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Free from Microsoft Research: Songsmith generates musical accompaniment to match a singer's voice. Just choose a musical style, sing into your PC's microphone, and Songsmith will create backing music for you. Then share your songs with your friends and family, post your songs online, or create your own music videos. (No help if you can't sing) - comment by Kathleen Nann

"One of the most exciting trends in public libraries is how families and children are engaging together in playful early learning. Much of this has been influenced by Every Child Ready to Read, a program that guides families in children's early literacy by talking, singing, reading, writing, and playing. [1] There is less attention paid, however, to how libraries and families can support early math. This is unfortunate, given that early math skills are highly predictive of later academic success, even more so than reading abilities or socio-emotional development.[2] Like literacy, math is a tool, and one that can be developed and honed early in life.  Building on the success of Every Child Ready to Read, below we offer six ideas for how librarians and families can talk, sing, read, write, and play with math. Libraries are in a perfect position to promote family math, as they increasingly offer opportunities for families to tinker with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM); offer a wide range of digital media resources-many with a math focus; and are trusted places where families of young children congregate for story times and other activities.[3] "

"Study Jams is a Scholastic website designed to help elementary school students learn and review math and science information through songs and videos. To use Study Jams students search for a topic in the math or science category. Each Study Jam offers a short tutorial on that topic in the form of a video, slideshow, or song. When there is a song available Study Jams provides a karaoke format for kids to sing along if they like."

"Use the e-Textiles-in-a-Box tutorial and get ready to teach young people about electronics and computing. Based on the Computational Textiles Curriculum and Sew Electric from MIT, e-Textiles-in-a-Box provides instructions for sewing soft circuits and programming an Arduino microprocessor on the way to creating a bookmark book light and an interactive felt monster that lights up and sings. NCWIT is pleased to offer e-Textiles-in-a-Box in cooperation with the MIT High-Low Tech Group, and with funding from the National Science Foundation."

"Toy take apart and hacking is a high engagement activity that works for kids of all ages, including adults who haven't lost their sense of kid, and both genders. I have done it multiple times during my summer maker camp for elementary level kids, my gifted students, and at conferences as part of teacher professional development. Here is a description of this activity from the tinkering studio at the Exploratorium: Do you ever wonder what's inside your toys? You'll make some exciting and surprising discoveries about their inner parts when you don some safety goggles and get started dissecting your old stuffed animal, remote controlled car, or singing Santa. Use screwdrivers, seam rippers, scissors, and saws to remove your toy's insides. Check out the mechanisms, circuit boards, computer chips, lights, and wires you find inside. Once you've fully dissected your toy, you can use the toy's parts, your tools, and your imagination to create a new original plaything.  (https://tinkering.exploratorium.edu/toy-take-apart)"

"To be subtle. To be true. To be original. To be on. * To sing without moving your lips. * To explore the conventions of a thousand genres and befriend a thousand tribes. * To set your love free. * To tweet and be RTed. * To convince someone to give you money. * To get better at doing hard things. "

"The legendary Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) can teach us a thing or two about engaging an audience. I stumbled upon this 1963 Playboy interview with Sinatra recently, and it's pure gold. "When I sing, I believe," says Sinatra. "I'm honest. If you want to get an audience with you, there's only one way. You have to reach out to them with total honesty and humility." Whether we're talking about an entertainer or about life in general, you can't be indifferent, Frank says. People do not connect with indifference. "This isn't a grandstand play on my part; I've discovered-and you can see it in other entertainers-when they don't reach out to the audience, nothing happens." "

Microsoft Research Songsmith - What is Songsmith? Songsmith generates musical accompaniment to match a singer's voice. Just choose a musical style, sing into your PC's microphone, and Songsmith will create backing music for you. Then share your songs with your friends and family, post your songs online, or create your own music videos.

"Integrating technology into the music classroom can be a real challenge. For one thing, students don't have desks, so any device with a keyboard presents a logistical problem. Nevertheless, the potential payoff is big. By introducing virtual instruments and digital composition, teachers are empowering students to innovate in ways that were unimaginable 10 or 20 years ago, and are making their classes more engaging and interactive."

"Gas-powered Roman chariots, singing greeting cards, play dough circuit boards, and homemade voltage detectors are just a few of the science projects you might see when you apply a maker approach to STEM education. The maker movement celebrates creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship through the design and construction of physical objects. Maker activities may come across as playful, even slightly wacky, explosions of inventiveness. But in education contexts like schools, museums, libraries, and after-school programs, research shows that if the invitation to creativity is accompanied by intentional structure and guidance, maker activities can be channeled to support deep student learning (Blikstein, 2013; Vossoughi, Escudé, Kong, & Hooper, 2013)."

"There are plenty of new Christmas songs each year, but it's not that easy to make a Christmas song that becomes a classic holiday tune. You know, one that you can repeat each year that still feels relevant. Straight No Chaser may have just made the first Christmas song fit for this new Internet 2.0 generation. Together with Kristen Bell, they sing Text Me Merry Christmas, a catchy tune about spreading holiday cheer via text. "

Pippa Davies @PippaDavies, Natalie Sing @rnsing and Jessie Davis @jdavislc HCS Learning Commons Team

"If I could sing a parody, which trust me, you DO NOT want to hear, I'd rewrite Megan Trainor's famous song "All About that Bass,"  with the lyrics, "It's not about the space… all learning."    It's almost comical for me to say it's not about the space, because truthfully, I've loved putting together every single learning space I've ever created.  From watching the evolution of my classrooms when I taught fourth grade, until this year's space, my goals have always been the same.  Use the materials you have around you, buy as little standardized stuff as possible, create the space, and remix, redo, and revise to make the space work for learners."

When tech giant Amazon announced its search for a second headquarters site, cities across the country scrambled to produce persuasive pitches. In Loudoun County, Virginia, fourth-graders from Goshen Post Elementary School took up the challenge personally. To create compelling video arguments, student teams interviewed experts in economic development, researched state history and geography, and even wrote poems to sing the praises of their region. When Northern Virginia was ultimately picked as a new HQ site, students were as proud as any civic leaders from their community. The story offers a good example of how education is shifting as we wrap up two decades of the 21st century. Instead of relying on textbooks and teacher direction, these students had to think critically about unfolding events, collaborate with peers and adults, and make creative use of digital tools to communicate their ideas. In the process, they also learned plenty about social studies and civic engagement. For Loudoun County Superintendent Eric Williams, what makes such authentic learning experiences worthwhile is how they prepare students "to make meaningful contributions to the world."