Greetings Dr. Repp!

My name is Christopher Michaud and I teach music at Nebo Elementary in
Paulding County, Georgia. I am a member of GMEA and I read your
article in the Fall 2005 Georgia Music News.

I want to thank you for your article and support for music technology.
The links to the TI:ME website provided some very useful websites that
provide drill and skill type activities for rhythm and pitch that I
have been looking for. I plan to use these with my students.

You asked in your article for teachers to share their experiences with
technology in the classroom. I have worked with music technology
throughout my career and wanted to share some of the activities I
do in my elementary music classes. Because technology equipment is
scarce, I often use the "older" cast off computers and free/inexpensive
software options for my classroom. Some of my ideas may seem mundane -
but we all start somewhere!

I divide my use of technology into two main areas:

1. Teacher use for presentation or demonstration of musical concepts.

2. Student drill, creativity, or exploration.

In the first area, I use a computer (standard school district cast off
PC with Windows 2000) and an LCD projector to project lyrics,
music, and PowerPoints to my classes. I find the use of the projector
holds the
student's attention more than posters or transparencies. While I
have a class set of textbooks - scanning pages of text into the computer
and
using PowerPoint to show pages reduces the need to pass out books and
improves singing and posture.

In addition to the projection system, I use the Windows Wav file
recorder and Windows Media Player to record and playback individual
student singing. With Windows Media Player I set the visualization to
scope and we have done lessons on timbre and pitch while studying the
shape, frequency, and amplitude of sound waves.

I also use Finale's free notation software "Notepad" for pitch and
rhythmic demonstrations.

The entire computer and LCD projection system is connected to the room
sound system for playback.

For music playback in class I replaced the usual array of CD's with
one Flash USB memory stick plugged into the School PC. Again, with
Windows Media Player I access the music on the memory stick. The
advantage
here is that I have the entire library of class music in one place.
While
there are MP3 players and the IPod designed for music storage and
playback, I find using the simple memory stick provides an inexpensive
way to store music and playback on most computers. (I have used
Windows, Mac, and Linux for music playback)

In the area of student creativity I use mainly the sound recording
programs and Finale Notepad. My 4th and 5th graders currently are
working on a composing project where they write 4 measure patterns in
duple meter and then they transfer these files to Notepad and select
instrumental sounds for playback. My goal is to record these student
compositions on CD for my students to have.

For student drill and skill, I have the students use several websites
that feature Flash type games that drill students on note values,
pitch, and rhythm. I have also had students use the Internet for
research on composers for group projects.

Like most systems in Georgia, money is scarce for computers and
software. I have built my class room music systems using cast-off
computers and software already built into Windows/Mac and freeware
such as Finale Notepad.

Therefore, what and where would I like to see us go with technology
and music? What I would like to see is an exploration of open source
technology and software for the music classroom. I currently run
Linux (a Debian form) on most of my machines and the open source
software
lets me equip more student computers for much less money. I run the
open
source software equivalent to Internet Explorer, PowerPoint, Word,
Sound recording, and CD burning. What I have not found yet is a good
open
source version of a notation/sequencing program like Finale Notepad?
Will Coda music put out a version of Notepad for Linux? Are there
open source software versions for notation/sequence programs.

Thank you again for your support of Technology. I look forward to the
workshops at the GMEA convention.