Instrument Families- Web Diagram Activity

Diagram-Instrument Families I recently created a poster board with the Inspiration program. I entitled the learning board "Instrument Families" as my main objective to cover. This particular standard is covered in the first grade edition of the Tennessee General Music Standards. Each of the four families entitled "Brass", "Woodwinds", "Percussion" and "Strings" have four instrument examples included as examples of each family. The "Percussion" family includes instruments such as the bass drum, cymbals, gong, and snare drum. Members of the "Strings" family include the cello, violin, viola, and bass. Some members of the brass instrument family include the tuba, trumpet, trombone, and the french horn. Finally, members of the woodwinds family are the clarinet, oboe, bassoon, and the flute. I also included pictures of each of these instruments for easy identification on a poster board or as a handout. What went well: It was fairly easy to come up with a topic because I have an extensive background in intrumental studies and I thought this would be the simplest way to make a story board that was not cluttered and easy to read. I had a seamless transfer of the pictures I had gathered to the Inspiration software by using the insert graphic tool.It was really easy to attach notes about each of the instrument families to the sub-categories Woodwinds, Brass, Percussion, and Strings. It was also really easy to make the main category "Instrument Families" into a hyperlink I found at a website that is extra student friendly for first graders to learn more about the different instruments and their families. What did not go well: It was a bit confusing to figure out what each of the tool's function was at the bottom of the Inspiration software. I had a little trouble making a text box and putting my State Standards and NET-T standards inside the box. I origianally had to draw a text box, but it wouldn't let me put a border around it until I clicked the rectangle on the tool bar and created another box to put my information in. I also had to make my project a little smaller in size so that it would fit on a poster board which was a little tricky. Dr. O'Bannon helped me with the formatting of the differentiation in shapes of my sub-headings as well. What could have gone better: I believe that if I had origianlly set my font size, color and shape of my different headings and size of my over all project by using the ruler I would not have had to go back in the program and change all of these minor details. Overall, I was very pleased with this software and I know it will come in handy for me in the General Music classroom. I am happy that I was introduced to this creative program.

Scavenger Hunt for Art on the UT Knoxville Campus

Caitlin Hammer and I were recently given the opportunity to take part in a scavenger hunt to find art in many different lines in nature on the University of Tennessee campus here in Knoxville. What went well-We found many different examples of the various types of lines in park benches, windows, road markings, trees, railings, and on the cement pavement. We ended up not having a problem with collecting pictures of our examples and we were ready to upload them to the computer in our classroom in about 30 minutes. Caitlin uploaded the pictures to her email and she sent them to me via email, and my task was to upload the pictures to Picasa web albums and make a slideshow out of the pictures with descriptive captions describing what we had discovered. What did not go well- When I uploaded the pictures to my desktop I named them with the first letter of the title capitalized before realizing that all of the titles needed to be lowercase. So I went ahead and added them to Picasa but then I had to go back and change the titles of the pictures to lower case so that they were in the proper format for the assignment. What we could have changed- Other than the title mess up there wasn't anything that I thought we could have changed to make the project better. It was a fun experience and I'd love to do another scavenger hunt in the future. How will I use this in my classroom- I plan to use the Picasa web albums as I will take pictures of my choirs at their performances and concerts and make them into a slideshow and make them visible at parent teacher conferences and open houses for parents to see their children in action on the stage. I will also take pictures when we are on tour and make slideshows for my students to have as well. Picasa web album: Slideshow Google Presentation

Scavenger Hunt- Art on the UT Knoxville campus

Me & UT!! :)

Scavenger Hunt