I recently had my students create and record some songs on the Prime Ministers of Canada. It was an interesting experience from which I learned at least as much as the kids did, though about different things. They learned a bit about each of Canada’s 22 Prime Ministers, how to use Audacity software and how to sing badly. So what did I learn?
- For a project like this set very specific requirements.
- How many lines long should it be?
- Should your song rhyme?
- What will the teacher tolerate in terms of choice of melody for the song? (Can it be copyrighted? Can it be rock, country or a nursery rhyme? Two girls took the tune of a popular hymn, much to my surprise.)
- Without specific requirements, it’s really hard to tell if the kids’ are reaching your objectives or not.
- There’s a certain amount of chaos to be expected with a project like this
- You can try to keep it quiet all you like, but when the kids need to find music they can remember, or when they have to sing it will be noisy, like it not. Get ready for it.
- Noise can be good. You need to figure out the difference between good noise and bad and that’s a fine line with something like this.
- As much as some kids do horrible songs, some do wonderful ones.
- Most kids used the recording software to disguise their voices. I have quite a few kids who apparently sound like chipmunks.
- Some kids picked well known songs and adapted them in creative ways. The most interesting song was probably “Why can’t we be Prime Ministers?”
- Other students actually created their own music. It wasn’t brilliant, but it gave them an opportunity to express themselves they wouldn’t normally have.
- Giving kids new opportunities is worth it.
- Not all kids excel at essays, or projects, or PowerPoints, or drawings, or whatever you can dream up.
- This project gave other kids an opportunity.
Thanks for sharing what you learned. I’m curious about your school setup? Are you in 1-1 laptop school? How did you group the students? Did the kids have experience with Audacity before this?
We don’t have 1-1 laptops, but I did have excellent access to our computer labs during this time period. That solved that problem.
The kids grouped themselves. That, naturally, leads to more supervision problems, but it made it a lot easier for the kids to accomplish the task since the louder kids tended to group themselves together, and the more musical ones hung together. They put themselves in groups where they felt comfortable taking risks with their group members.
As far as I know, this was the kids’ first experience with Audacity. Most of them have worked with Movie Maker last year and many of the processes are similar. They took to Audacity readily. It’s that old “digital native” thing in action again.