Reply To: iPads in K-2 General music

[nafmeadmin]

Wow, this is a tricky question! I polled the Council for General Music membership and none of us have run into this issue before. A mutual colleague did offer some ideas here:

From David T.:
My favorite program is GarageBand for the iPad. For digital instruments and loops as well as composition. I’d have any saved work pushed to a cloud or shared drive, and you’d probably just have to teach the kids to reset the apps, but they learn fast! With only seven, they would obviously be for small group work and can be used as part of student compositions with multiple elements…percussion, movement, speech, etc… Or taking turns on TuneOut, Marimba or iTablas as virtual instruments. Other uses of the iPad could be outside strictly music and for a broader scope – Using visual programs like Delerium to respond to music or to inspire or guide movement or musical improvisation. Sock Puppets for creating digital puppet show performances. Singing Fingers for vocal exploration and playback manipulation. Poetry magnets for building speech pieces or poems for insertion into creative music and or music forms. Lots of options… Most if which haven’t been invented yet. 🙂

I have successfully used GarageBand for composition with loops myself and it is easy enough for the littles. I will post more if I get any more leads! Hope this helps a bit or maybe leads you down a new path of experimentation!
~Sarah B., Council for General Music Chair