making and creating

by

Music as an option – GarageBand

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/app-reviews/garageband

 

 

Garage Band is an app that is primarily through Apple apps. There is the ability to download on PC’s but may take downloading other apps.

 

This site is amazing in letting students from the age of 8 onwards to compose their own music using digital technologies.

 

Digital technologies and music can be linked to literacy and maths. Maths can be aligned with music in numerous ways. Structure, patterns etc.

 

For example:

Learning notation in music reading is understanding fractions. The whole note is the whole, half is the half, a quarter is a quarter and on and on.  I have used this diagram below as well as a simple pie cut into pieces. Kids get it. If you put the pieces on the floor and let them manipulate them in real life, the idea of fractions becomes real. They understand the space and proportion.

by

TechRocket

TechRocket

Screen Shot 2016-08-01 at 6.14.48 pm

Subject: Digital Technologies
Year Level: 5/6

Cross Curricular and General Capabilities:

  • Critical and Creative Thinking and Information
  • Communication Technology (ICT)

Strand: Digital Technologies: Process and Production Skills.

Content descriptors:

  • Design solutions to a user interface for a digital system (ACTDIP018)
  • Design, follow and represent diagrammatically, a simple sequence of steps (algorithm), involving branching (decisions) and iteration (repetition) (ACTDIP019)
  • Implement and use simple visual programming environments that include branching (decisions), iteration (repetition) and user input (ACTDIP020)

Website description:

TechRocket is an education website inspired by code.org, helping to introduce students to the idea of “Hour of Code”. TechRocket has a diverse range of courses for students to complete at any year or ability level between the ages of 10-18. This website enables students to complete a variety of courses, lessons and games using a range of coding skills. TechRocket not only offers courses and games about coding, there are courses focusing on game and graphic design too. Each course contains support materials and interactive challenges for students to follow as they reach more complex stages in the coding program. These courses, lessons and games are designed to take one hour to complete and as students form a foundation of their abilities and strengthen their skills from previous levels. Students gain work points as they complete various course levels, the higher the point score the harder the tasks become.

Screen Shot 2016-08-01 at 6.44.58 pm

This resource may be used in the classroom as an extension to the mathematics location and transformation units. Students may use TechRocket games to show characters different formations using a grid reference and describe the characters actions using mathematical language, such as translations, reflections and rotations. This will show students a different visual representation of transformation in mathematics while becoming more competent with their coding skills.

 

Integrated learning areas:

Mathematics:

  • Use a grid reference system to describe locations. Describe routes using landmarks and directional language (ACMMG113)
  • Describe translations, reflections and rotations of two-dimensional shapes. Identify line and rotational symmetries (ACMMG114)