The VGA Switch - iPad and Computer connected to same projector

I have an iPad 2 which can be connected to a projector. But my computer is connected to the projector all the time because I use the SMARTboard for every lesson. I wanted to be able to connect the iPad to the projector easily without having to unplug things all the time. I thought, "It would be really great if I could just flip a switch between the two." Well, guess what? Such a beast exists. It's called a VGA Switch Selector Box. There are quite a few to choose from and I went with cheap. I paid less than $9 for it. That may not have been the best choice, but I didn't want to spend a bunch of money to find out it wasn't going to do what I thought it would. This is the one I got. I also got a headphone splitter so that I can have the iPad and my computer hooked to my sound system at the same time.

The first time I plugged everything in and switched between the two, I was so excited. It worked great. I used it for my classes that very day. Then I came back the next day and was slightly disappointed. When I hooked it up the first time, my computer was already booted up and ready to go for the day. When I booted up my computer the next day with the VGA selector box already plugged into everything, it seriously messed up the resolution on my computer. I unplugged everything, plugged my computer back into the projector directly and rebooted. The resolution was fine again. I re-plugged everything into the VGA selector and it worked great for the rest of the day. So this means that I have to have everything unplugged before booting the computer for the day and then plug everything in. That's a big pain. It sort of defeats the purpose of why I bought the thing. However, it does make things quick during classes when I have it set up in advance.

I'm unsure if my problems could have been avoided by investing in one of the more expensive units. I'm still playing with it to see if I can make it work with fewer set-up steps. I use a Mac and you can set up a display control in your toolbar to quickly switch between resolutions. That's the next thing I'll try when I have time to play with all the different resolutions to find out what I need.

Picture Books on the iPad

I had a brilliant idea the other day (at least I thought so at the time). I could be using the iPad to show picture books to my classes. Why didn't I think of this before? I have an iPad 2, so I can hook it to the projector and kids will be able to see it big on the SMARTboard. And what kid wouldn't be super excited to be the iPad page turner? Hooray this sounds great! Except...

I immediately went to Amazon to find a picture book. I was pretty disappointed in the limited selection, but there were a few titles I might be able to use in the music room. I downloaded a sample of one and my idea went out the window. It was in black and white! There's no way I am paying money for a picture book I can get in vivid color to show it in black and white. I couldn't figure out why it would be in black and white until I remembered that the Kindle is black and white.That's probably also why the selection is so limited.

And then I had another thought. The Barnes and Noble Nook Color. I raced over the B&N website and saw several titles that might fit the bill. I downloaded the free Nook Kids app. There were a couple of sample books within the app including The Elephant's Child: How the Elephant Got his Trunk by Rudyard Kipling. There is an option to Read by Myself or Read to Me. It looks fabulous. Nice colors. The page doesn't actually look like it's turning like it does in the Kindle, but I can live with that. This might really work. The drawback I see is that the cost of the books are basically the same as the hardcover versions of the books. That means I won't do this for every book I want to use, but I might do it once or twice over the course of the year.

Here are some titles I found that seem like they might be appropriate for the elementary music classroom:

Five Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves
The Composer is Dead
The Snowy Day - Lynn Kleiner has a nice lesson for this book in Kids Can Listen, Kids Can Move
The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker
Otto Goes to the Beach - There is a lesson for this book in GamePlan Grade 1.
Hush Little Baby
Caps for Sale - There is a lesson for this book in Artie Almeida's Mallet Madness book.
Puff the Magic Dragon

I haven't hooked the iPad up to the projector to try it out yet since my projector bulb burned out yesterday. Boo hoo. I plan to try it out soon though.

A listing of iPad Apps

My friend, Martha, on the MK8 list recently acquired a new iPad. I'm always excited to hear of other music teachers getting new technology. She is looking for some instrument apps, so I've decided to make a quick list some of my favorite music and non-music apps here. All apps are free unless otherwise noted. This is definitely not an exhaustive list. I'd love input about additional apps from others, so leave a comment if you have some to recommend.

Instruments:
Virtuoso - piano keyboard
Shaker - iPhone app with lots of unpitched percussion. Hit the 2X button in the lower right to make it iPad sized.
BaDaBing - Drum set and bongos
Percussive - Xylophone. The lite version is xylo only, the $1.99 paid version has glockenspiel, kalimba, xylo, marimba, and vibraphone.
iCanBass - Bass guitar
iVibraSlap - iPhone app for vibraslap
Train Whistle - iPhone app for a train whistle
Rain Stick - iPhone app for a rain stick. You actually turn the iPad to play it.
Cowbell - obviously, a cow bell.
Zampona - pan flute

There are a LOT more instrument apps. These are the only ones I have explored at this point.

