PowerPoint Picture Books

This is related to my previous post. I happened upon a site of picture books in PowerPoint format. Most range in price from $1-2. I'm not really sure how this is legal, but there are some good books on the site.

Update: I just received email from the company that offers these powerpoints. They have permission to create/sell a certain number of powerpoints for each title. That's why some books are listed as unavailable. They have to request permission to make more copies. I'm relieved to hear that they are going through the proper channels to do this.

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.

Planning ahead with Music Express

I've mentioned Music K-8 Magazine before which is really my favorite elementary education periodical. However, I also get John Jacobson's Music Express Magazine. I like this magazine for different reasons than I like Music K-8. My favorite parts of this magazine are the listening maps and the pop songs. The kids love the pop songs, so it's nice to have someone else figure out which ones are kid-appropriate. Last year I discovered that the Music Express website lists the songs and activities that will be in the future issues. You can access this year's sneak peek here. I love that feature. It really helps me with planning, especially if I think I might want to program one of the pop songs for our spring concert. This year I subscribed to the electronic version of the student magazine which will save me from having to scan the listening map to be able to project it. I also like that it won't take as much room to store. We'll see if I like it as well. The drawback to this magazine is that it is so expensive and that makes it not accessible to some schools. I'm very fortunate that our music booster organization, Friends of Music, makes this purchase for me each year.

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.

SMARTboard Gallery Collections

I'm preparing to do some SMARTboard training at our teacher inservices in a couple of weeks. While I was looking for some links to include in my presentation, I found some Gallery Collections that were of interest to me for my music classes. Hopefully some of you will find them useful too. These Gallery Collections include some items that aren't in the Gallery Essentials that installed with your Notebook software.


Music Pages - This is a gallery Collection of pages that are helpful. This includes a blank staff on a page, as well as a grand staff on a page, and a fun Note name game featuring Ricci Addams musictheory.net note trainer. (description from the SMART Exchange site). This is only 3 pages and the Note Game looks fun, but I wonder if it is only useable on the 800-series boards the way it is in the file. You could 
just delete one of the sides if your board can only have one user at a time.


Notes, Clefs, and Staves - This is a gallery collection that includes blank staff, clefs, and notes for use. (description from the SMART Exchange site). There are a couple of items that I didn't already have. Some items are repeats, however.


There is also a Circle of Fourths (which I've always called the Circle of Fifths) collection. I didn't download it because it's not something I teach in my classes.


If you go to the SMART Exchange and do a search, you will also be able to find a Holidays Gallery,  a Celebrations Gallery, Friendship Gallery, Winter Images Gallery, Spring Images Gallery and possibly more that would be of interest to you.


Simply download the files and click on them to open them. They will automatically be added to your "My Content" file in the Gallery of SMART Notebook.

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