Musical Citation Project

There was a conflict with scheduling my use of the tablets today (a problem I like to have) so I had to come up with an extra project last night. I keep a list of future projects on my delicious account and found an interesting idea.

Reviewing Citations
Last year, I worked on the idea of saying thank you for images in a PowerPoint lesson for the fifth grade. I wanted to extend that thought in a new way. I do not like to over use PowerPoint and felt that I'd like to use images again.

The lesson found on Pics4Learning's website suggests that the teacher selects a piece of music that students can use with images in Pic4Learnings free photos.

I did a quick search for Creative Commons music and came across an article titled Creative Commons Music in Honor of Obama. I listened to a piece titled Taps-America the Beautiful by Obi Best. It is a beautiful piece with an attribution-noncommercial 3.0 unported license. This is perfect for the project. I was able to edit out the taps and have a minute and eleven seconds of song.

I used EasyBib to create a citation for the music and posted the lyrics, music citation, and link to Pics4Learning on our wiki page.

Learning Ahead
I introduced the lesson today. I played the piece and asked the students to think of images that came to mind as they listened. They enjoyed the music, swaying to the beat, humming and singing along. They suggested some images as starting points for each other.

I decided the best way to proceed was to teach them how to make a Bookmarks folder in Firefox. As they found images they would want in the presentation, they added a bookmark.

We're going to import the MP3 into iMovie and add the images to complement the music. The students haven't used iMovie yet. They already have plans to bring the music into Garageband to mix it up. I didn't plan that part of the project. It evolved in class as they asked for the option. It was a great opportunity to talk about the Creative Commons license selected by the artist which allows for remixing of the song.

Overall Plan
We will create a title and a series of images for America the Beautiful. The students will include citations for the music and all the images. We will eventually upload the completed movies to our school podcast page and/or my vimeo account. I'll have to determine this as I see the project evolve.

In the end, the students will have 24 versions of the song. We will do a little analysis at the end. The project is still evolving, but it seems like the students are going to have a lot of fun while they are reminded once again about citations AND begin learning about copyright, creative commons, and the public domain.

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Image Citation:
"America the Beautiful..." longhorndave's photostream. 2006 Jul 15. 2009 Oct 27.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidw/189892126/