Other Music Apps:
Melody Street - described in this blog post. 99 cents/
Singing Fingers - described in this blog post
BeatWave - create beats/loops
Finger Stomp - described in this blog post
Isle of Tune - not yet available. I'm very impatiently waiting for this one. The website is described here.
Monster Chorus - described in this blog post. 99 cents.
Young Music Genius - described in this blog post
Sound Drop - create chance music with balls and lines.
Blue FiRe - recording
ElectroBeats - beat making app
Tap Tempo - for determining tempo of a piece of music. iPhone app.
GarageBand - $4.99. The iPad app of the Mac software.


Teacher Helpers:
Teachers Pick - for randomly choosing students
SmartSeat - seating chart app. $3.99. Described in this blog post.
Planbook - not yet available, but this is an iPad app for Planbook.com. I am beta testing it right now and will let you know as soon as it is available in the app store.

Other useful apps:
Diigo - Internet bookmarks
Dropbox - file storage/sharing
Friendly - for Facebook
Kindle - for reading books. Love this! You can use it even if the iPad is your school's and not your own. The books are stored in your Amazon Kindle account, not actually on your iPad.
AppShopper - for finding new apps
Freebies - for finding free apps

Dropbox

This isn't specifically music-related, but it sure has made my school life easier. There are a lot of times I am working on a large file at home and want to send it to myself at school. Sometimes email works for that purpose, but if it is a very large file, that isn't always a good option. The answer for me is Dropbox. I simply drag the file into my Dropbox and then I have access to it on all my devices. With the free account, you start out with 2 GB of space. If you refer other people, you get an additional 250 MB per referral up to 8 GB of space. Yes, if you sign up with the link above, you will be giving me referral credits. Sneaky, huh? :)  I have it installed on my home and school computers and also on the iPad. You can also access it at any computer through their website. No, you don't always have to be connected to the Internet to work on your files. One more thing that is really nice about Dropbox, once you put the file in dropbox any changes you make to the file are updated in your Dropbox as well so you are always working with the most current version of the file. It's super slick. Try it out.

Updated information for Melody Street

Since posting yesterday about Melody Street, I've discovered some new information.

First of all, my friend Martha Stanley wrote to me:

"Beth, the original poster of the Melody Street site idea was Sarah (<sarah at urbanmusiceducation dot org> and she is also quite the tech-head with a good resource web site. I did some looking at Melodystreet and found it to be a fine site. I agree about some of the loading times, but I think that the site is very well done, colorful without being stupid, and a good resource for my classroom. Thanks for posting about it."

Thanks for that info, Martha!


Secondly, I discovered that a couple of chapters of The House on Melody Street book are on You Tube. They are animations as if they are being shown from an iPad. The content is the same as the iPad app (without the interactivity, of course). This would be a good option for those who do not have access to iPads.


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

My accidental iPad discovery

This isn't music related, but it is technology related.

For a brief period of time, I've been fortunate enough to have TWO iPads. I know not everyone has this luxury. It has worked really well this summer since my twins have each had their own iPad to use and we have not had issues about sharing them (except when they have to share with Mommy!). Unfortunately I have to give the borrowed iPad back in about two weeks. I dread that day.

I had an iTunes card I wanted to apply to my account, so I went into settings to try to do that. I never did figure out how to do it through the iPad (maybe it's not possible?), but I did make a different discovery in the process. I went to Settings and then Store and found this screen:

This screen is either new with the newest iOS update or I've simply ignored it because I didn't have multiple iPads. I sure wish I'd discovered this at the beginning of the summer. If you move the switches to yes, any downloads you make to one device will automatically be made on to the other device(s). I don't use the iPad for music or books, so I just moved the app switch to yes. Then I downloaded Elmo Loves ABC's to one of the iPads (it's huge and took forever) and, lo and behold, it was on the other iPad when I checked later.

Why is this useful, you may ask? Well, if you are like me, you don't sync to your computer all that often. This saves me from having to hook both devices to my computer and syncing. You know, when one kid has an app, the other wants it too and I frequently end up going to the app store on both ipads to download the same app. If you are lucky enough to have multiple iPads in your classroom (that are connected to the same account) and you don't have one of those fancy carts that sync them all at the same time, this may be of use to you. If not, you may have a little more unnecessary information floating around your brain. Oh, well...

