Web+2.0+Resources

I currently teach two online music courses for a district different from the one where I am a full-time employee. In these courses, I have found great benefit in using YouTube in my lessons and assignments. I just go onto the YouTube site and search for whatever it is that I'm teaching and I have almost always found something that directly relates to the lesson and can be used either in the lesson itself or in an assignment. One of the greatest parts about it is the ability to embed. The online courses I teach are done in Blackboard and I am able to embed the clip directly into the class's site. This allows limits the amount of "browsing" that has to be done by the student and it also gives me partial control over what the student is viewing. I'm not having them go to YouTube, I'm bringing what I want them to see on YouTube to them. The difference opens up so many doors that are valuable to the teacher and the students.

WebQuest One of the neatest ideas I am looking forward to implementing in my fourth grade classes in the upcoming months is a WebQuest about "The Star-Spangled Banner." In our fourth grade music curriculum, we have to teach the students the history of and how to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner." In the past, I have done a number of interactive and project-based learning activites in order to teach them about the history surrounding our national anthem. I have recently, however, started developing a WebQuest that I think will prove to be the most productive activity for this unit yet. I am going to be dividing the class into groups and each group is going to have to do one part of the WebQuest - each part of the WebQuest is a person who played a major role in the historical story. After each group has done their portion, we will bring everything together and do a diferentiated instruction activity where each group has to teach the other groups what they have learned.

Blogs Here is a blog site I found that I feel will be very useful to me in the online course that I currently teach entitled Modern American Music History. While in class we discuss what has happened in the past and how it influenced American music, this site allows students to be see music history as it happens and make predictions.

[|Obscure Sound]

Podcasting Here are two articles I found as I was browsing the internet that discuss podcasts in the world of education. I found them very interesting and informative.

[|Podcasting in Education]

[|Why Every School Should Be Podcasting]

Blogs and RSS Feeds Here is a blog that I subscribed to this week. It's a really great site for music educators who are using or attempting to use technology in the music curriculum of today.

[|Music Technology in Education]