EEi Webinar: Using EEi to Genuinely Connect with Your Students

Welcome and the framework

[00:00:24] hi and welcome thanks for joining us today my name is Steve Smith and I work at how Leonard and a particular I work with the essential elements interactive website and I'm really excited to kind of bring some things to you today and hopefully provide some insight on how to use a central that's interactive we also hope that this video finds you and your family well during this you know highly unusual time I know that we have people joining us from across the world so that's very exciting

[00:00:49] so hopefully the information we share today can give you some insights and things that will help you and your students so let's kind of dive in and I'm just excited to show you several things today let's get going all right so we're gonna dive right in and a lot of great things to kind of show you today and I'm just gonna kind of chug through all this and kind of keep going and there are a few things that you can do while we're on this webinar you can do the chat you see the chat that's

[00:01:20] right there you can do that in the public forum or if you want everyone to kind of chime in you can put your questions up there and everyone can see you can also send us individual messages because we do have our AEI support team is available to answer your questions we're also going to have a couple of polls you've already answered a couple of those just getting in here but we'll have several polls that we ask just to kind of get an idea of where you guys are coming from and just to get some

[00:01:45] information about certain topics that we're going to talk about today so feel free to join in and take advantage of those of those resources in that section right there so just some thoughts about where we are right now obviously things are different we're teaching in a completely different environment then we would like to be or that we typically are so we're gonna kind of break what we're gonna talk about today down into three different things one is stability and just kind of talking about how we

Stability — provide normalcy

[00:02:13] can keep things you know stable for our kids and keep them as much normal as we can get the other word is engagement and really trying to find different ways to make sure that we're reaching out to the kids and really bringing them into the environment that we're teaching and then the other part is going to be an experimental part of this we're gonna experiment with some things because again this is this is all new but you know we're going to talk about this as being our goals for

[00:02:38] weekly connection you want to provide stability you want to engage something and you want to try something new and and then just kind of build on that so that's gonna be kind of the framework so it's stability is concerned as far as that's concerned you know you want to work to have some normalcy we all need this as much as possible right now things are not normal but you can help provide that for for the kids and it's gonna be an important thing and the other thing is you don't want to

[00:03:03] completely change you or your program or what you're doing it should be the same program just think of it as a different a different Avenue so that's gonna help you to start simple and you can kind of allow this to grow so what you normally do in your class we're just gonna try to provide different ways for you to do that online through EEI so in terms of stability it's it's important to realize that first of all students still need your direction they're gonna need all the information that you would give them

[00:03:33] in class it's gonna come through a different Avenue like we said but more importantly parents are gonna need you as well parents are being asked to do things that they've never been asked to do before particularly in your class so you're gonna that information that you're sending home the more clear you can make it and the more uniform you can make it the more stable you can make it the better it's gonna be for the kids and the parents students are gonna need to play regularly and they have more

[00:03:59] time to do this I have a friend of mine colleague who's really really great music teacher but he actually said that during this time his kid has actually improved in how he practices he's seen him at home and he says you know he's recording himself more he's actually making more self assessments and he's actually practicing better than he was before so you know some kids might really thrive in this environment and if you provide them that same instruction you normally provide at school as best

[00:04:25] you can through this that little that focused practice might you know benefit some of those students and the students are gonna need and want your guidance they can still grow through this obviously not as much as if they were if they were in your class and you see them on a regular basis and of course it's it's it's more meaningful when they're with you and it's it's a better environment but they don't lose sight of the fact that kids can still get better they're so can't be time to improve it's

[00:04:53] not a wash especially if you don't let it be you know that's the stability that you're providing here you you know there's gonna be some people who just want to throw in the towel and finish it out you can remind them nope we can we can keep this going we can still have some type of music class so there's a lot of new things that are coming in there but if you keep some of the same it can keep them growing and that's can be a great thing so here's an example of something that I used to give my

[00:05:20] students when I taught and we would give them you know ideas we'd give them ideas on what to practice and how to practice and I adapted it for this for this session I took it and kind of refreshed it a little bit but it's his weekly practice suggestions and this is for you know a full week of practice and I chose to make it into like kind of a fun font you can kind of do that and then there's we always talked about this it's we always say it's a great practice session if you can say these things and this is

[00:05:47] this is what works for me this is what worked for us when we taught yours might be different but if you can if you can phrase this and put this in there for yourself and send this to your kids then it allows them to kind of latch on know what they should be doing specifically where they're at home there is a word document this is in a Word document in the in the material section of this webinar in the downloads so make sure you get that the handouts and I put it as a word document so that you can adapt this you can do whatever

