Use of Wii Music In Classrooms Appears To Be Growing

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A few months ago I wrote a few articles (including one that ran in MENC Teaching Music Magazine) about the topic of using technology and software to teach educational concepts in music class. In particular I mentioned a little game called Wii Music that I have been personally fascinated by in how easily it seems to grab the attention of students of all elementary school ages. While it is not a purely educational game it is still very useful in music class. I and many others around the world have tried using it in some form or another with our young students and I have to say in most cases it has been a very good experience.

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What Do You Want To Read About On MusicEdMagic?

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MusicEdMagic is three years old now and has matured nicely into something that I hope is of use to the many hundreds of people that read the newsletter each week and the many thousands more that visit on a regular basis.  Three years though is a long time, and I admit that from time to time I have written articles for the site that may have been less useful than I would have liked.  My new year's resolution is to try to get back to the basics in terms of what I personally write about on the site.  MusicEdMagic started as a place for me to force myself to learn new things that would help me in my classroom and then write about them so that others could benefit.  Although I never really lost sight of that goal I am now going to work very hard to get the train back on that solid, straight track to the future.  The problem is, after three years I find myself wondering what the readers of this site actually want to hear about.  To that end, I am throwing this out to all of MusicEdMagic's readership:

What do you want to learn about today?

Please communicate with me, either by the comment forms found at the bottom of each page or by email using the Contact The Webmaster form. If you have an idea that you personally are an expert on maybe you would like to share your knowledge with the rest of the world through this venue?  I am constantly looking for new authors and music teachers that just want to make a difference and help out our community as a whole.  Send me an article you have written or perhaps an old research paper that is sitting on your shelf collecting dust.  We'll put it up online and let it help others to improve themselves as educators.  I have always wanted MusicEdMagic to be a community effort, and it is my goal that in the future it will grow to be the best music education community on the Internet.  Let me know what you think!  I am looking forward to hearing from you!

Off-Topic- NASA's New Rover to Roll In Obama's Inaugural Parade

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Written by Chad Criswell

This is WAY off topic but it's also very cool so I am going to post it anyway.  Take a look below (or Read More...) to see an embedded video of NASA's new lunar rover that will be serving as the finale of Obama's inaugural parade next Tuesday. 

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Online Music Notation Editor- NoteFlight

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Written by Chad Criswell

I have long been searching for a music notation editor that could be used online not only for me to use when not able to get to a copy of Finale or Sibelius, but also to use as a collaborative tool in the same vein as many other music oriented Web 2.0 applications.  Now there is finally a solution for creating and embedding music notation in a blog or in a web page without the need for dealing with creating scores in Sibelius and uploading the Scorch files or doing screen captures or PDF's of Finale documents.  Enter Noteflight, a new online music notation editor that looks great and makes it much easier to collaborate online.

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