Music sites offer kids information about composers, conductors, and musical instruments, while providing them with opportunities to see, hear, play, and compose their own music. Included: Nearly three-dozen tuneful sites.
Getting students interested in music is easy with online music sites. The sites cover all musical genres -- from children's music to jazz to classical music -- as well as offering information and resources about musical instruments, composers, compositions, conductors, and more. In addition, most music sites are highly interactive -- virtual music labs where kids can listen to music or create their own.
Arts Alive
Canada's National Arts Centre provides this fascinating site full of unique and useful orchestral music resources for students and teachers. The site includes numerous teaching guides (with worksheets) about such notable composers as Mozart, Beethoven, Vivaldi and Schubert, sound files of "virtual" instruments, video clips of orchestra performances, information about the people and instruments responsible for orchestral music, and much more.
Creating Music
Morton Subotnick's Creating Music is an engaging interactive site where kids of all ages can explore and create music. The site's Musical Sketch Pads and Rhythm Band areas allow kids to "sketch," edit, and listen to original musical compositions, while Playing with Music, Melodic Contours, and Cartoon Conductor provide opportunities for manipulating the compositions of others. The site also includes areas where children can solve musical puzzles and experiment with performing music. (Requires Shockwave.)
DW 3 Classical Music Resources
Duke University's DW3 Classical Music Resources provides scores of information and well-chosen links related to classical music. Visitors can learn about and listen to the full range of classical instruments, discover composers from a variety of historical periods, and access more than 40 databases covering every aspect of music, including MIDI files and photo collections.
Jazz in America
Maintained by the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, Jazz in America provides lesson plans (eight each for grades 8 and 11, with a promise of grade 5 lesson plans to come) tracing the development of jazz as a part of the American music culture. Each lesson includes goals and objectives, standards, background information, instructional activities, and assessments. In addition, the site's resource library includes a timeline and glossary, photographs, audio clips, a list of important "firsts," information on selected artists, style sheets, and a history of jazz education.
SFS Kids: Fun with Music
This San Francisco Symphony site for kids offers a clickable map of an orchestra linked to information about the categories of orchestral instruments and the individual instruments within each category. A 360-degree view of each instrument (click the arrows to spin the instrument) is included. In the Music Lab, kids will find a basic introduction to musical notes, as well as a more advanced study of tempo, pitch, and harmony, and more. Visitors can experiment with the sites and sounds by playing a tune, composing their own music, or listening to others'musical compositions.
For even more great music sites, visit Education World's Site Reviews Archives.
Article by Hazel Jobe
Education World®
Copyright © 2004 Education World
05/19/2004
Links Updated 03/01/2007
|
