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My favorite publication for instrumental music education. Includes composer, and educator interviews; pedagogy, recommended recordings, and more.

I really like the composer-related activities, especially when they related to recorder. I think that many times, students (and parents and classroom teachers) don't view the recorder as a real instrument. I think this is a great way to show them that they can play along with famous classical melodies. 

The San Francisco Kids website offers students many musical activities from listening, performing, composing and even conducting. I think that my elementary music students would love this site, and that it would also work well on the SMARTboard in class. I think the visuals would keep students engaged, and excited about music learning.

This YouTube Channel is dedicated to jazz music education, sponsored by Jazz at Lincoln Center. It is filled with videos about jazz pedagogy and heritage. This is a great site for music educators to keep their jazz education up-to-date, and for students who have an interest in jazz music. Students are able to take video lessons or learn about different styles and composers of jazz. What a great resource about America's own style of music.

Another great website for teaching music. There are many interactive games, some great videos about composers in the time machine, and tools to help kids compose and improvise together.

Quaver's Marvelous World of Music is an interactive music education curriculum and program that integrates, what students love: technology and fun! The host of the video episodes, "Quaver" makes music learning fun and memorable. There are free parts of the program as well as extensive paid sections. If you teach in SC, this is a service paid for by the state. Contact Buz at Quaver Music for your log-in information.

Music educator and composer Scott Watson shares his thoughts on education, technology, the role of music in everyday life in this podcast.

Composing/Music Theory Software

Regina Carter is a jazz violinist. Not only is she an incredible performer and composer, but she has helped make the violin a more approachable jazz instrument.

Audacity is an audio editing tool used to alter recordings and export them into various formats. Used as an educational tool students are able to record, edit, and add digital effects to recordings to remix or compose creative musical products. Music educators may also find it valuable for editing recordings of performances or demonstrating the properties of sound. In order to export a song file to MP3 additional instillation steps are required, see the FAQ for more information.

This website provides a collection of operatic midi files and/or scores on Aria collections of Berlioz, Mozart, Puccini, Verdi, and Wagner, as well as partial collections of over 50 other composers, for a total of 1,288 Arias.

The Aria Database has: 1288 Arias ,177 Operas , 65 Composers, 389 Translations,1027 Aria Texts and 223 MIDIs. The search features on this site are impressive. You can search using the name of the aria, opera, or the role. You can also search by voice part or vocal range. While the website is not adding new material, most vocalists will be able to find what they are looking for with the depth of material already entered.

The Aria Database is a free website to find useful material for music educators, students, and performers. It has a huge library of Aria and Opera roles that are easy to search. It comes with very useful information such as range, translations, setting, synopsis, and recordings. Searching is easy and can vary in degree simple search, Aria search, Opera search, Role search, or browse the many selections. People can contact or contribute to this website. I do not see any scores, but there are links that do provide them.

Auralia5 and Musition5 are very good soft wares for a music classroom. Auralia is for ear training, while Musition is for music theory. These softwares enhance a student's musicianship through very interesting activities of listening, composing, notating music, and sight reading/playing. A school has to purchase the software, though it is cloud based. The teacher adds students to different classes in the groups so that when assignments are set, they are easily submitted to the class where they belong. Teachers can create and assign worksheets, tests, and courses, and grade his/her students online as well. Tracking allows the teachers to run exams with high quality content that students love. Reports are also created in the software and parents can access their children's performance. Auralia and Musition are perfect for students of all ages and abilities. Auralia has a clean, easy to use interface designed to keep students focused on their essential ear training task.

This site gives students the ability to create satisfying compositions that explore texture using loops that are designed to fit in with each other. Perfectly suited for differentiation, students can create works that are simple or complex.

Music Improvisation Arranging Music

Incredibox is a web-based mixing tool, and its purpose is to create mixes with pre-set loops including, beats, effects, voices, and melodies. In each "dude", the user needs to select a "clothing piece" that contains a specific loops. The user begins creating their mixes, and can add and delete them as needed. Musically speaking, it is a teaching tool because the user learns how to mix loops ate certain points. It enhance several concepts such as rhtyhm and meter. It can be used by elementary and secondary-level students.

This site is used for an orchestra unit or when describing specific instruments of the orchestra. Site provide games, pictures, and sounds.

Through support from the New York Philharmonic, this website introduces famous composers, has instrument games, rhythm games, and much more for young students. It also introduces students to some of the actual players in the New York Philharmonic.

A fun and interactive source or beat mixing and music making. No account needed. Free options. Allows students to create, record, and download their compositions.

Incredibox is an online and free music technology resource that has the user drag and drop icons to create different arrangements using various loops. The website also creates a game where the user must find the right combination of loops to make creative decisions that the program has pre-determined. This resource is a great tool to introduce students to the world of music technology while also teaching about form, the recording process, sharing of music, and how/why musicians makes creative decisions.

This composition website allows the composer to experiment with form, texture, harmony, and other elements of music without having to read standard notation. Instead of music notes, the music is represented by a cartoon boy in different outfits.

This interactive website includes cute and detailed graphics of land and seascapes. It has a comprehensive catalog of clips from many orchestral works as well as information about the music and its composer. This website would be great to use with a classroom set of iPads or Chromebooks.

An online marketplace for teachers to buy and sell classroom resources. I have found many free and low cost worksheets, visuals and even lesson plans online. Resources include worksheets for pitch, rhythm, composers, specific songs, like the Star Spangled Banner and so much more. A valuable resource for a teacher who does not want to "recreate the wheel" OR who is creative and likes to "recreate the wheel" and earn a little cash doing it!

Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT), is a great resource for lesson plans, bulletin boards, and so much more! While most resources are free, some you do have to pay for.

This would be a great source for teachers who need the documentation for certain topics. This website provides every grade level, along with every subject being provided. There are lots of information on this source for free, and there are also many sources that are not free. But it depends on what you want or need. The purpose of this sources is to give teachers a wide range of things, that they may need in their classrooms.

With the popularity of the movie "Amadeus", there is a bit of misconception about the famous classical composer. This academic blogpost does a fair amount to parse fact from fiction, and can be a nice supplemental resource for music history syllabi.

A great resource for your last minute lesson plan needs!  There are plans, activities, and quizzes!

Resource for UF Masters in Music Education. I love this resource primarily for the fun and interactive nature that the games provide to my classroom. There are plenty of resources such as lessons, pre-made assessment, and videos. However, the games allow students to enjoy learning through assessment and interactive scenarios.

This website is a great resource for beginning to integrate technology into your classroom. There are ready-made lesson plans, as well as fun activities to do with your students. There are worksheets on theory, lessons on piano, and so much more.

For teachers looking to make use of listening examples in their classes, Classical Archives offers a substantial database of recordings and listening examples. Users can filter examples based on genres, periods or by individual composers and have access to both live recording and even MIDI recreations of famous pieces of classical and more contemporary music.

Music Ace is general music education software that comes in commercial and education editions. The software is installed on a computer (not online/cloud), and includes a variety of games and activities which focus on general music theory. There is also doodle pad feature which allows the user to compose using a variety of instruments and sounds. This software title is generally appropriate for elementary grades, but may have usability for other age groups too.