Teachers Love SMART Boards

SMART Boards and WatchKnow Video Library

In all my workshops, I find that I never miss an opportunity to recommend the WatchKnow website for finding educational videos for the classroom. This is also a great place to locate videos that you may want to download and incorporate into a Notebook lesson file.

This site is maintained by the users and organized in a way that can really help teachers find relevant videos for the classroom. I also like the rating system that is used to help teachers make a educated decision on what videos to review.

You'll want to start searching through the site right away once you see it so please go there right now and take a look. When you're done, make sure you look at all the things you can do with WatchKnow by watching their introductory video.

Here is the video if you want more information now:

If you can't view the video here, you may have YouTube blocked. Click Here to go directly to the YouTube video.

Please don't forget to share this incredible resource with the teachers at your school.

Sharing Is Caring!

SMARTBoards and Musical Sharing Is Caring!

I believe that teachers should take the lead to transform education. As educators, we need to start changing the traditional learning communities and begin to build sharing communities where students and teachers work together.

If we start thinking about what would be most beneficial to the student as our first priority, we can transform how students learn and how teachers teach.

The motto for Teachers Love SMART Boards is Sharing Is Caring. This is not just a cute catch phrase; this is the key for building a library of ever-changing and ever-increasing information that students and teachers can utilize and add to.

 This week, I will be sharing one or more teacher-created web resource for  each of the following subject areas: Music, Mathematics, Language, Science, and Art.

Today's resource is called Mustech.  It's a Wiki created using PBworks that provides various Music resources for teachers and students. It has an incredible collection of Interactive resources as well as teacher-created Smart Notebook lessons. I also love the mission statement for the wiki:

This wiki was begun because of a conversation on the Teachers.net music teachers discussion board. Some of us decided we'd like a place to share our Smartboard lessons, and perhaps some other resources we use in our classrooms.

The idea behind this wiki is simply to collaborate and share the things that make our classrooms better. It is not about us, it is about the kids and how to teach them music as effectively as possible!

Please take the time to look at how these sites are organized and don't be afraid to contact the creators of these resources to thank them for adding to the education knowledge-base.

Thank you Alex Ramos and everyone else involved for living the motto...

 

Sharing Is Caring!

SMARTBoards and Every Good Boy Does Fine

I'm guessing that if you're a music teacher, you understand the title of this blog post. I learned this mnemonic for remembering the line notes of the Treble Clef and it definitely brings back a lot of memories from my once-a-week music class with Sister Katherine Mary in the 7th grade. Let's F.A.C.E. it, music classes in the 70's tended to be a little boring.

I found an incredible resource that uses much more exciting and engaging ways to learn and understand music theory. The site is called, appropriately enough,  MusicTheory.net and it contains a vast amount of interactive music resources including interactive lessons, activities, and even calculators. These activities work great on the SMART Board.

The creator of MusicTheory.net, Ricci Adams, has also developed a newer version of the site that you may also want to take a look at since it will replace the current version sometime this Summer.

I like the look and feel of the current version a little better than the newer one; however, the new one has the ability to create custom exercises. It's really quite brilliant! Once you create an exercise, you can just save the web address for that exercise to your Bookmarks.

I want to encourage anyone reading this blog to forward this post to your school's music teacher (if you have any) or anyone else who may be interested in this incredible collection of music resources.

By the way, you are free to save and distribute the resources following the rules of the Creative Commons - Attribution 3.0 license. This is great since it would allow you to insert the flash activities directly into your Notebook files.

The creator of this site has even made an offline version of the resources available for download. 

Thank you Mr. Adams for all your hard work and for your willingness to share your resources with others. You really understand the concept of...

Sharing Is Caring!

SMARTBoards and Making Music with Kisstunes

Here's a really great tool for playing and recording music using your computer QWERTY keyboard, your mouse, or by touching your SMART Board. It's called Kisstunes.

It's incredibly simple to use and the really fun thing about this program is that you can record your songs and save them to your computer in the Kisstunes format. This allows you to load your recordings and play at anytime. You can also select from three different instruments: Grand Piano, Electric Guitar, or Acoustic Guitar.

There is also a new version of Kisstunes available that allows you to share your recordings with others and it also includes a few extra instruments.

This is really a fun little tool to add to your library of interactive music sites.

Sharing Is Caring!

SMART Boards and the Virtual Keyboard

Here's an great interactive keyboard application that was shared by one of my readers. It's a Virtual keyboard from the Birmingham Grid for Learning that can simulate nine different instruments (my favorite is definitely the electric guitar) and can even play back chords. It's a perfect companion for the SMART Board.

This application is so simple in design but so powerful in it's ability to help teach. Just a quick note for the music teachers, "the piano keyboard goes from ‘Middle C’ to ‘Upper F’ – one and a half octaves (18 different notes). The double bass is pitched lower but still tuned to ‘C’."

Thanks Alison for sharing this great resource!

Sharing is Caring!

SMART Boards and Music to my Ears

Here's a fun collection of interactive websites related to Music that work great on your SMART Board Interactive Whiteboard. Please use the comment section to share your favorites.

Classics for Kids: Compose Your Own Music

PBS Kids: Thumb Piano Tunes

Pauly's Playhouse: Freaky Frank's Music Machine

Sphinx Kids: Classical Music Interactive Learning & Games

Classics for Kids: The Note Name Game

ArtsAlive: Activities and Games

Dallas Symphony Orchestra: DSO Kids Games

Please share these wonderful resources with the other teachers in your school.

Sharing is Caring!