[00:06:14] you want to with it save it as a PDF and upload a PDF which we'll talk about here in a second but this is what we would say you know would be a great practice session for them now I also got more specific and this is for the brass so I kind of put this down here and you know we want them to do some type of breathing exercises tone work you know working on their mouthpiece working on long tones the EE daily warm-ups new music we want them to you know try some sight-reading and get in there and do

[00:06:44] some things like that and then play their music you know II exercise 90 it was submitted just a particular one that I chose out of here and I asked them to make four recordings and choose the best one so again I go back to that if they can record themselves which we'll talk about a little bit later that's going to be helpful and kids can record themselves they should and then added a few things your solo and then a fun song talk more about how they can do some more fun things and then at the bottom

[00:07:07] had a little reminder so this might be like just a weekly a weekly goal sheet that you give them just to kind of give them some suggestions on this parents will need this too if a parent sees this a parent can maybe kind of walk through a practice session with them so you know it's not this anything revolutionary to make some kind of PDF by the way I also took my my emoji from my iPhone and I put that in there because you know if you can personalize it in any way and I call this my Steve Smith / Justin

[00:07:34] Timberlake look but anyway because that's definitely not how I look but it's as close as I could get anyway but I put something in there just kind of fun to add that so that it it works now in EEI what you can do is you can actually put that PDF in there and and you can give that to the kids in that within their site and we'll talk more about how this can really help quite a bit but there it is there's that PDF they click on that and if you made a PDF out of that they can upload that and

[00:08:02] they can kind of see that but what you can do with this the nice thing again I put this for the brass so if you have an resource a PDF resource in EEI you can share that with specific people this is one of the best parts about EEI so I have that I just want to share it with my brass so I'm gonna share that with my trumpets my horn players my trombone then the baritones and the tubas and I can look over here and I can see yep those are the students that I want to send that to and when I share

[00:08:29] that I know that those students will see that and so that's a it's a really helpful way to get that information out to them so when they log in they're gonna see that in their resources section and they'll be able to use it and you can do that kind of kind of every day we'll talk more about how you can do that in the in the resources sections and things you can do in that as well so you can do a PDF I mean there is that and that's kind of again going back to the normalcy if that's something

[00:08:55] that you do regularly you could turn that into a PDF and put that out to kids through EEI if you want to add a little bit to this you could actually you know make playing assignments and put it in there not necessarily playing assignments or recording assignments so you want them to submit but put it in there so that when they log in and this is a student login page when they log in that's right in front of them and can look in there and they can go okay breathing exercises rhythm study number

Engagement — recording assignments and feedback

[00:09:19] one section study number one don't name him whatever whatever you want them to practice you could put that right there in front of them and have them do that and so when they're logging in and they're coming to this you know it gives them kind of some direction and that's that stability again that we're talking about and as we go through this you're going to start to see that there's a lot of things you can do in EE I and and the more you can get kids to come to one place the again this the more stable

[00:09:47] that that is so it's it's kind of an important thing to be able to do that and the teacher can it's really easy to do this and we have tutorials to kind of show you about this but you can go in here and you can create these exercises and you can come back and see who you've assigned to you like this one I assigned all those two just the general just the beginning band so that they could go in and they could make those those they could see that on their on their login page and then you know this is the

[00:10:15] assignment creation tool and again you can like I said just like those resources you can assign things to groups and that's one of the best parts about EE is you can assign something to just your sixth-grade flutes if you want to or to your eighth grade you know clarinet players you can create groups in EDI and when you do that you can again you can make them whatever group you'd like and you can just really isolate it and the kids only see what they are what is assigned to them so again it's simplifying it and if you can

[00:10:46] get one place that they go you can customize this in a lot of different ways so that when the kids log in they truly see what they need based on their instrument based on their ability level based on whatever you've decided to separate them in from that standpoint but again we go back to this going to one place and the word it's funny that the word simplicity is there because there's a lot of things that you can do here but NEIU can't have them play music from the book you can have them to play

[00:11:14] along accompaniments you can have them look in the EEI resources we have a lot of resources that are there that you can share with them you can upload and share your own PDFs or create videos and share videos with your students which we'll talk about here a little bit you can share links to important site they can make recordings from their ebooks they can make recordings that are not based on ie they can do self-assessment and you can provide feedback so all of that they can do in e I and the reason that word simplicity is

