Rachael Gros

I reviewed a course from iTunes U for Educator in the Inspiring Lessons category called iPad as Expressive Sound Canvas. It is a distinguished Educator course for Secondary Music. This collection is solely courses for a classroom.

This course is about creating connections between the visual arts and music. It gives topics to discuss and even assignments for the students to do. This course gives a basic outline into what you can focus on for each piece of the unit. It has three main parts to the unit, introducing the topic, building understanding and applying learning. Each section has a main ideas and possible assignments for the students to complete. Using this from a teacher perspective, this is just an outline. There are materials and things to use but you would be responsible for the teaching and day-to-day lesson planning. I really like the idea of this lesson. It is focused on helping students become more creative with jazz improvisation. It uses abstract expressionism art and more specifically a Jackson Pollock painting.

Overall, I think this is a fun unit to cover but be aware that this does not do all the work for you. You would still have to be responsible for the day to day planning and preparation. I plan to take a look at more of these courses and see what they have to offer.

I reviewed the book about the app Puppet Pals HD. This is a fun and interactive app that allows students to create videos using their own backdrops and characters. This book can be found in iTunes U under the for educators tab and then in the Category Apps in the Classroom. The category Apps in the Classroom is books on different apps you can use in the classroom.

This short book had multiple lesson plans for different age groups and content areas. There were even rubrics that you could sample for your classroom. The lesson plans walked you through the steps it would take for students to complete the activity. Unfortunately, it does not demonstrate how to use the app but with some exploring you can easily figure out the app. I really appreciated the many different lesson plans and the types of activities in the lesson plans. Each one had a different spin such as giving a presentation or doing an interview on a historical person. Any good teacher would be able to take these lesson plans and adjust them to whatever they need for their particular classroom.

This book of ideas on the Puppet Pals app is a good one to check out. It gives the students a chance to present information but through technology. You can either have student script it out or just go with the flow. You could also use this as a teacher to introduce a topic in a new and fun way or if you have a sub and you still want to teach some information. Make sure you check out this book on iTunes U for educators along with all the other awesome resources!

I reviewed a book from the iTunes U book series called One Best Thing. I read From Pachelbel to iPad: Student-Performed GarageBand Concerts. This was a short book on how to create a small ensemble and perform using the app GarageBand for iPad.

This book really surprised and delighted me. Since I am a music content area I really wanted to read this book. I really appreciated how the writer walked you through all the steps to create this in your own classrooms. There were videos, keynotes, and pictures showing you how to do each step. The writer has even made available the copies of his arrangement of Pachelbel’s Canon in D available for you to use should you wish to start with his example. Also at the end of the book he gave you some pointers on how you could switch it up to make the students take more ownership in what the are doing such as adding percussion or changing some of the instruments. The only thing I could possibly say against this is that this type of setup does not lend itself to easily record the whole piece. You could record each part individually but it would take work to create a whole piece through recording. Although he does give you links to Apple for support and does give some pointers on how it could be done.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I loved reading about how to do the individual parts and how you can make it your own. As a teacher this would be fun to dig into with your students. Everyone can show responsibility for their own parts and this incorporates tempo, key and harmony. At the end of the book he does caution that his is not meant to replace real instruments but act as a gateway to interest in real instruments after having successful performances on the iPad. Go out and look this book up!

I reviewed the app Slate by Adobe. I used it to give an explanation about the Grand Staff in Music. You can find my Slate here. This app made it fun and easy to create a short lesson about a topic and you could easily extend it to be longer. There are many apps out there that can do what slate does but I like the simplicity of Slate. 

In slate, you can add pictures and text to you story line. You can also change the font size or bold anditalicize your text. The movement of pictures and text really makes the whole thing attractive and easy to read for a viewer. The only thing it does not do is let you use video or sound. It is simply an article. 

This would be a great introductory article for a lesson and it can be as short or as long as you want. This would also be easy to have students produce one of these to demonstrate their knowledge of a subject. You could also use these in place of a paper by having the students write main ideas and sub ideas while illustrating with pictures. 

Overall, I would recommend this app for someone who wants to put a spin on introducing a lesson in a fun and fast way. This app is free on the iTunes app store and it is simple and easy to use. This would be easy for students to use as well which makes it ideal for a classroom setting. 

This week I made a short video about Organs and Their Stops! I used a really neat app called Explain Everything. This app is an interactive whiteboard app that has many different interactive tools to make videos better. This app has everything from a laser pointer to grouping pictures to a writing tool. It can be found on the app store for 2.99, however, I found it worth the price.

This app starts with a clean screen that you can add text, pictures and sound to. You can group pictures together write on them or use a laser pointer. How it works is you click the record button and then you can move pictures around and draw while you are talking. It records your audio as well as you on screen movements and drawings.

