Chrome Music Lab – How to use this FREE site in your music classroom

 

I always find it tough to find more ways to bring technology into the music room. It can often serve as more of a distraction than a helper! But Chrome Music Lab has been one of my favourite tech tools I’ve ever used in elementary music class – here’s a quick guide to what it is, along with a few tips to use it in your classroom! 

Chrome Music Lab (CML) is a website with 14 different “experiments” that allow students to experience music in different ways with different visualizations. It can be a great tool to put sight to sound in music, or to get students who are hesitant about composing to get their ideas out there! Some experiments are simpler visualizers, while some allow students to compose and even save and share their compositions. The most well-known experiment from CML is “Song Maker”, where students can make their own compositions using simple block notation, and even add colour and experiment with different instrumentation! (Check out my bundle of Song Maker activities if that sounds interesting to you!)

Tip #1: Let Students Explore!

When I’m introducing students to CML for the first time, the first activity we always do is some unguided exploration time. I usually let the students go wild looking at all the different experiments for the first 5 – 10 minutes, and then have them pair and share one cool thing they found with a partner. Moving from something like this into a more structured activity (like my Getting To Know Chrome Music Lab Scavenger Hunts) lets students have “aha” moments when they realized they already found the thing they’re looking for back when they were exploring on their own!

Tip #2: Differentiate Instruction

You can use CML to differentiate for many different kinds of composing tasks. Kandinsky is an experiment that lets students compose through drawing pictures – use this with students who may struggle with traditional notation (or check out my KandinskyDrawing Challenge to use it with everyone!) If you are doing a composition activity with Song Maker and there are students who are overwhelmed by the number of options, point them to the even simpler Melody Maker experiment so they can compose without distractions.

Tip #3: Bring the experiments into real life!

CML has great opportunities for cross-curricular connections with Science class. For example: after looking at the Strings experiment, have students look at the strings on stringed instrument and guess what shortening or lengthening the string will do. You can also have students use rubber bands to make their own stringed instruments using the same scientific principles!

 

 

If you haven’t got enough Chrome Music Lab knowledge after this, check out my FREE Teacher’s Guide to Chrome Music Lab with all these tips and more!

 

Helpful Music Teacher Digital Organization Hack: Tab Groups in Google Chrome

 

If your music teaching schedule looks anything like mine, you’re bouncing from grade to grade all day. This digital organization strategy uses Google Chrome, which you probably already have on your computer, and is a complete lifesaver for when you teach multiple different classes back to back! Take a look through this guide with pictures (click on any of them to make them bigger if you want a closer look!) to find out how you can use this hack yourself.

What are Tab Groups?

Simply, tab groups group your tabs together (and colour code them -  who doesn’t love colour coding?), so it’s a bit of a mini window within your window. You can expand and minimize the entire tab group at once, so you can have 20+ tabs ready to go, but not all up in your face confusing you about what comes next.

How do you add a tab to a tab group?

When you right click a tab in Google Chrome, one of the options that comes up will be “Add tab to new group”. Click that, and you’ll get a choice of colours and be able to name the group whatever you want.

How does this work in the classroom?

The first thing I do every morning is open up my daily schedule in Google Slides (I have a slide for each class that I project that just shows them what our schedule is for that day). I add this to its own group called “Schedule” – it’s always red!

Then, I go through my schedule slide by slide, opening all the links I will need for each class. When I open the first link for the grade, I create a new group named after that grade/group of grades that is doing that lesson

Then, as I open more tabs, I can drag them into the group (they will get the coloured outline of that group when they are added into the group)

Once I’m done opening the links for one grade group’s classes, I click on the name of the group (in this case, K12). This will minimize the group – see how it makes things neat and tidy?

 

 

Now, when I get to my first Kindergarten, Grade 1, or Grade 2 class for the day, I click K12. All the links I need for that group are right there, ready to go! When I’m done with them, I click it again and the links minimize. Then, I can close the entire group after the last class I teach in that group for the day.

This is such a little thing, but it seriously upped my organization game when I learned it! I hope it can help you out as well. Happy teaching!