I'm Yours

One of the challenges of teaching is trying to balance the difficulty level of the assignments. You want the work to be challenging but not too difficult for the students. I crossed the line with my most recent music assignment. Most of the students were unable to successfully complete the task.

I wanted the students to practice using Audacity. I wanted them to practice manipulating different tracks and to apply different effects to different tracks in a song. With these goals in mind, I thought it would be a good exercise for them to compose a song.

I knew that the students, at this point, would be unable to compose their own song from scratch. So, I decided to have them remix an existing song. The song I chose was, "I'm Yours," by Jason Mraz. This is a good tune because it repeats the same four chords throughout the song.

Unfortunately, Audacity does not have any built-in sounds or instruments. I figured the simplest way for the students go get the music into Audacity would be to use Jamstudio. So, the students entered the chords for "I'm Yours" (C, G, Am, F) into Jamstudio, and then selected some instruments. I instructed them to use different instruments for the verses and the chorus. So far, so good.

I knew that the students would not be inclined to sing, so we used AT&T's text to speech website to convert the lyrics to speech.

Most of the students were able to get as far as this. But the process of importing chunks of spoken lyrics into Audacity and then synchronizing them with the verse and chorus of the song was very challenging. It required the students to use Audacity effects to change the speed of the lyrics, repeatedly, until the length was correct. Many of the students got frustrated by this process and were unable to successfully complete the task.

These two students came pretty close:

Games

I really like the philosophy of using fun and games to motivate the students; however, I always feel guilty whenever I use games in the classroom. I know I shouldn’t.

There is a website called JamLegend, which is a nice emulation of Guitar Hero. In my Music class, I asked the students to sign up at this site and take their character to Level 2. The students really enjoyed the activity.

Still, I felt uneasy about the task. Would my principal approve? Would the other teachers approve? Would the parents approve?

Were the students really learning anything, any skills? I had to convince myself that the game was improving their dexterity (for guitar) and developing their sense of rhythm and music.

Essentially, any time that my students are having fun or enjoying themselves in the classroom, I feel a tinge of guilt. School is not supposed to by fun. It’s irrational, I know; maybe it’s a product of my Catholic upbringing.

An event later in the week did nothing to ease my conscience. I decided to have my Geography class play SimCity, because I think it teaches a lot about the way a city functions. Unfortunately, I had to abandon my plan when I discovered that the SimCity website is blocked at our school.

There are many game sites that are not blocked. The filtering program seems to be quite haphazard. For example, an online game, Evony, is not blocked, and many of the students play it during their free time and during lunch. Evony is a medieval type game where the player must build up their town and army, and manage resources. Hmm, maybe I can incorporate it into my History class…

Photo by All Glass Photo.

Jamstudio

Jamstudio is a website that lets easily compose songs.

Teachers can request a free educator account.  Within a couple days of my request, I received an email with an access code good for 200 accounts.

Last week, I had the students in my Music class write a song.  Unfortunately, the “Share” button did not function properly; therefore, the students could not email me their songs.

I found a work-around solution.

There is a button on the Jamstudio website, “Mp3 Mix.”  This allows users to email themselves an MP3 file of their creation.  I will instruct my students to send their MP3 to their own email accounts.  I could just ask them to then forward the email to me.  However, I want their music to be publicly available, on their blogs.  Unfortunately, Blogger does not allow for uploading MP3s.

Thanks to this great website, Zippa.com, which is a repository for Web 2.0 websites, I found this interesting and useful website, File2.ws.  File2.ws allows users to upload a large variety of files, which are then converted into a simple web page.  There is no sign up procedure.  So, each student will upload their MP3, which will be made into a web page.  This web page can then be linked to on their blog.

Photo by Hryck.