[00:11:42] that this because if you've got kids and you're trying to have them do stuff through you know one site to do to look at you know PDFs and another site to watch videos and then another site to read the music and then they're using their book on their stand and then they're gonna record and go to a different site and you've got a there they're pinging all over the place it it seems organizing your in but that's a lot for them to do on the other end so here you can do a lot right within a I

[00:12:07] and so simplify one place for them to come and we'll talk a little bit more about some things that you can do with this but that's kind of where we're kind of going with this the music studio is another great place that they can come so when you're coming in here the just to do a quick refresher they can play through music and you know there's music on screen for them and I know we've had a number of people who have said hey my kids forgot you know they we got out of school I have a lot

[00:12:37] of kids who don't have their books what can we do I know there's a lot of you that kids are this is now how they see their EE music it's it's right here this is how they do that the recording studio there's a lot of different things they can do in here there's simple playback tools there's practice tools that we have in there and and then the big ones they can record and make multiple tanks and they can save the best one and put that up in the cloud so again they're

[00:13:01] they're assessing they're they're making recordings they're making multiple recordings and working to get better so there's a lot of different things that they can do just within the music studio and then you know we also want to try and keep it a little more a little more energetic and through a lot of book 1 and we have it coming for book two and three it's not quite in there yet but they do have some of these styles in book two and three but for the first you know for a lot of book one there are

[00:13:28] multiple styles for of accompaniment tracks for every exercise and so they can practice the same song multiple times so you know encourage them to get in there and play and and do encourage them to get in there and play and do a lot of different things so first of all the the the drop-down menu that shows the multiple accompaniment tracks it's very easy for them to navigate this and to see what they can they can do as far as different accompaniment or this first one that you hear this is actually just a

[00:14:00] professional clarinet player playing and we do use professional musicians in all of these so now here's professional musician playing with its activity principle clarinet player for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra then same song Addison and non metronome and piano or kind of the standards and then the next five are gonna be just [Music] then you can also easily take the melody [Music] so there's just a lot of different things that they can do in here and mix it but you get the idea and one of the things one of the things

[00:15:11] it's important to understand is as they're getting they're playing that it's it's having them play the same song multiple times I know there's a lot of kids that get in and they just play play a song and then they're ready to go to the next one now that we have these multiple accompaniment tracks they can get in and play a variety of styles and still stay on the same song and hopefully that helps them hopefully that helps them get better on that one tip where if they're gonna record for you

[00:15:37] and send in recordings we use it you can adjust how loud the accompaniment volume is and how loud the input volume is so you want to make sure they lower the output volume of the accompaniment track so that you can hear them on top of that so it might take a little bit of work within each with each person's set up but and then a lot of times people have them record with melody off so they can hear just the student in another group and then some just like them to record with just a metronome that's always a

[00:16:07] simple thing and then this simplest you can actually have them recorded with none as the accompaniment and the melody turned off and that's just gonna be a blank track where they just record by themselves so there's a lot of different ways that you can have them do that but you want to make this again you want to make this a two-way conversation so you want to engage with the with this with the students you want a sense from teacher to the student and you want to get the student to talk to the teacher

[00:16:29] we're gonna talk about a couple of different things you knew it but variety variety is the spice of life on this so we're gonna talk about a couple ways you can kind of kind of engage the students we're talking about teacher uploaded videos some things you can do student recording assignments which we'll talk about here in a second feedback and we have some kind of cool new things in there with the feedback student voice messages and then we're going to talk about adding rubrics for

[00:16:55] writing in fact there's even a way that kids can write and journal in this and then we're gonna talk about student suggested videos so that you kind of bring them into this but your students first and foremost your students are gonna miss you so if there's a way that you can put yourself in front of them and there's a way you can you know do that and there's a lot of things I know there's a lot of people doing zoom calls and things like that but if you can stay in front of them on a more regular basis

[00:17:17] that can be helpful and beneficial as well you know there's a lot of people that do written direction and they put it up in YouTube or they put it in the Google Drive or they put it up on Dropbox but you can provide that and if you if you make a video and you can upload a video to YouTube or you can put a video link in again like I said in Google Drive or in a Dropbox you can actually upload that to me I and some people like well that seems like extra work but again we come back to the idea that what you're

