Light the Music empowers educators to ignite student creativity and collaboration. Using a digital audio workstation, students learn about the fundamentals of music while creating their own music that is authentic, relevant, and meaningful to them.
Light the Music provides a curriculum aligned with the creating strand of the National Core Arts Standards. As students are introduced to the technology tools, they create an artist’s profile to guide their work throughout the curriculum. Students then learn about the elements that make up a piece of music; rhythm, chords, bass, and melody. They learn concepts by recreating and remixing, then use that knowledge to create something new. In each lesson, students share their work with classmates to give and receive feedback that is kind, specific, honest, and helpful.
The Light the Music curriculum comprises 8 units and 26 lessons, containing tutorial videos, templates, resources, and slides to make teaching easy. In each lesson, students learn, practice, and apply new skills. The curriculum offers a scaffolded structure for teachers to sequence lessons, yet contains enough flexibility for students to get support or dive deeper when desired. Students will work towards creating their own piece of music and a video to go along with it. At the conclusion of the 8 units, students share their work in a final showcase.
Light the Music is ideal for students in sixth through twelfth grade general **music, music technology, music appreciation, or any other music courses where student creativity is a goal. Additional stand-alone lesson plans for teachers looking for a one-time project are also available. If you’d like to learn more, check out www.lightthemusic.com.
As you can imagine, running a blog and podcast isn’t free. Costs of tools and hosting fees are monthly investments, not to mention the countless hours it takes to edit, publish, find guests, and other logistics.
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">Backstage Access patrons get access to an early-access podcast feed with bonus discussion. Ooooooh…. look at that pretty alternate artwork.</p></div>
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As public school teaching and private teaching are already far greater responsibilities in my life, this site has remained largely a hobby project to share the tools and strategies that help me manage my actual job, which is performing and teaching.
This past year, COVID forced me to be home more often and I felt a great need to share more of my experience with technology during a year where people needed it. I bumped up my average publishing to two episodes a month and a few blog posts.
I’d like to maintain that pace into the future and continue to produce deep, high quality content, that helps both teachers who are new to technology and those who are looking for more out of it.
All supporters get a video update once a month which is kind of like an extended version of the Tech Tip/Apps/Albums of the week segments of my podcast. All supporters also get invited to the Music Ed Tech Talk Discord community. All you need is a Discord account and then you can join other patrons and guests to talk about tech, music, pedagogy, lesson ideas, hardware, tech support, and more.
There has already been some lively discussion there. I hope you will join in on the fun!
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">The Music Ed Tech Talk Discord community is a place you can talk with me and others about all things music, teching, technology, and more.</p></div>
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Tyler S. Grant joins the show to talk about teaching band in a hybrid learning model, composing music, and the tools and habits that help him find balance between the two.
Robby's cohost from The Class Nerd podcast, Craig McClellan, returns to talk about recent smart home and Apple purchases, speakers with digital assistants, technology and music we are thankful for.
Sponsor Music Ed Tech Talk! Do you have a product or service related to music or technology that you would love to get in front of music educators? Reach out to me on my Contact page to learn more about advertising on my site and this podcast.
Use code THANKFUL at checkout to buy anything on my Store for $10 off! This puts my Scale Exercise Play-Along Tracks at only $5!
Do you have a product, app, or service that you would like to promote?
I am now offering sponsorships for the blog and podcast! A sponsorship includes…
An ad pinned to the sidebar of this blog (my thanks to this month’s sponsor, Flat for Education!)
A blog post about your product in my feed. You can provide the copy. If you wish, I can test your product and add some of my own experiences to the post.
An ad read on one episode of my podcast. Again, you provide the copy, but it is read conversationally in the middle of my show, not like a commercial. I speak to my own experiences if I have them.
I am open to all kinds of sponsorships. The audience of the blog and podcast are musicians and educators, often active music teachers, who are generally tech-savvy. Many of them use multiple computing devices, aren’t afraid to try new tech, and are looking for practical ways to engage their students musically.
Naturally, software that enhances the creative and productive lives of musicians and teachers is a good fit but I am open to sponsorships of a much wider variety than just that. Music stores, colleges, fundraisers, books, you name it!
If you want to be a sponsor, or if you want more details, choose Contact in the navigation bar of this site and leave me a message!
And if you don’t have a reason to sponsor the site in this way, but you want to support my continued hosting costs and motivation to keep producing content, check out my Buy Me a Coffee page. I appreciate any and all support!
Music Ed Tech Talk 