GarageBand-Jennifer

**How can GarageBand be used to facilitate learning in the classroom?**

 **Connection to Educators **

Technology is advancing faster everyday. Almost anything we do in our daily lives involves technology. Children now days use technology better than us adults and can relate to it better as well. As teachers, we should not ignore this growing love for technology, but rather embrace it and use it to enhance classroom instruction. Students get bored listening to their teacher stand in front of them and talk, and have trouble in certain subjects due to the lack of hands on activities. We as teachers should bring technology into our classrooms to engage our students and give them something worth learning. Who wouldn’t love to learn about our solar system through an online interview with a scientist? Wouldn’t it be cool to take a quiz using our cell phones? Students will be so much more excited about school if we appealed to their interests, one of the biggest being the use of technology.


 * Personal Connection **

When I was young, school was not interesting to me. All my teachers ran a teacher-centered classroom where they stood and lectured to the students, and all the students did was work on worksheets or take tests. Our interests were never considered when it came to planning each lesson. I believe I would have enjoyed school, and gotten a lot more out of it, if it had been directed towards something I could relate to. This is why I think incorporating technology into the classroom is so important tot the success of my future students. All around us we can see kids younger and younger showing more and more experience and knowledge using different technological tools. Knowing the influence technology has on our students, I believe the smartest thing we as teacher can do is to use it to our benefit to help enhance students learning in our classroom.

 **Brief Overview of GarageBand ** GarageBand is software created by Apple that allows users to create music or podcasts. The main purpose of GarageBand is to allow musicians to record, edit and create the own songs. They have the ability to use their own instruments to record their music, or choose from the variety of instruments uploaded in the GarageBand library. GarageBand also allows users to create and export their own podcasts. Users can also add music, morph their voice and incorporate sound effects in order to enhance their podcast.


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Podcasting with GarageBand

GarageBand can be incorporated into the classroom in a number of ways, but the main use in the classroom is creating podcasts. Students and teachers can create podcasts easily using this software and share them with others. Teachers can create podcasts to enhance their instruction, while providing students with a resource that they can refer back to at later dates. Students can use podcasts to enhance presentations, projects or to share information about themselves with others. Creating podcasts allows for students to work cooperatively together to achieve a common goal. Jobs and tasks can be assigned to each member of the group to help promote organization and cooperation within each group.
 * GarageBand in the Classroom **

__//Examples of incorporating GarageBand/Podcasts in the classroom://__
 * Help with an introduction to a unitinstead of reading the introduction from a textbook, teachers can create a podcast to grab students attention and give them an overview to what they are going to learn
 * Help students improve their reading fluencystudents can create podcasts of their reading and then listen to them to evaluate their fluency. Teachers could also listen to them to evaluate them and help with any areas of improvement.
 * Help enhance a presentation or activitya unique way to present information other than with PowerPoint. Students can be creative with adding in photos, graphs and other information to enhance their presentation. Then podcast can be shared for students to revisit later.
 * Enhance their creative writing Students could create a digital story using what they wrote. They could record their story and add drawings or other pictures to create their own personal digital story to share with others.
 * Create study toolsstudents can use the software to create raps or songs that can help them remember information. For example: singing a song about the water cycle to listen to repeatedly or share with friends.
 * Provide students with previously recorded information that can be accessed outside of the classroom

//Pros// ==> Interests and engages students ==> Allows them to return to information later ==> Provides them with a skill that they will probably need to use later ==> Promotes cooperation among students ==> Helps with personal expression ==> Good ice breaking technique

//Cons// ==> Software can be difficult to use ==> Requires school to have Macs—could be too expensive ==> Might not be appropriate for younger grades which could limit its use ==> Students might not have access to computers at home to watch podcasts presented in class

**Useful Resoures** media type="youtube" key="d7a8iVOpgwM" height="344" width="425"

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**This video is an example of students who retold a story through podcasting and digital artwork.**

Improving Reading Fluency Activity

Creating an Educational Rap Song

GarageBand in the Classroom

Unexpected Collaborations using GarageBand

**Annotated Bibliography** 1. Antin, J., Perkel, D., & Sims, C. (2008). Unexpected Collaborations: Kids’ Appropriation of GarageBand as a Group Creative Tool. UC Berkeley: School of Information. Retrieved from http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1f47139s.

This article focuses on a study that was conducted in a couple different art classrooms to see how social interactions between students helped or hindered collaboration efforts. Students were introduced to GarageBand as a means of adding background music to their video productions. What researchers saw was an increased interest in the activity due to the relationship with music as well as an increase in positive student interactions as they help each other in completing the project. This activity was intended to be individualized but as the students progressed through using GarageBand, students were getting ideas from other students to use in their project as well as listening to music other students were exploring and explore it for themselves. This simple activity of exploring music with GarageBand turned into an unstructured, fun, engaging, and collaborative activity. Students were interacting positively with each other and enjoying one another’s music choices. They were bouncing ideas of off one another, and although they were in a noisy environment, they also felt safe in the environment around them. Instead of feeling like they were involved in a structured, rigid assignment, they felt relaxed and uninhibited while still getting educational value out of their activity.