This app was really easy to use for what I needed to do. It is also really easy to share to many different formats such as youtube, to your iPad or iTunes. You could easily make one of these and share with your students. You can also have students make one to cover a topic they are covering. They can demonstrate their understanding and show what they know through audio and on screen drawings.

Overall, this app was fun and easy to use. I know that I did not use it to its fullest potential and I plan to keep exploring the app even more. It was well worth the price and I would recommend this to any teacher that is trying to execute a flipped classroom or wants to use this for a lesson.

I experimented with iMovie and created a trailer about composing music. I found the trailer part of iMovie easy to use. It was nice that everything is preset for you and you just plug in your pictures, videos, and text. I almost wish that you could play around with the amount of pictures and text. This would be easy to use in a classroom with students. You could come up with short introductory trailers for a unit or cover vocabulary words. You could even have the students create their own over information that they have learned. You can find iMovie on the app store for free if you have a newer device.

Overall, I really enjoyed using this app. I found it fun to go search for pictures and create a fun storyline from the topic I chose. Teachers can create engaging introductions to topics, and students can create short videos about what they have learned. I would recommend this app for everyone who wants to create fun, short, and engaging videos.

Today I experimented with the app called Tellagami. This app is all about creating short videos that record your voice. You customize an avatar and a background then record your voice. The avatar then lip-syncs the words that were recorded to make the effect of the avatar speaking. This app is free and fun to use although there are paid upgrades within the app.

I found this app fun to use but also a little simple. You cannot coordinate your avatars movements, so if you want to emphasize a certain thing by movement you can’t. Also the free version only lets you record thirty seconds of voice, which was enough for my small intro but would not be enough for a longer explanation. You can upgrade to a 90 second gami but at a cost. Lastly, you cannot change the background during the gami so you must choose one background and run with it for the recording. Since it is a 30 second video this is not much of a problem unless you wanted to use more than one picture to explain something quickly or make an effect.

This app was quick and easy to use. I could easily navigate from one thing to the next whether it be customizing my avatar or changing my background. There are also emotions for your avatar so if you want them to be happy or sad you can change their expression. Also the app does pretty much all the work for you. Once you record your voice it analyzes it and coordinates the avatar and its movements. I also liked that you could share it to many different places, including saving it your iPad. One thing I will caution you on is that if you close out the app without saving it, the gami that you were working on will disappear. Make sure that your students save it before closing out.

The app can be found in the app store and being a free app, it is well worth taking a look at. Your students can demonstrate an understanding of a subject and use a fun background and all this can be done in a short amount of time. As a teacher this could be invaluable for starting class while you take attendance or attend to some other short task. Go try out this fun app today!

I created this using the app Visual poetry, an app managed by imagechef. I found this app simple, maybe even a little too simple for me to use. I like the feature of drawing your own shapes. When you can draw your own shapes you can relate the shapes to your topic as I did in my example. The problem I have with this app is that you cannot really adjust the words in the cloud unless you add words separate from the original words in the shape. You can resize the added words and move them around like I did with the word Grand Staff in my picture above.

A potential problem I could see with this app is that it can be hard to read for some students because it does not keep each word whole but splits it up if it comes to the edge of the shape. Also it does not follow the shape down each end but goes left to right even if there is blank space in-between the words such as note names on the stem of the eighth note above.

I did like all the different types of fonts I could use and I liked the colors I could change it to. You can also use a picture from your camera roll and have it be the background behind your shape. You can also easily save or share you picture right from the app but as far as I can tell there is no way to save the picture created in the app itself.

Overall this could be fun for students to draw in their own shapes and create their own word clouds. As a teacher I can also see many uses for this such as introducing topics and assessing student learning. Unfortunately, this app is not free so it may not be worth paying for in a school setting when there are other apps that are potentially free. It can be found in the app store with the icon to the right.

This is my experiment on Thinglink and I discussed the grand staff in music. I found this app easy to use. It did not take much to upload my image and start adding text, images, and videos. I found it much easier to add your url instead of searching for your video through the app and I ended up saving my images and copying all my urls so that I could just paste them in the text boxes.

This app was fun to use and I could see using this in the classroom to introduce a topic to your students. You can introduce a topic and then add more details in the little tags you add to the picture. You could also have your students create one of these to demonstrate what they know about a topic by adding text or they can present on a topic much like a powerpoint or other presenting medium.

The app can be found in the app store with the icon to the right. You can log in using many different mediums such as facebook, your email, or even google+. It is relatively easy to navigate for a teacher or a student. You can also look at the featured section which shows you other Thinglinks people have created.

I would recommend this app to teachers and students alike. It is a fun way to introduce topics through pictures, text and videos. It is very interactive and it can be a fun way to assess your students. Download and try it out today!