[00:17:47] gonna do is you're trying to get them to come to one place so that they don't have to jump all over the place and I'm gonna show you how that can be helpful I had one teacher ask about YouTube let's say well if I put a video on YouTube can't everybody see it it's important to know that with YouTube you there's different settings you can do public where anybody can see your video you can do private where you can only you the only people that can see it is if there's like a password protected type

[00:18:10] of thing and it's very restricted but the one that you might do the one that you would do for eg I would be one called unlisted and unlisted means that it's not gonna show up on a youtube search it's not gonna show up for anybody that doesn't have the direct link to that video so it's a way for you to put it's almost like a semi-private type of type of link but if you make an unlisted YouTube video you can post that in e.i and they can kind of they can kind of see you and you can put some

[00:18:38] stuff out there for them because they are gonna want to see and hear from you whether you think they do or not even the kids that all sudden you were like I didn't know that kid missed me they're gonna miss you and so this is a chance to kind of get in front of them a little bit so here's how that might work so I go back to this whole idea that again in EE I you can you can allow you can make things and you can send them directly to specific groups of people so for example I made this video for just the trombones

[00:19:04] and euphoniums and they can get in there and they can play this euphoniums well today I'm gonna give you a song I'm gonna play it on my mouthpiece I'm not going to tell you what it is although some of you might know what it is you need to look it up and try and find what the name of the song is also after I'm done playing it you're gonna back the video up and you're gonna play along with me on the mouthpiece so you match my pitch alright so here we go give me [Music] I did pretty good so you see if you can

[00:20:05] figure out the name of that song and see if you can figure out the famous piece that is actually associated with later so check that out doe remember to don't forget to back the video up and play along with me and match my pitch on the mouthpiece alright hope you're having a good day so you know you can make the video and then then when you share it you can see as I do in here I click on this and you can see that I've just shared that with the trombones and the baritones trombones and euphoniums and I can check

[00:20:30] over there and see yep those are the kids that that I shared that with and you can make those videos you know again as specific as you want for each of your instruments and when they come to their eg I account they're gonna get specific type of stuff that they need maybe even more so than you can do in your regular class so it's just kind of something to think about quick videos I mean that video is not even a minute long and just do a couple of those quick hits and then they can kind of get in there and get

[00:20:56] that specific information one of the things that is important to understand we've talked about you know the music studio and playing with EE usek and you can definitely record EE music in there but something else that you can do is you can also record you can record anything we have what we call the all music studio and this is a place where again you've got the EE music on screen in the EE music studio but if you go to all music kids can record whatever you want them to record they're not

[00:21:25] restricted to just recording something from the book so they get in and there's they can either record with a blank track it's just kind of a blank recorder there's some metronomes they can do in there but if you have a piece you want them to play they could record that just if you have specific ways you'd like to do scales so you can have them record those scales in there they can make up a song or play their favorite song put that in there hey or if you have them want them to do

[00:21:47] class warm-ups but they can do that they save it to their recordings they can submit those just like any other recording so they go in there and they submit that that comes to your teacher account and it's a way for them to record anything that you want them to record so this isn't just a place for essential elements they record whatever you're working on whatever you want to direct them to record it's always something important to remember the organization of those recordings is something that we've

[00:22:14] worked really hard on to try and help you guys have just this you know easily accessible way to kind of see and hear and access the recordings from from your students and so with this in this in this what we call the student recording section you have a chance to kind of organize it you see that the gold labels mean it's ungraded if you've graded it and given it a passing it's a green check or a green grade and then if you want them to do it again you can ask them to go and do it again and get that

[00:22:45] red redo so you know where they are easily access all of this music so if you click on just a specific exercise you're gonna get a chance to listen to their recording you can type comets and put that in there we even have a new thing that I'm going to show you here just came out actually this week I'll get to that in a second it's not even in that part of the the site that I was just showing on this demo video here you can easily see recordings from every kid and go straight down the list of

[00:23:12] everybody if you just go to the exercise number 10 now here's everybody who recorded that exercise number so those headers are exercise numbers and you can see everybody that recorded that the easiest way to kind of do this we'll talk about here in a second is actually that show ungraded button but you can sort again you can organize things however you want to organize these sort of my groups organize it by instruments the Allmusic recording these are going to come in these are the recordings that

[00:23:40] the kids have recorded whatever they want to record you can click in there in the Allmusic and then if you create assignments those assignments will be there and you can kind of look down and again you click on any of those headings it's gonna pull up all of the recordings from from those from those those students so if you click on chromatic scale there it's gonna show all of that but the big button right there show ungraded this is going to show you all of the exercises that you have not given

