Digital Musicking

I'm a Choir Director: With close to 25,000 members, this is the largest group that I am a member of on Facebook. I highly recommend joining this group, even if you strictly teach instrumental music as I do, for the great shared content (updates in the vocal world and additional resources).

This is a helpful website for students interested in jazz. Students can read more about the history of jazz, learn about specific artists, and get tips for improving their own playing.

This is a great resource that I plan to use with my Jazz Band students.

Great source that contains a good jazz history database as well as a lot of performance practice tips.

Handy site with a lot of educational resources for the violin.

Great resource for learning about the musicianship building method "Orff Schulwerk". Here you can find resources as well as sign up for professional development opportunities to learn more about Orff Schulwerk.

This site contains a collection of lesson plans for theory and history that could be utilized or referenced for the classroom.

A youtube channel that focuses on providing short lessons on jazz history/tradition, instrumental technique, and the jazz language.

This YouTube channel is a great resources for jazz educators in both a private and ensemble setting. The videos cover the whole jazz orchestra, providing videos of technique as well as ways to develop students' improvisational skills.

Jazz Academy is a YouTube library with free lessons on jazz for educators and students. Lessons range from the instrument specific techniques, jazz history, master classes with professional musicians, and lessons on different styles of music. From these videos, students receive important information from professional jazz musicians. As a jazz educator, there are also videos that improve my understanding of specific techniques and styles.

This website deals with World Music for children. There are projects, audio links, sheet music for purchase, and coloring/information sheets.

This website introduces students to musical cultures around the world.

This website has opportunities for students to experience World Music. There is a subscription if you want to use the website for more opportunities.

I use these videos for my elementary students. They are great listening videos to learn music concepts.

These videos are great to hear the sound of the instruments.

This website offers many applications to help teach virtually anyone to play piano. These apps use the latest gaming software to help make learning the piano fun.

JoyTunes makes absolutely phenomenal piano learning apps, especially PianoMaestro, which I use with my second graders. They download the app on their iPads, and it guides them through the basics of piano playing, all the way through playing simple songs and melodies. It's definitely worth checking out!

This is a great website called wheeldecide.com. It's one of the only "spinner" websites I've been able to find, and it works perfectly for when you've got some extra time with your younger elementary students. I just load up the songs and games they know, and I let one of the students spin the wheel and we sing and/or play whatever song/game comes up. They love it!

I know this isn't a "website", per se, but I need to share Dudamel conducting the fourth movement of Dvorak's "New World Symphony" since I just bookmarked the listening map. This is such a wonderful performance, and it demonstrates how crucial the conductor is in coercing a certain sound from the performers!

This is an excellent, short article about the history of the blues that my fifth graders read during our blues unit.

If you teach any sea chanteys, you might be able to find some information as well as an authentic recording of them at this website by the Hyde Street Chantey Singers. (I've found that Firefox works best for this website, for some reason.) I use this site when we learn "John Kanaka" in fifth grade.

This is a VERY old website, but if you teach square dancing (we do "Camptown Races" in fourth grade), this is the resource for you! You can click around to find detailed names and instructions for probably any square dance move you can think of, and each one also includes an animated GIF showing what each move should look like. This was a great resource for me as a non-dancer!

This site is FANTASTIC, and I hope it never goes away! It's got each instrument's preeminent part from Britten's "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" and I use it as review as well as for a summative listening assessment where students have to identify the instrument that's playing.

This is a great Prezi I happened to find as I was looking for resources to teach "Sansa Kroma" to my third graders. If you use that song in your setting, it's worth checking out!

What better way to involve students--regardless of musical talent and ability--in the music-making experience than to integrate technology into our everyday classroom instruction? Blogger Ethan Hein provides his audience with seven sample lessons that use music technology as the means through which to teach music-specific content; among the examples he provides are assignments for making music with loops, MIDI, and found sound. By adapting any of these lessons for use in our own classrooms, Hein is convinced that we can engage and involve all students in the music-making experience.

This is the professional organization that represents and advocates for the use of Kodaly concepts in music classrooms. Typically General Music and choir but may include instrumental pedagogy.

This website is a must use for any general music or choral teacher. It contains information regarding conferences and certification courses, as well as resources. Kodaly is a wonderful method with an emphasis on singing, music literacy, and folk songs. In the Kodaly method, teachers learn to prepare, present and practice concepts with students. Teachers also discover the importance of developing their own musicianship

Getting students to improvise is sometimes a very tricky task--lending itself as one of the most difficult challenges we face as teachers; however, author Steve Treseler provides a concise list of 10 steps, or strategies, for approaching the aforementioned topic with students, which includes but is not limited to building community through improvised games, choosing a piece that remains in one key center, and teaching all students the melody. By following these 10 easy steps, Treseler is convinced that students will receive the support they need to perform with confidence.