This course is a creative, hands-on exploration of contemporary and historical approaches to live electronics performance and improvisation, including basic analog instrument design, computer synthesis programming, and hardware and software interface design.

Children are inherently musical. They respond to music and learn through music. Music expresses children’s identity and heritage, teaches them to belong to a culture, and develops their cognitive well-being and inner self worth. As professional instructors, childcare workers, or students looking forward to a career working with children, we should continuously search for ways to tap into children’s natural reservoir of enthusiasm for singing, moving and experimenting with instruments. But how, you might ask? What music is appropriate for the children I’m working with? How can music help inspire a well-rounded child? How do I reach and teach children musically? Most importantly perhaps, how can I incorporate music into a curriculum that marginalizes the arts?

This book explores a holistic, artistic, and integrated approach to understanding the developmental connections between music and children. This book guides professionals to work through music, harnessing the processes that underlie music learning, and outlining developmentally appropriate methods to understand the role of music in children’s lives through play, games, creativity, and movement. Additionally, the book explores ways of applying music-making to benefit the whole child, i.e., socially, emotionally, physically, cognitively, and linguistically.

Students' understanding of how robotic touch sensors work is reinforced through a hands-on design challenge involving LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT intelligent bricks, motors and touch sensors. They learn programming skills and logic design in parallel as they program robot computers to play sounds and rotate a wheel when a touch sensor is pressed, and then produce different responses if a different touch sensor is activated. Students see first-hand how robots can take input from sensors and use it to make decisions to move as programmed, including simultaneously moving a motor and playing music. A PowerPoint® presentation and pre/post quizzes are provided.

Focuses on musical traditions of West Africa. A variety of musical practices and their cultural contexts are explored through listening, reading and written assignments with an emphasis on class discussion. Subject includes in-class instruction in Senegalese drumming, song and dance, as well as live lecture-demonstrations by guest performers from throughout West Africa. This course is an introduction to selected musical traditions of West Africa. A variety of musical practices and their cultural contexts will be explored through listening, reading, and written assignments, with an emphasis on class discussion. The course includes in-class instruction in West African drumming, song and dance, as well as lecture-demonstrations by guest artists. After an introductory unit, the course will be organized around four main geographical areas: Senegal, Mali, Ghana, and Nigeria. An in-depth study of music from these countries will be interspersed with brief overviews of Southern, Central, and East Africa.

This lesson traces the long history of how African Americans have used music as a vehicle for communicating beliefs, aspirations, observations, joys, despair, resistance, and more across U.S. history. Lesson includes objectives and standards, sample lyrics, lesson plan, assessment and extension activities.

Physics for Future Presidents Spring, 2006. The title is serious. The official designation is Physics 10 and is sometimes called qualitative physics -- but this is not trivial physics. You will be learning material that is generally not learned by the physicist until after earning a Ph.D. After every lecture, you should come away with the feeling that what was just covered is important for every world leader to know. Topics covered may vary and may include energy and conservation, radioactivity, nuclear physics, the Theory of Relativity, lasers, explosions, earthquakes, superconductors, and quantum physics.

In this lesson, students will learn about the tribes in the state of Wisconsin and how they celebrate the social gathering of the powwow. Students will view videos of powwow related to the tribes that are close by, or who's land their school is on. Students will also read the book Bowwow Powwow by Brenda Child.

This resource is used to help students connect with literature through music. Students are able to connect with children's books and music to make meaningful connections. Students use technology to create their own songs to interpret their comprehension of books. 

Percussionist Steven Angel has developed an innovative program that uses rhythm to help struggling students improve their reading fluency and comprehension. Deceptively simple -- a facilitator taps out a basic rhythm while students read aloud -- the method relaxes students, helps them focus, and is effective in after-school intervention programs as well as traditional classrooms.

In this video segment from Between the Lions, Sloppy Pop's song Read the Signs spotlights the letters and words we see on signs every day, encouraging children to be aware of print in their environment.

In this video segment from Between the Lions, country music stars Patty Loveless and Buddy Jewel perform a kid-friendly song that spotlights some of the important reasons to read.

This video segment from Between the Lions features a motivating, kid-friendly song that celebrates the reasons to write in everyday life.

Richard Hildner Armacanqui and Juan Tomás Martínez are two musicians based in Madison, Wisconsin who weave together their experiences, travels, and cultures to make their eclectic music.

This resource is part of Re/sound: Songs of Wisconsin; a collection of educational media resources from PBS Wisconsin Education and Wisconsin School Music Association. These resources can be used to explore connections between music, identities, cultures, and emotions. The collection includes video interviews with Wisconsin musicians, performances, audio files, and educator guides designed to help activate the media with learners in grades 4-8.

This video segment from Between the Lions presents an animated rhyming song to help tune the listener's ear to language sounds, and it incorporates strategies for building vocabulary and fluency in reading.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the early history of Rock and Roll music. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

Students work as if they are electrical engineers to program a keyboard to play different audible tones depending on where a sensor is pressed. They construct the keyboard from a soft potentiometer, an Arduino capable board, and a small speaker. The soft potentiometer “keyboard” responds to the pressure of touch on its eight “keys” (C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C) and feeds an input signal to the Arduino-capable board. Each group programs a board to take the input and send an output signal to the speaker to produce a tone that is dependent on the input signal—that is, which “key” is pressed. After the keyboard is working, students play "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and (if time allows) modify the code so that different keys or a different number of notes can be played.

In this video segment from EGG: the arts show, learn about the Gullah/Geechee culture of Sapelo Island.

This site invites children of all ages to explore the science of music through movies, questions, and online exhibits. Compose, mix, and play with music in ways you probably haven't before. Find out what makes sad music sad, why some songs get stuck in your head, and how opera singers are able to sing notes that seem to last forever.

Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.
Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create and share Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.

Students work with partners to create four different instruments to investigate the frequency of the sounds they make. Teams may choose to make a shoebox guitar, water-glass xylophone, straw panpipe or a soda bottle organ (or all four!). Conduct this activity in conjunction with Lesson 3 of the Sound and Light unit.