio is one such site that makes the song composition easier by allowing users to choose an instrument loop, plug in basic chord changes, and listen to what they have created — all within seconds.

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BY BILL FERRIS

For this month’s random roundup, we’ve selected the Library of Congress, our nation’s storehouse of pretty much everything worth knowing. As you’d expect, a lot of great resources for teachers have been derived from the Library. See your tax dollars at work by reading the articles linked after the jump.

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Looking for ideas or resources for your class? MIT Open CourseWare is there to help.  Yes, the same MIT that everyone hopes their engineering-focused little one gets into has created a free and open resource for anyone in the world to use.  It’s not just math and science courses either; MIT has published complete course resources for all the subjects they teach, from history to music and theater arts. (more…)

Before Hannah Montana, before the Wiggles, before the Backyardigans and other execrable music for the younger set came the great children’s records of the 1940s and 1950s. Now that I’ve reached the age where I believe everything older is automatically better, I’m considering turning my own kids onto some of these classics from a bygone age.

Kiddie Records Weekly plays vintage music for tots from the golden age of children’s music. You can download these records, or listen to them in streaming audio. When they were originally released, several of these records came with a read-along storybook. Kiddie Records Weekly provides digital versions of these books, allowing you to follow along just as your parents (or grandparents) might have. The album covers are a treat as well, featuring colorful illustrations, classic childhood characters, and the long-lost art of cursive writing. So if you’d like a change of pace from another Dora the Explorer sing along, let your elementary students try out something from Kiddie Records Weekly. -BILL FERRIS

Kiddie Records Weekly

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The sounds of history on PBS Kids Jazz website

20 Kids * 20 Kites * 20 Minutes
From the Big Wind Kite Factory in Hawaii, this link provides a complete rundown of instructions and supplies to get 20 of your students building kites and getting them in the air in 20 minutes. Sounds like a cool springtime project for an elementary art class.

Top 10 Tools for a Free Online Education
Want to learn programming? Maybe you’d like to learn to play an instrument or speak a language. Lifehacker has 10 great tools you or your students can use to learn cool new skills.

10 Must-Try Social Media Sites for College Students
While Instructify’s audience is predominantly K-12, a lot of your students will head off to college someday — possibly in a few short months. These 10 sites can help them thrive in their new learning environment by helping them find internships, stay organized, or maybe just find a ride to class.

20+ Must-Read Education Technology Blogs for Teachers, Students, and e-Learners
If Instructify whets your appetite for even more ways to bring nifty tools into your classroom, check out this list, which is pretty much what it sounds like. The fact that they’ve omitted Instructify is clearly just an oversight. -BILL FERRIS

Photo credit: .mands. on Flickr.

You’ve probably already heard about the link between math and music. How musical patterns, can help explain mathematical patterns. Phil Tulga is a musician who has taken this connection to make a happy combo of fractions and rhythm with flash to help students make tunes and learn about math. Students are shown fractions in pie form, and the beats they stand for are explained. Then, at the bottom, they can listen to songs that range from Revolutionary War drum calls, to the theme from The Simpsons. They can also make up their own using everything from Taiko drums to water, with a nice snare drum in the middle. This makes a great activity for music, math, or even social studies. -ALICE MERCER

Playing Fractions Pies.

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Add The Biochemists’ Songbook to your .mp3 collection

Karaoke to learn English? I thought it was Japanese?

Photo credit: iurikothe on Flickr.

I was once told by a band director friend of mine that 108 is the magical musical tempo at which all middle school band music is played. But how do you know how fast 108 is if you’re not a band director? Luckily for you, the internet does it again with Best Metronome.

This site offers, well, an online metronome, in three different versions. The highly accessible metronome is quite simple, allowing you to type in a tempo (such as the magical tempo of 108), and hear the beat. Additionally, it lets you know what tempos go with musical tempo markings – for instance, 108 would be andante. Slightly more advanced is the simple best metronome. On screen, this one looks like an old-timey metronome with the stick that moves back and forth (you even have to wind it!). Finally, you have the advanced metronome. Some of the settings on this one were too complicated even for me, an old band nerd. However, you can set the speed of this one all the way up to 900 beats per minute! Why you would want to do this, I’m not sure, but you can. Additionally, you can have it play you standard preset rhythm, such as the waltz or tango.

If you are a band director, have musical students, or are musical yourself, you will find this website useful. Even if you’re not musical, you can find out what the standard beat for the polonaise is, and who doesn’t want to know that? -REBECCAH HAINES

Best Metronome

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We Got the Beat: Metronome Online

Learn Music Theory Solo or in an Ensemble at MusicTheory.net

Play it by ear: Trainear.com