Music+Classroom+Blogs

**Music Education Blogs:** Sing Imagination Sing Imagination" is the blog of a middle school music teacher at a school in Pennsylvania. She uses the blog as personal and professional space. A few things are really clear: 1) She loves her job 2) She respects youth as people with real ideas and talent, not just 'adults in the making' 3) She's honest about her ups and downs with technology. In other words, she's learning, and her writing is filled with the insight, grace, and humor of a person open to learning and being vulnerable, as well as knowledgeable and determined.

She posts regularly--it's fun to keep up with this one. Be sure to visit the link for her Music Room. On it, you'll see great examples of Web 2.0 tools integrated into her teaching. For example, check this out: 5th graders built a digital bulletin-board to post information about a 'mystery musician' whose birthday they were celebrating. 7th grade guitar students used 'Xtranormal' to create 2-minute videos demonstrating particular guitar concepts, then Skyped with a professional guitarist who'd been invited to comment on the movies, which were posted on the blog. This teacher also posts general insights and ideas related to her interests, her reading, and her connections with fellow music lovers.

A Music Education Blog Collective

A Blog Collectiveis written by a group of music teachers. This blog focuses on important issues within the realm of music education. For example, the recent article, "Guitar Hero," discusses how teachers might use the game to facilitate a musical learning experience. The blog goes all the way back to May of 2005. These people discuss the issues within the sphere of music education in order to help music teachers expand their teaching to become more profitable.

Teachervission

The web source that I found is called [|teachervission]. This website provides you with creative lesson plans for teaching culture through music. I has ideas such as African Drumming. By doing this you can provide your students with a strong background of different cultures and if you pick a specific lesson idea for a certain culture your students who feel more comfortable speaking those languages will feel more comfortable in the classroom. Since this website isn’t just for music education it also works for art as well as science, history, math, literature and reading and many other subjects It has lesson plans from pre-k – 12th grade. And it has topics like elections, Halloween and diversity. Diversity being the key with our current project of the book Becoming Biliterate. This is great source if you are looking to incorporate culture into your students learning.

Music Education in the 21st Century

[|Music Education in the 21st Century] is a blog started by Crane graduate, Brian Franco. He is a music teacher in the Syracuse area and a few years ago, he lost his job due to budget cuts. He was in the process of creating a "unusual" curriculum at the time now called, Weedsport Music Industry. He found another job and now this class is in full swing. The first link link in this post is one for Brian's personal blog, and the other is for a website created for his classes. On Brian's blog, he writes about his thoughts and ideas on many things, the most prominent being music education. His posts inform and also challenge the reader.

[|Weedsport Music Industry] is a website dedicated to showing readers what Mr. Franco's classes are all about. He provides a rationale for his curricula, student assignments, student projects, resources, and assessment. He also tells a little about himself on the website, making it very personable for his students.

Aileen's Music Education Blog <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">[|Aileen's Music Education Blog] is the blog of Aileen Miracle, a teacher in the state of Ohio. She has been teaching for thirteen years, has her Mater's, and is also Kodaly certified. This website is a great tool for music educators of all backgrounds. Aileen writes about lesson plans, songs, new ideas, what she's up to in the music world, and she also puts links to some great music resource websites for music educators. This blog is just full of great resources!

=<span style="color: #800000; display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: center;">Music Matters Blog =

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The creator of [|Music Matters], Natalie Wickham, is one of the most passionate teacher-bloggers I have come across. From the way her blog overflows with ideas, you would never have thought that Natalie didn’t enjoy teaching piano when she first began! Natalie found a way to put passion in her teaching, which is something that all music educators should be striving to do. This blog is just chalk-full of ideas and passionate writing that any music educator could benefit from. The sidebar of the blog includes podcasts, business issues, compositions, game ideas, group class ideas, piano camp ideas, repertoire suggestions, worksheets, and the list goes on!

Elementary Music Teacher Blog <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Wow. That is the first word that comes to mind when writing [|Elementary Music Teacher Blog]. Where to begin! It seems that the woman who put together this blog has endless ideas for the music classroom. From ideas for bulletin boards to lesson plans to pictures to resources—she has it all! And my favorite part of her blog is her [|Music and Literacy] section. She writes about using children’s literature in the music classroom and has some great ideas for doing this! She even has a [|list]of books she uses and corresponding music concepts that go with them. All I can say is check out this blog! = =