Young Music Genius and Musical Me HD

I may make several postings today. Never fear, I won't always be so verbose. Right now I have a bit of time for researching and writing. When school starts, that likely won't be the case and the number of posts will decrease. You know how things go.

Recently I've learned about a couple of iPad apps I'd like to share with you.

Young Music Genius: Classical Wiz - This is a free app which was shared with me by my school's ESL teacher. It introduces children to instruments, composers, and well-known pieces of music. There are several parts of the app.

• Learning - Learn the sound of the instruments by touching the instrument picture. You can also touch a composer picture to hear one of the pieces he composed (Yes, they are all the "dead white guy" composers). For instance, if you touch Haydn, you hear the Surprise Symphony. Brahms plays Hungarian Dance No. 5.
• Games -  The instrument quiz shows four pictures of instruments and plays the sound of one of them. You are to tap the instrument you hear. The same goes for the composer quiz. The app shows four composer pictures and plays a piece of music. You are to tap the correct composer. There is also a memory matching game. There are easy and hard levels of the games, but honestly, I can't tell the difference between the levels. 
• Progress - This feature keeps track of the the player's achievements in the app: Master Learner - Played all sounds in the learning section, Instrument Desciple - Played all instrument sounds. I don't see any way of resetting this information and can't see how it would be all that useful if the app is being used by more than one user.
• Kids' Music Store -  You can purchase and download albums or individual pieces of the composers highlighted in the app. Be sure to use a safe password and/or don't store your credit card number in the store if you don't want children to "accidentally" buy the music.

 

Musical Me HD - This app was developed by Duck Duck Moose. They have several other good apps for young children that are worth exploring. The app costs $1.99. There are several different areas of this app.

• Dance - The first segment is some "monsters" that can be manipulated to dance with well-known children's songs: Skip to My Lou, Farmer in the Dell, etc. Not terribly educational, but sort of fun for kids.
• Rhythm - This segment requires you to tap the birds as they fly by. Each will play a note of a children's song. If you don't start on the first bird, it does not work well though and you don't complete the song before running out of birds and the rhythm is off. The little ones like it though.
• Memory - The screen is outer space with three planets. The planets are different solfege pitches which plays a melody. You are supposed to remember the melody and tap it back (sort of like the old Simon game). The problem with this portion is that the pitches are not played in relation to the scale. For instance, it may play Do, Mi, Mi. The pitches sound correct, but the Do planet looks higher than Mi planet on the screen. Additionally, Do is on the right side of the screen and Mi is on the left side of the screen.
• Notes - Notes are shown on the treble staff and you can manipulate them to change the melody or you can tap the notes to play what is already on the staff. This looks to be the most useful portion of this app for use in the classroom.
• Instruments - Children can tap on different instruments to make them play while children's songs play. There are egg shakers, maracas, cymbals, snare drum, triangle, and a squeaky rubber duck. You could use this to have kids demonstrate the beat of the song.

This isn't the most musically accurate app for teaching about music, but my three-year-old girls like to play around with it. I can see possibilities of using the Notes portion with primary students. I would probably avoid using the other areas of the app in the classroom for the reasons I listed above.

Monster Chorus iPad App

I was looking for a couple new iPad apps for my girls to use and Monster Chorus was suggested to me by my friend, Anne Lyon. The app costs 99 cents. Each monster on the screen plays a different note of the scale. You can create your own melodies or play several traditional songs with the help of the app. It's cute. I see some possibilities for the classroom. I think I will call the monsters Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, and High Do. My K/1 kids will be able to play some S-M-L melodies we learn in class.

Seating Chart App

For those music teachers with iPads or iPhones, here is a good seating chart app. It's called Smart Seat.

This is about the coolest thing since sliced bread. I've played with it and there are only two features I can think of that would make it any better:

1. The ability to export records to email for a whole class at a time rather than just individual students.

2. The ability to tell the random chooser to only choose students once before repeating.

I've looked at several of these types of apps and this is by far the best. It's worth the $3.99. I'll still use my Teacher's Pick (popsicle stick) app for choosing turns, but this is wonderful for seating arrangements.

iPad Apps

Here are a couple of iPad apps I learned about today. They look really cool and I'm anxious to try them out in the classroom.

Finger Stomp: The app is $1.99, but there is a lite version of the iPhone app you can try out first. The app uses Stomp-like items to create sounds. You can create your own rhythms and record them.

Singing Fingers :This is a free app. Just touch the screen while you are making sound and watch the paint appear. Touch it again to hear what you just painted. There is a YouTube video you can watch to see what it's all about.