know how important personal feedback is to our students. Unlike Smart Music, Sight Reading Factory doesn’ t assess students, so you are in complete control of the grading.
Smart Music is a fabulous resource, but not all of my students are able to utilize it( funding, time and access are limiting for us) so I use Smart Music mostly with my beginning band students and middle school instrumentalists who are looking for extra help, or more challenging music or exercises. If you want to learn more please visit www. smartmusic. com.
Since discovering Plickers this summer( www. plickers. com), and writing about it in the fall edition of Maine Motif, I have been using it all school year so far and love it! I use this simple system to not only start my rehearsals with music trivia, terminology, or theory questions, but also to hold each student accountable for having their music and it’ s an easy way to take attendance too! My students love it so much, they get very upset if I skip a day. I have found it to be very helpful to show parents reports of their child’ s answers and get summaries of class and individual results over time. If you don ' t know what Plickers is, please have a look, it is free and very simple to use.
I hope this brief review of online technology is helpful to you. I certainly am no expert, but I am having great success using these tools to streamline my instruction, assessments and engage my students in new, challenging and fun ways.
Rebecca is the 5-8 band director, 6-8 choral director and jazz band director at Reeds Brook Middle School, RSU22 in Hampden, Maine.