If you are looking for a very large collection of on-line education games, Primary Games Arena has to be one of the largest I have ever seen. It is a compilation of hundreds of Flash based education games about Math, English, Science, Physical Education, Music, Spanish, German, French, Religion Education, ICT, History, Geography, Art and Design, Citizenship and Technology. All the games are also sorted by grade levels (based on the UK educational system) or game types. The games are not necessarily hosted by the Primary Games Arena, but they link to only kids-appropriate games. The API let game developers feed scores from their games straight onto Primary Games Arena. I strongly recommend this site if your students need to learn while playing.
Archive for the Category ◊ Music ◊
If you are teaching music, especially violin, “Printable Violin Scales and Music” is a free resource that will certainly be useful to you. It includes a collection of scales and a few pieces of music written by violin teachers for their students. You can reproduce them for use in your classroom, as long you don’t use them commercially. You also need to make sure that you include the author’s name and copyright information when you distribute them to your students. All the music sheets are in PDF format.
Are you a music teacher and wanting your students to practice reading music sheets? If you are, the “Violin Music Flashcards” will be a great resource for you and your students. The cards are a collection of multiple-choice questions and you can you choose what clef will be used to produce questions: G-Clef, C-Clef and B-Clef. This little web app will also keep track of the score as the student answers questions.
Educational Videos dot com is a site devoted to finding you the best educational videos on the web. It includes a collection of videos about arts, science, environment, geology, health, history, language, mathematics, music, psychology, sports and technology. They are only few videos available in each category right now, but the number is growing. Even though the videos are already available on YouTube and they are simply embedded on this website, they are better organized on this website for use by educators. The videos are intended for students of all ages.
This website from BBC is designed to help students (7-11 year olds) to explore basic musical concepts in sound, rhythm and mood. As the pupils work their way through the site, they gain valuable listening, composing and musical interpretation skills. The site offers eight activities and a series of supporting worksheets, that can either be used in the classroom, or given as an extension activity for homework. The students can choose from four different themed units to work if they prefer to do so: Sound; Rhythm; Mood; Orchestra. There’s also an online quiz giving students the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learnt. Good graphics and sound.
Very funny website where students just roll over the different instruments to make music. They have to move their mouse over the Aliens drums, cymbals, horns and keyboards to hear them play. They can also hear what they have created by clicking on ‘Drum Loops’ and then drag the different instruments down onto the squares at the bottom of the page. By pressing ‘Play’ they can hear the piece they have created. The 16 squares represent the 16th notes of a bar of 4/4 music. As it is an interactive site the children can leave their comments and experiences.
“Fun with Music” is a great website produced by the San Francisco Symphony to get your students in elementary school interested in learning music. It has a great visual Flash interface. In addition to explaining the concepts such as tempo, rhythm, pitch, harmony, symbols and instrumentations, the student can actually experiment with them. In the activity about symbols, the student can add symbols to a score of music and then listen to the music being played to hear the effect. There is also a “radio” where the student can hear classical music. Obviously, there is a bit of “publicity” on the site as the concerts and activities of the SFS are listed in the section called “What’s up at the Symphony?”
If you are presenting the great composers to your students in your music class, this website about Ludwig Van Beethoven is all you need. Students will find mp3 and midi files with Beethoven’s music. There is also Beethoven’s family tree. There are also some copies of love letters sent by Beethoven. A section containing anecdotes is called “curiosities” and includes interesting facts such as the two Voyagers space probes traveling with a recording of Beethoven’s music. There is also a list of shows for the current month including radio and TV stations. A “school” section will guide the students to the most important parts of the website.
Treble Clef and Bass Clef is a very cool program to teach your students, in a fun and easy way, how to read music notes on the staff in both treble clef and bass clef. It is a shareware, which means you can download a demo version, but you will not be able to access all the notes. You can pay a small fee to access the other notes. This program works well with Windows Vista, XP, Me, 98, 95, NT or 2000, but doesn’t work under Mac OS X. This program is part of a collection of programs to learn music through games published by Happy Note!
When the program starts, the student may choose the notes that he or she wants to practice. At first, the student can start with only two notes and gradually add more notes. It is also possible to choose the speed of the game: adagio (the slowest), moderato (average speed) and allegro (full speed). The notes appear on the staff and the student must recognize each note. He or she then needs to select the proper name of the note and then shoot a projectile on the note. If it is a miss, the projectile may come back and make him loose one live. There are also explosives that must be avoided. At full speed, the scrolling of notes and the presence of projectiles and explosives make the game very interesting and enjoyable. It is a challenge to complete each level. The student really has the impression of playing a game rather than learning notes. It is possible to either use syllabic names for notes (Do, Re, Mi, etc.) or alphabetical (A, B, C, etc.)
