Living Sky Band and Music Programs

I found this very interesting video of a performance artist and software engineer. He has created technology to link what he draws to sound and creates a performance for us. I could see how this might lead to other listening and drawing activities with students. To turn it around – draw what you hear.

Click this link to the video.

If anyone tries this out with students could you let us know how it goes for you?

St. John’s Music has provided me with some information about purchasing an African Drum Class set, which could be loaned out through the division on a rotating basis. Here is what Nadine wrote:

Below is a list of the complete world percussion kit.  It sells for $5139.95

Package C PPWMDCCC
3-10″, 5-12″, and 3-14″ tunable tubanos; 1-12″ tunable djembe; 2 talking
drums; 2 talking drum mallets; 2-16″ pre-tuned hand drums; 2 pre-tuned
bongos; 6 Senor Kelly shakers; 2 guiros; 2 pairs of claves; 2 pairs of
maracas; 1 medium and 1 large gongokui; 2 shekeres; 2 cowbells; 1 World
Music Drumming classroom instruction kit and 1 standing Ngoma leaders drum.

If you would like more detail on particular types of drums listed you can go to www.remo.com to the products section and then select world percussion.

This is the same package we have sold to other divisions and they have given very positive feedback on it.  It is generally a good size for most school classes. It also includes the instruction kit which incorporates the use of the entire kit in one class.

So what do you think? We received an increase to the instrument purchase fund this year (we now have $12,000) and we could buy a kit and still have about half left to help those of you in need of new instruments (including those schools who get mouthpieces this time).   Keep in mind that the drum set would be good for those schools who do not have a band specialist as well. We would include teacher materials as well. I’d love to hear your thoughts – please leave a comment here.

October 22

This is a division-wide day and we will all be together at NBCHS. There are two sessions planned for Arts Education teachers – hope to see you all there! Does anyone have ideas or projects to share that day? Paul will be presenting on Musical Mud with Marg Parkinson and Crystal Needham (thanks Paul).

10:30am – 12:00pm “Arts Collaboration” in the Middle/Senior schools

Sharing exciting projects in the division (ie: “Musical Mud” and others)

Brainstorming ideas

Exploring with mixed media, arts integration

1:00pm – 3:00pm “Arts Collaboration” Projects from the Resource Box

Focus on K to 5, but easily applicable to older grades

Sharing exciting projects (ie: “Wild Things” and others)

Brainstorming ideas connected to the resource box

Exploring with mixed media, music, drama and dance

October 30 & 31st

Artist in the Classroom

Don’t forget to sign up for one of the Artists in the Classroom projects (your principal and Arts Alive rep have the info if you’ve not yet seen it). You might want to go join Scott Leithead (and an African intern) doing Choral work in Kerrobert. He has an amazing choir out of Edmonton “Kokopelli” and does a lot of work with exchanges to Africa. There are other artists too – you can even go outside of your field for something new if you like. Go to our wiki site for a full write up and click on “Artist in the Classroom”. Don’t miss it and book your days now and send your registration form in to me.

(By the way – this is considered Institutional PD and does not come out of your personal PD budget.)

November 26

Kevin Junk has agreed to come to Lawrence that afternoon for our PLC time. He will be going over instrument repairs and he wants you to bring some instruments with you to work on during the afternoon. Thanks for hosting us Barb!

Band & Music teachers came together today to learn about many exciting and interesting resources available online. We all learned how to blog, created a blog for our school and learned how to save resources to del.iou.us, so that we can share our bookmarks. We got a lot accomplished in 2.5 hours!

Please remember to “tag” your bookmarks with lskyb (in addition to other descriptors) so that we know how to find what we want to share.

You will see on the right sidebar a list of the school blogs created in the workshop. Check out what each school is up to and be sure to comment when you see something cool! Have fun blogging and let’s see what we can create.

Note* can each of you please also add a link back to this page as well at “bandteachers.edublogs.org”

What a modern world we live in … podcasts, video, creating music, listening to music, connecting the arts, teaching ideas and advocacy for the Arts are all available to us through an online environment. Will this stop us from sharing and talking in person? Most certainly not! But it will provide an opportunity for resources sharing at a higher level, and it might just become another form of support to teachers who live and work outside of North Battleford.

I hope you find the resources here useful (bookmarks on the right sidebar will be updated regularly) and I look forward to seeing the cool sites you are able to share as well. It is exciting to know that we can share what is happening in our classrooms with one another, with parents and with the community – one more avenue to celebrate the Arts Alive in our division!

Sherron Burns
Arts Education Consultant