This week I was able to explore this exciting new resource Tech EDGE (https://m.youtube.com/user/TechEdge01/videos)! Tech EDGE is a partnership between education programs at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Concordia University in Nebraska and the school districts in Nebraska. This helps the teachers use new technology to teach to thier students and help them understand technology better and become better leaders. I was able to explore many different podcast and discover many different apps that could be helpful in the classroom and also they gave so many helpful videos about how to integrate techonology into the classroom.
The first app that I explored through with the help of Tech EDGE was Curiosity (Curiosity: Daily Facts & Knowledge Discovery by Beacon Solutions, Inc. https://appsto.re/us/W27P7.i). Really this app caught my eye because of the title "Curiosity". I like to think of myself as a very curious person and I feel students are pretty curious in the classroom as well. This app opens a new door to integrating other subjects into the music classroom. This app gives student random facts to spark interest in them and they can even watch videos. If they want and then they can talk about them in class and we can sing songs according to the subjects they thought were interesting and I can talk to a teacher who may teach the subject the students were curious about and we can co-teach lessons according to what is intersting to the students. This app is free.
The second app that I found was this app called Me Tinybop (Me by Tinybop by Tinybop Inc.
https://appsto.re/us/5cyjdb.i). This app is probably one of my new favorite app to play around with. This is an app where the students get to answer questions about themselves in different ways. They can either type, draw, or record into these different sections. Question range from "How old are you?" to "Who is your best friend?". Sometiems students have a hard time trying to understand who they are and how to describe themselves and this is a good way to help them get this point. Further, this app is also great at helping students be able to tell stories and music is stories often. This app, personally will be excellent to use during the first few weeks of school, having the students fill different sections out and then sharing it with partners, table groups, and the class so they can understand who they are and who their classmates are. Especially since music is so personal, it is good to understand how it effects you and others. This app does cost $2.99.
https://appsto.re/us/5cyjdb.i). This app is probably one of my new favorite app to play around with. This is an app where the students get to answer questions about themselves in different ways. They can either type, draw, or record into these different sections. Question range from "How old are you?" to "Who is your best friend?". Sometiems students have a hard time trying to understand who they are and how to describe themselves and this is a good way to help them get this point. Further, this app is also great at helping students be able to tell stories and music is stories often. This app, personally will be excellent to use during the first few weeks of school, having the students fill different sections out and then sharing it with partners, table groups, and the class so they can understand who they are and who their classmates are. Especially since music is so personal, it is good to understand how it effects you and others. This app does cost $2.99.
The final app that I found is called Classcraft. This app was really cool to me because what it does is it creates your class into a game and adds to the fun your class can have. First you set up the game, you can create it for a full year, just a semester, really whatever time amount you want. Once you do this you can then add assignments the students need to do, it can acutally be assignments for a unit or it can be just things such as "put away binder" or "helped a fellow classmate today". This would be useful in the classroom because I could use this app for when students need to fill out solfege or rhythm, which are not so fun of assignments but this way it can become more fun and purposeful. This is a free app.