Digital Musicking

This website has games, videos, activities, and facts about instruments and instrument families. This would be great for elementary students learning about instruments of the orchestra.

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

MusicTheory.net is a free resource that provides lessons and practice on music theory concepts. Lessons include musical concepts such as note names, meter, scales, key signatures, intervals, chords, chord progressions and more. Each lessons comes with exercises that provide an opportunity for students to gain confidence with the concept at hand. Exercises can be personalized to the students knowledge and ability.

Musictheory.net is a free and powerful online resource for teachers who are looking lessons, student exercises or other learning tools. Teachers can browse various lessons that cover topics ranging from the basics of the staff to understanding complex time signatures. The lessons on this website can prove to be useful for all levels of music education.

Musictheory.net is a great resource for students to learn about music theory and explore learning more on their own. The lessons and exercises are well-crafted and of great quality. The recent addition of apps for lessons and exercises provides a great low-cost option for students to continue learning on their own, but also allows for classrooms to be equipped with the apps for low costs, assuming that iPads are available.

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).

Beginning Band Engagement (band director chat room): I utilize this resource very frequently to connect with other music educators. With this resource, band directors can get extremely helpful advice from a pool of thousands of fellow band teachers.

I use this website with my beginning bands when they are first starting to pick what instrument they want to play. It categorizes instruments by family and gives a brief description of each with a sound clip. There are strings, percussion, woodwinds, and brass. The woodwind section is missing tenor and bari sax, and the brass section is missing euphonium but otherwise it is quite complete. I usually show this while having the actual instrument out.

West Rowan High School has proved scale sheets for each instrument at different levels of ability. This source provides easy to read full range scale sheets for students practice their scales with. For younger students, one octave scale sheets are available to begin practicing their scales without the extra notes they do not know how to play yet.

This game goes through The Magic Flute, and gives students examples of instruments as they appear in the music.

This website offers one interactive game, using The Magic Flute, where students guess the instrument sound, as it appears in the music. I would definitely use this in my beginning band classes, so that students can remember instrument sounds in an interactive way.

For band directors in SC Iowa, SCIBA is a support system is resource center. Through their website, directors receive information on honor bands, All-State auditions, and district festivals. SCIBA also provides important resources for directors, such as the JEI (Jazz Educators of Iowa) website. For directors in the district, this is a must.

Rubric builder designs a rubric for teachers using parameters that can be set. This is a great tool for busy teachers that need a quick rubric. Rubrics are necessary for students to understand what they are getting graded on and Rubric Builder makes the rubric making process easier.

This site contains a rubric builder. This is a valuable resource to help educators create an organized rubric for their classes.

IBA (Iowa Bandmasters Association) is the organization that leas Iowa band directors. If you are a band director or music educator in Iowa, you should be a member of IBA. IBA provides professional development, networking opportunities, and will assist a director in any way they can, such as advocacy.

This website has a series of games meant for younger children to understand sound, rhythm, mood, and sounds of the orchestra. I would use this in my beginning band classes, even though it's middle school, just to ensure that they understand instrument sounds.

IHSMA is the hub for music education in the state of Iowa. IHSMA runs state functioned events such as Large group festivals (marching band, concert band and choir, jazz band and choir, show choir), solo and ensemble contest, and the All-State Music Festival. IHSMA provides guidelines and rules directors should follow regarding all of these events. IHSMA also provides professional development for all music educators across the state, regardless of position.

Teachers pay teachers is user content for other users to use. For a small fee (or free in many cases!), an educator could find lessons, activities, resources, or curriculum that would work well for their specific teaching situation. For a teacher with ideas and resources looking to make a little bit of extra money, they could put up their own content for others to buy.

This website offers information about hearing and how to preserve your hearing, which can be a useful lesson for many student musicians.

Pertinent information about ear health as it pertains to listening to audio with headphones and preventing ear loss. Could be a good resource for music teachers who engage in individual listening assignments, helping students to understand the importance of turning the volume down when things get too loud, etc.

This website is one of my favorite ways to introduce new musical ideas to K5 and 1st grade students. Older students love using it as well. The lesson plans, games, and activities are all aligned and geared toward specific subjects. These also make great sub lessons.

A comprehensive list of podcasts for music educators looking to learn on the go!

Methods for approaching assessments with large numbers of students. The overall site has a lot of wonderful ideas for teaching elementary general music as well.

A flash-style card game that helps students solidify their identification of notes within the grand staff. There are several different levels available, so it's useful for all ages and ability levels.

A great way for students to practice ear training, including identification of intervals. Excellent for large classroom settings as well as private lessons.