2. Char, L. (2009). Using GarageBand to Motivate Students to Practice. ScholarSpace at University of Hawaii at Manoa. Retrieved from scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/7969

This article focused on a study that wanted to use GarageBand to increase student engagement and motivation in beginning instrumentalists. The teacher wanted students to be self-motivated and self-assess themselves during practice of a new instrument. Students were to practice independently and record their practice sessions on GarageBand. They then would rate their success of practice next to a recording of the whole group performance of a scale or piece of music. The process was supposed to help students notice themselves if they were improving as well as monitor whether or not they stayed on task and motivated during practice sessions. After talking to students after this study, the majority of them reported that they practiced harder because they knew they were going to be recording themselves using GarageBand. The author suggests that further research needs to be completed to prove that GarageBand increases students motivation to get data that will match the outcome, but overall she states that students felt positively about their use of GarageBand and that helped them to develop valuable listening and self-monitoring skills. This was an article that showed how GarageBand was used in a music classroom to increase student’s motivation and involvement in practicing music. Before, they had little desire to improve their music skills because they were just in the class to get an easy grade. After they realized they would be recorded through GarageBand, they increased their motivation to practice because they were using a piece of technology that interested them. Because GarageBand appeals to the new 2.0 generation of students, its use in the music classroom increased their motivation in improving their music skills.

3. Farmer, M. (2008, 17th Nov.). GarageBand in the Elementary Classroom. Message posted to http://cnx.org/content/m18122/latest/

This blog discusses various uses of GarageBand in the classroom. A brief introduction is given on the general uses of GarageBand but GarageBand is mainly used in the classroom for podcasting. Teachers can use podcasting to introduce a new unit to the students in an exciting way as well as record a lesson to present to the students so that they can look back at it at a later date. Students can use podcasts to practice their reading fluency, add some creative to a presentation, present their creative writing or create study tools. The blog continues with the pros and cons of GarageBand. Some pros are that it allows teachers and students to revisit or review information at a later date, introduces students to a new tool that they can use later and podcasts can be viewed and used in classrooms at a variety of age levels. Some of the cons of GarageBand are that it is a complex tool that wouldn’t be appropriate for lower elementary students, students have to have a strong understanding of how to use the program in order to be successful and students may get distracted by all the other features of GarageBand that they might have trouble staying on task. Overall, this blog gives some brief suggestions of how GarageBand can be used in the classroom.

4. Waters, L. (2008). Mash it Up! Using GarageBand to Enhance Second Language Learning. Department of Educational Technology: University of Hawaii at Manoa. Retrieved from etec.hawaii.edu/proceedings/2008/HaslerWaters2008.pdf.

This article discuses the lack of second language education in the American classroom. There are any strategies that can be employed in the classroom to help students with their second language acquisition, but their article mentions that music is one of the most fun and motivating strategies to help students learn a second language. The idea of Web 2.0 technologies to help with language acquisition is important in the classroom because it allows them to embrace cultural diversity and have access to learning language tools. Social networking tools are also available to allow students to connect, share, publish and interact with the world around them. This article suggests allowing students to create musical mash ups using Apple’s software program GarageBand. The project tat was assigned to students required students to use GarageBand to make a mash up while employing the following essential ingredients to successful language acquisition: using music as a learning strategy, connect to the culture of the target language, encourage them to use the target language and have fun by doing so. Students were instructed to use specific vocabulary words and use them to create a song in groups of two or three that would be posted to the class website to be shared with others. This activity helped immensely with the student’s language acquisition because they created meaningful songs using vocabulary that they understood. This article then briefly discuss obstacles that were encountered, like teams not getting along, and how they could overcome these problems. This project was successful overall because it allowed students to engage in second language learning opportunities in motivational, interactive and real life ways.

5. Author Unknown. (2009). What is GarageBand. GarageBand ’09. Retrieved from http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/

This site gives an overview of the tools you can use in GarageBand. GarageBand is your own personal and professional recording studio. It allows you to record your own songs using your own instruments or use the instrument tabs provided in the software to enhance your songs, record your music and edit your singing over it, loop a particular section of your music to continually play, record multiple takes of one section of music and replay it to decide which one you like and mix your music with other beats to create your own unique sounds. GarageBand also has the tools to teach you how to play a particular instrument. It provides some introduction lessons free and more advanced lessons can be purchased for the guitar and piano. Another tool that is available is the ability to learn to play a song, and have the artist of that song teach you through purchasing a lesson online. There are son many uses for GarageBand and it really is a fascinating tool that turns your computer into your at home recording studio!

6. Director Unknown. (2009). Get to know GarageBand. GarageBand ’09. Podcast retrieved from http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/

This is about a five minute video that gives you a visual learning experience and tour of 'the learn to play' tool offered through GarageBand. It specifically centers the tutorial on how to navigate through the ‘learn to play’ tab and ‘lesson store’ tab. It shows you what you can do when you want to learn to play an instrument using GarageBand. Features like slowing down the lesson to follow along with your instrument or skipping around to a particular part of the lesson that you want to practice more are offered. It then talks about the feature of buying a lesson that will teach you to play a song you like. This song is taught by the artist themselves and allows you to watch follow along by watching what notes they are playing. You have the ability to slow down the lesson to make it easier to learn, as well as play along with the artist to feel like a feel musician. This certain feature of GarageBand is very useful because it helps people discover or refine their musical talent and encourages them to expand their knowledge of music on a particular instrument. Again this is mini video that allows teachers to learn more about particular features of GarageBand.

7. Author Unknown. (2006). GarageBand 3: Getting Started. Creating Podcasts in GarageBand. Apple Computers Inc. 80-87. Retrieved from: http://www.det.wa.edu.au/education/cmis/eval/curriculum/ict/podcasts/

This is a instruction manual that discusses all the uses of GarageBand. The specific section highlights is the section on how to create podcasts using this software. It gives you an introduction of what podcasts are and then gives you examples of different podcasts you can make using the programs. Some of the podcasts that can be created through the software are: audio (use sound), enhanced podcast episodes (use sounds and artwork/markers/URLs), video podcasts (contain movie and audio), and enhanced video podcast episodes (contain movies and artwork/markers/URLs). This section of the manual gives you explicit instruction on how to create all these different types of podcasts as well as how to export to a separate website. This is very informative for people who are getting familiar with the podcasting tool offered through GarageBand.