Last Edited
Music and technology both offer rich opportunities for students to engage with primary sources, but can be daunting when there is limited time to explore. We have developed a self-directed individual or collaborative activity for students to learn a little history, a little music, and a little technology. Our hope is that a teacher from any subject area will be equipped to explore this intersection with students, and ideally collaborate with other educators through the process. Follow the link to a guide students can use to explore Civil War bugle calls through coding, along with additional resources teachers can use to extend and enrich the learning experience. Since it is self-directed, it may be used as a class activity or an enrichment activity to challenge and engage individual students. An optional extension activity challenges students to express what they’ve learned through the exploration by composing and coding original music of their own. We’re eager to hear feedback – and listen to the original compositions - from diverse classrooms that have used our tool!
This activity uses Scratch. "With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations — and share your creations with others in the online community. Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively — essential skills for life in the 21st century. Scratch is a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. It is provided free of charge."
Carolyn Bennett
Art/Music
Library
3 - 5
6 - 8
Technology
bestof
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I feel so bad that I didn't let you know about the editing tools so that you wouldn't have had to spend all that time recreating this album. Any time you create a post of any kind, you have access to a red box with a white gear icon (upper right of screen). If you click on that icon, it lets you go in to make changes in wording, add more tags, delete individual items from albums, and so on. I use it all the time to fix my writing or typos, or sometimes to add ideas that occur to me after I upload a post. So, my apologies, 
Kellie Taylor
, for any irritation I've caused by neglecting to let you know about the editing options.
I absolutely love the combination of "a little history, a little music, and a little technology" in this teaching idea! It's so creative!
No apologies necessary. I didn't recreate it. I simply deleted the Word document and added another in. I could use help on understanding why it looks as though it was a new album...
Brilliant! Another teacher and I completed this activity today in class as an enrichment, and it was wonderful. Thank you for sharing.
We loved that it involved decoding music. The activity was very circular, and we appreciated that. If students are unsure of notes, beats, or a process, the repetition will reinforce the concept throughout the activity. It was a rewarding coding activity!!! :) So many times, you move something from one side of the screen to the other, and this was so much better! It was cool to hear the music at the end of the activity; the kids thought it was rewarding. I recorded a video of the end result: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_BSotUuHJ0LXkW5UdACA6G8jeaN0dhvj
What a fun activity; thank you for sharing!
Fantastic! Thank you so much for the feedback. I love the video!
What an amazing connection to primary sources! This would be a great collaboration between science, social studies, and music class! Although I have not done the activity with my students, the instructions of how to code using Scratch seem very student friendly. After they have completed the self-led tutorial, it would be interesting to bring in other historical music pieces that they need to program. I can't wait to collaborate with my co-workers on this! Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for your comments! I agree that this could be an initial project with many more to follow. There are so many different ways the basic activity could be used.
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