Keeping Score – Study the Symphony:

“The San Francisco Symphony’s website Keeping Score is up for a Webby Award this year. Keeping Score is a comprehensive website full of educational materials about composers, scores, musical techniques, and symphonies.

There are two elements of Keeping Score that should be of particular interest to educators. The most immediately accessible section of Keeping Score is the interactive education elements that contain videos, images, and texts that tell the stories of composers. The interactive section also features explanations of musical techniques, the history of notable events and themes in the symphonic world, and analysis of various scores.

The second section of Keeping Score that teachers will be drawn to is the lesson plan library. In the lesson plan library teachers will find lesson plans developed to incorporate elements of the Keeping Score website. There are lesson plans appropriate for every grade level.

Applications for Education

What I like about Keeping Score is that while the materials are obviously appropriate for music classes, there are also materials that could be used in a social studies classroom. The stories of composers and the history section provide teachers with opportunities to talk about what was going on in the world when the composers were creating their scores and how that may have affected what the composers created.”

(Via FreeTech4Teachers.com.)

NY Times – Inside the Olympic Action:

“The New York Times has good collection of videos and audio slideshows designed to take you ‘inside the action‘ of Winter Olympic events. The videos will take you down a luge run at 90mph, through a snowboard half pipe, and down the men’s downhill ski course. Along the way athletes and coaches explain intricacies of each event and how the athletes maneuver through their events.

Applications for Education

Inside the Action could be a good resource for learning about Olympic events from an ‘insider’s perspective.’ You might want to use these videos in conjunction with a Google Maps Street View tour of the Winter Olympics.”

(Via FreeTech4Teachers.com.)

“Yesterday, while exploring Time’s website I came across this timeline featuring the key decisions made by President Roosevelt during World War II. The World at War is an interactive timeline in which you can click on any of the key decisions listed to learn more about those decisions. The decisions interspersed amongst other key events of WWII. None of the events are terribly detailed, but the timeline does provide a nice general overview.

Applications for Education

The World at War could be a good introductory resource or review resource for US History teachers and their students. Teachers could have each student in a class select an item from the timeline to research and teach to their classmates. ”

(Via FreeTech4Teachers.)

TIME Magazine Interactive World at War Timeline

Tetons by Ansel Adams

I’ve always been a fan Ansel Adams and his stunning landscape photography. He turned 100 in 2002 and to commemorate that event the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art launched an exhibit “Ansel Adams at 100.” Unfortunately, living in Chicago very few if any of us (or our students) would have been able to attend.

Now however, the Museum has decided to recreate the exhibit online with interactive content including photos, audio interviews, and video with the artist. Its incredibly well done and really a must see in my mind.

This site is a great resource for middle school photography units, or art appreciation at the elementary schools. Outside of Art this would be a great place to see stunning photos of the American wilderness in Social Studies, or to gather information for a bibliography project.

Hats off to Free Tech for Teachers for finding this great resource.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: Ansel Adams at 100