Immediately upon entering the classroom and seeing the laptop cart a hand shot in the air,
"Are we going to learn GarageBand!?!"
Last year I covered a technology period for a teacher that went home sick. I was provided 10 minutes notice and carte blanche. The first idea that popped into my head was GarageBand and I ran with it. This particular child was in that class on that day.
I anticipated spending most of the period rehearsing procedure and routine but the kids nailed the initial set-up routine perfectly the first time. Since they use the computers during their weekly technology sessions in their homerooms they were fluent in setting up and logging in to the computers. I used my SmartBoard to demonstrate how to locate GarageBand in the finder and start a new file.
The remaining 15 minutes of the lesson were devoted to exploring loops. The students were tasked with selecting one percussion loop, dragging it to the work area and looping it for 16 bars. If they completed that assignment they were free to layer additional loops underneath. The primary objective was to get them familiar with working in the interface.
I was amazed that in a short 15 minute period so many of the students had already put together really catchy beats and grooves. Some of them are already well on their way to creating a full-blown song.
The laptops will come back out on Thursday. Objectives include:
- Students will create a 32-bar piece using loops in AB form.
- Students will save the file created to their folder on the shared server.
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