Wednesday, August 14, 2013

JoyTunes Recorder Express Game

Obviously this blog has been dormant for a while. Last year I was teaching two technology classes in addition to my music classes. It was a lot more work than I expected! It was fun, but the extra teaching responsibilities ate up my blogging time. This year, I am not teaching tech because it doesn't fit in my schedule. So....I'm back. Thanks to fellow blogger Christopher Russell of the Tech in Music Ed Blog, I've also discovered Blogsy for posting to the blog from a mobile device. That is making blogging so much easier!

This summer I've been thinking about new ways to incorporate technology into my lessons. I've been using SmartMusic with my recorder players. They have the Recorder Express book I love. I'm not really wanting to pay for the SmartMusic subscription this year though. I found another tech source that utilizes Recorder Express. It's an online game where kids play their recorder to activate the game. Here a short intro video about it.

Students create an account and have access to the first nine pages for free. After that they can purchase additional pages. The entire Recorder Express Game can also be purchased at West Music or other music stores for $14.99.

The really cool part about this is that students can connect their accounts to your account and you can get reports about how much time students have been practicing while playing the game. I plan to award special badges in Edmodo for students who play the game outside of the school day. I'll post more about other ways I'm using Edmodo in another post.

If you want to create a free teacher account to see more about the Recorder Express game, you can go to the JoyTunes website. Using this link will help my students gain access to additional music in the game.