This page is a reference document for a presentation given at the Iowa Music Educators Conference titled No! You Can't Call It A Hashtag!- Music, Technology, and Teaching Outside the Box by Chad Criswell, Band Director at Southeast Polk Community Schools.
The many music education products and services listed below are those that I have personally used or that I have learned about through my many years of interviewing music teachers for my position as technology writer at NAfME's Teaching Music Magazine. Whenever possible links to the original articles that ran in the magazine have been provided. This page will be kept updated as new apps are added throughout the year.
Make no mistake, by the very nature of being music teachers our classrooms tend to be very noisy places. Whether you teach vocal, band, orchestra, or general music, the number of students that we deal with combined with the equipment that we make use of adds up to a lot of ambient, extraneous noise that students must mentally filter out in order to hear and understand the teacher. For most teachers raising our vocal intensity and projecting more forcefully is a subconscious and automatic method for dealing with this noise. We find ourselves speaking more loudly in order to be heard. Over time however, and under the right circumstances, pushing our voices too hard can cause potentially irreparable harm to the vocal cords that are so vital to our very careers.
Just a friendly seasonal reminder here that I have dozens of different Christmas carols, children's songs, and patriotic standards all arranged for beginners and all available for free from MusicEdMagic. Stop by or feel free to share the link below with your students so they can download whatever they want to play during the holiday season.