Brief Description

Have you ever given any real thought to why you listen to the type of music that you do?  What section do you head for when you go to your favorite retailer to purchase music?  What form do you purchase that music in; CD, vinyl record, cassette tape?
Our students, as members of  the  younger generation, are experiencing some of the greatest advances in music technology in history.  The Internet holds a wealth of information like finding, previewing, and downloading music. You can even log onto music magazines and find information about your favorite groups, performers or composers.  You can download resources for creating and personalizing music with your computer.  There are even sites full of information about music from around the world and they allow you to listen to some examples.  That is what this WebQuest is all about, students will be learning how to preview and evaluate different types of music, evaluating the kind of music they listen to and why they listen to that type of music and learning about new sources for purchasing music.

Standards and Frameworks

Technology Standards

Academic Standards National Music Standards Objectives

Academic

Technological Pre-Requisite Technology Skills Materials Accommodations for Special Needs

SEI STUDENTS:  These students may be paired up with another student who can help them read the directions as well as create the classroom presentation together.  They should be given the opportunity to type some of the information from the rough draft, cutting and pasting information that they feel is interesting and learn to create a classroom presentation.

ADHD/ADD STUDENTS: Break task into small parts and provide frequent feedback to ensure successful progress towards the completed project.

REACH STUDENTS:  Reach students might want to learn how to download mp3 files to be used in a computer generated presentation or they might want to create their own CD.  This requires that the teacher be willing to purchase a membership in a site that allows the user to do that legally.  Most sites charge an annual fee and then charge for each download.  The CD actually will cost more than it would if you purchased it from a store, but you get a CD of the music that you want instead of a CD with one track that you like.

Procedures

This is a WebQuest that was developed to be used with sixth grade music students.  It was taught over a period of five weeks, in classes that meet once a week for forty minutes each.  It was taught in a computer lab, but could be adapted to be used in a classroom and rotating the use of the computers.  This lesson could easily be adapted to be used in a regular classroom.

STEP 1:  Each student will be writing a paragraph telling their audience about themselves and their musical interests.  This information is to be included in their classroom presentations and should include a graphic either of the student or their favorite artist.  This is a wonderful time to teach students how to scan a picture, edit it, and insert it into a document.

Here are some questions that should help get them started:

1. What kinds of music have you been exposed to?
2. Who has been the most influential in your musical interests?
3. Do you play or have you ever played an instrument?
4. What radio or television stations do you listen to the most often?

STEP 2:  This next step the students need to tell about their favorite groups, performers or composers.  They will need to write about a minimum of three groups, individual performers or composers.  Of course they can always write about more than three, but make sure that you write one paragraph for each group, performer or composer. Because part of the assignment is to become more familiar with using the Internet for information they should include the URL addresses of the sites they felt had the most valuable information for them.  They should be able to justify to you why they felt it was so valuable.   Here are some suggestions of things they could include when writing about this information.
1. What style of music does your group, performer or composer perform?
2. Why do you like this group, performer or composer?
3. How did you find out about this group, performer or composer?
4. What is your favorite song performed by them?
5. How did this group, performer or composer get started? (this means to write a mini biography about them)
6. Tell us three sites we can go to, to learn more about these artists.

These are some sites that helped us look up about our favorite artists and groups.
 
 

Site
Description
LookSmart Music - Artists  Artist links at a great music search engine!
AllMusic Guide Great links to music groups!
RollingStone - Artists  Artist links at Rolling Stone magazine site!
BluesNet Artists Summaries  Great links to Blues musicians!
Jazz Online Great links to Jazz composers/musicians/groups!
STEP 3:  Students will be interviewing parents, grandparents or someone from another cultural background.  The assignment for this section of the project is to research another form of music.  This can either be the type of music their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors, teachers or someone from a different cultural background listens to, but it needs to be different genre from their own!  They will need to find out about the type of music those people grew up with, and the type of music that they enjoy listening to now, and why.  Pretty much the same questions that they needed to answer for themselves.    Here are some questions that could help them with this project:
1. Name of person being interviewed
2. Relation to you
3. What types of music, or what groups, performers, or composers do they like to listen to?
4. What era were those groups, performers or composers popular or are they still?
5. How did they first hear them? (radio, dance, concert, television, friends)
6. Have they ever played an instrument or performed in a group?
7. Who/what was the most influential person/event in developing their musical preferences?
Step 4:  Now it is time to go to the Internet and listen to that type of music, describe the music in their own words, and one nice thing about that style of music.  The purpose of this assignment is to expose them to a new musical culture.  Maybe they will want to listen to that new style more in the future!  (That's called growth and learning!)  When they write about this experience they need to include a minimum of three different countries, or three different genres, or three different forms of music.  Here are some ideas of information that should be included in this section:
1. Name of the country, genre of music, or culture
2. The description of the music (in their own words of course!)
3. Something that they like about this style of music
4. Links to the sites that will help us better understand this music and hopefully be able to listen to some examples.

Here are some great links to sites that we used to learn about music from different cultures. Many sites allow you to listen to examples of music from the cultures.
 
 

Tinder Records This is a beautiful site but not much listening.
BUY.COM Some listening but mostly a site to purchase music.
Putumayo World Music This is a beautiful site with lots of listening.
World Music Network Great place to listen to music.
Assessment

Students will be evaluated on their participation in the project and their completed personal guide to music choices.
The rubric that was used to evaluate this project is saved on the rubistar site. http://rubistar.4teachers.org.  It is number 693958.
 

Teacher Name: Marcie Young
Site: Rio Vista
Date Submitted: March 10, 2003