Here are three blogging options:
1. Edublogs (http://edublogs.org/):
Kathy Cassidy uses the paid version of this
service as it allows photos and is very inexpensive. The blog is displayed beautifully
and organized nicely to make it easy for the
reader to find topics.
2. Seesaw (http://web.seesaw.me/):
Our school uses Seesaw and we love it. Seesaw is a digital portfolio. As a teacher, I (or
have the students) can add their work from
audio recordings, video recordings, drawings, and other musical creations created in
other apps to their Seesaw portfolios. When
the work is added, their parents receive a notification. The parents can then check their
work from their mobile devices or computers. Parents can only see their own children’s
works and parents must be invited and approved by the classroom teacher to follow
their children’s portfolios. As a parent, I love
that our school uses Seesaw to connect with
me. I can see both of my children’s works,
videos, accomplishments, learning styles,
and so much more. Plus, receiving the notifications on my phone makes it as easy as
Facebook to read, like, and if allowed, comment on my child’s works. Seesaw is free for
teachers to set up for 10 classes. However, if
you want the tools for assessment, teacher
notes, and more classes, you will pay $120
per year. Or, have your school subscribe to
the service (best option). Seesaw can also
take posts of your choice and create a blog
post from it for those to see that are not in
your school’s network.
3. Easy Blog (http://easyblog.org/): I
had not heard of this one. Kathy showed it
and it is a wonderful tool for young students
to use for blogging. If Seesaw’s $120 price is
too much, this is an affordable alternative. It
is very similar to Seesaw, but much cheaper
from free to $5 a year. If a parent wants to
keep their child’s digital portfolio at the
end of the school year, the parent pays $10.
From what I could research, Easy Blog is a
digital portfolio service that puts more of
the cost on the parents than on the teacher.
Music Creativity Programs
There are some wonderful music creativity programs that elementary music
OCTOBER 2016
students can use that have a collaboration
feature built in. For composition, Noteflight
(https://www.noteflight.com) and Flat
(https://flat.io/) are notation programs that
students can collaborate with other students
to compose music. Soundtrap (https://www.
soundtrap.com) is a combination of GarageBand and Google Docs where the EDU
version allows students to create music and
podcasts through loops and recordings and
then collaborate with other students to add
to their musical creations.
These examples of skyping, tweeting,
blogging, and music creation programs are
just some samples of connecting your music classroom globally. Connecting your
classroom with other music classrooms is
one way in making your students feel like
what they are learning has a real world connection. Other ways involve what we do
naturally every day in the elementary music
classroom: Perform on instruments from
various countries; sing and learn about songs
from other cultures; learn dances from other
cultures and countries; learn about composers; learn about music history; and so much
more. As music educators, we continuously
strive to bring the