I was struggling to think of a way to utilize maps in a music classroom because often what happens in a rehearsal is the students warm up, play a few pieces and spot work difficult sections. After playing for what is esentally an hour, they are dismissed. I wanted to find a way to incorporate maps into my curriculum to get students more familiar with music and famous composers. I came up with the idea of using maps to show how many different places composers came from and having my students “travel” through a tour of historic performance halls and doing research on what famous composers performed there and what makes that given performance hall significant. This will help students become more familiar with music history becuase (I believe) it is not taught enough within the secondary school community.
Feel free to comment on different ideas that you all have to use Google maps in a way to teach students musical curriculum 😊!
Hey Ashley! It's Paige.
ReplyDeleteI also thought that using Google Maps in a classroom enviroment would be so so cool!
I know that we talked about this in class, but to add on to your music hall idea, you could also do a little coordinate activity. Ahead of time, you could search up 5 different great music halls all over the world. You could find these coordinates for the students and have it up on the board as a warm up activity. As the students are searching the coordinates, they could be finding out how they all relate!
If you are studying a specific musician, you could dive into where they are from. Maybe use Google Earth/Google Maps to take a virtual stroll through their neighborhood. If they took a long journey, maybe use MyMaps to map that out with your students!
I also found some pretty cool things through Voyager (the ship steering wheel on the left) on Google Earth on the education tab. Supposedly, each of these modules created by Google Earth connects to a Common Core Standard.
This one looks at classrooms around the world and the thumbnail pic looks like a band! https://earth.google.com/web/@47.65340349,-117.42329672,1067.68355618a,14.07096557d,35y,0.00000025h,44.99574179t,0r/data=CjASLhIgYjcyZWM5ODdiNDZmMTFlODg5NTkzMTI2ZDUxNTNkOTYiCmdjc19saXN0XzA
Aside from the Google maps idea, you could also break down the four walls of your classroom by utilizing flip grid. Maybe many different music classes in your school are making one song. Maybe first grade uses boomwackers, 2nd grade uses recorders etc. and you have students in each grade record an 8 count of music. What if you were able to make a song out of everyone's flip grids? Im not sure if that would be possible, but still would be cool!
Or even using Flip Grid to connect to (professional/kids) musicians around the world. Kids in different schools could share what musical instruments they use to practice music!
Hope this helps,
Paige B
Thanks Paige! These are all great ideas, especially using Flip Grid to connect students with professional musicians. I will take notes of these ideas for the future! :)
DeleteHey Ashley, nice post!
ReplyDeleteI think giving students an opportunity to check out where a certain piece of music comes from and why the location is significant to it can give them their own motivation for improving at music. If they realize how much of an impact a musical artist can have on the structure of a city or country, maybe they will become inspired to make a change with their music as well. I don't know much about band or music history, but that's my impression, lol.