[00:24:06] a grade to and you can just go right down this list we've really tried to make this the easiest way to listen to recordings and give students feedback and then you can expects port those into an sell sheet so that you have those grades in Excel to upload the grade into into your grading program as you need to but this it's a very organized very easily accessible way to listen to recordings we've really tried to try to streamline it for you guys self assessment is really important too

[00:24:39] because you can actually have the kids put self assessment in here and you know I think that's something that a lot of people are really being asked to do and have the kids assess themselves like I said before with my colleague whose son is practicing one of the things that he says it's making him better and it's practices that he's got to do more of recording and listen to himself and assessing what he does we have this ability in EEI we introduced this a couple years ago and students can write comments about

[00:25:06] their recording you can attach these self assessments to specific assignments and you can create these self assessments so for example here's one that I just created these are checklists so a student can go down and I created one that had posture it's been hand position and embouchure all that tone quality I had them rate themselves rhythm steady beat and they went through and they they they would rate themselves when they submit that recording to you so hopefully they're they're checking

[00:25:35] themselves before they submit something to you and you can create this this is customizable to what you would want to do I've actually in the handout section I've put some example rubrics that some people have used and they have sent us as examples that they thought were we're helpful so just some some different ideas and what you can use as far as self-assessment is concerned now as far as engaging them these are those are all very educational two things recordings and grades and getting information back

[00:26:03] to them but let's talk about how to kind of use this to kind of make it a little more personal because you can come in here and add a couple different things so for example you could just have an assignment that really is just like tell me about the best part of your day the kids can actually use The Awl music studio and just talk to you and just say hey this is the best part of my day I did this and they could just just have a simple recording and it's not even a grade it's just a way to connect with

[00:26:25] them and you're gonna have kids that want to do that they're gonna want to tell you about things that are going on it's the same kids that come into your come into your room all the time and at one point you might have been like oh my goodness will you please leave well now you're like I kind of miss that person so you know just have them do just simple things like say about the best part of their day I put another assignment in there too this one is just says describe shaky Nimrod there's a

[00:26:49] great recording of shaky kind of Mason playing cello and playing Nimrod and you know just ask them to listen to that recording and then have them come back to the whole music studio and just talk about a recording that they saw on on on the YouTube that there's a link that you put out there so you know they can write about something but they can also use that all music studio just to kind of describe things and talk about things and send that back to you that's it can be a really helpful thing for a lot of

Self-assessment and performance targets

[00:27:16] kids some people might like doing that more than maybe writing things out but yeah so again they could just make that recording talk it through and then submit that recording to you so that you hear them talk about shakers recording what it means to them what they think the piece means something along those lines so just another way to kind of get in there this is one of the lessons there's some lesson ideas too in the handout section we've kind of given you a few lesson lesson ideas to to maybe to

[00:27:44] use and this is one of those is the just commenting on a piece of music or on a recording so that's something you can kind of look at there the other thing you can do is on that self-assessment is you can make them all written because there's gonna be some kids that love to journal love to write things of course this example that I put up here I did this really quickly you're gonna have some kids that really fill these fill these boxes up so you can have them write about that piece if you wanted to

[00:28:08] they could talk about it they can write about it but it doesn't have to all be just performance-based you could you know this is a chance to show them some great music that that maybe you you know when we get it we all get that in the in the day to day we have things we've got to teach the kids we've got performances coming up we have we have all these things come up and we do play the music but maybe not as much as we would like to because we have those other deadlines well right now it's this is a time where

[00:28:36] you know you you may not have that concert coming up so you could take time to you know you're gonna have to find other ways to show them the love of music that you want to instill you know so you might need to put more music out there but don't just put it out there and just say okay well there you go hope you like that have them comment on it have them write something else back here again it's that engagement you're sharing something that you think is really cool you want to know what they think about it now coming

[00:29:01] back to this circling back here because this is a kind of a new new feature that we have coming up actually it's already out there and that is the ability for you to provide audio feedback to your kids so when they come in and they play a recording let's say for example they did you know this to as a team before you could just do typed comments now you can actually come in here and you can do audio Komets so let me just kind of give you an example of this this is a this is an actual recording from one of our

[00:29:30] teachers and she's just kind of jumped all over this this week and she really enjoys doing it so this is the portal that's gonna come up you're gonna get to see this you've got the student recording there so you can hear the student play and then you can either pause the student recording you can record you can record yourself talking you could record a lot of different things but this is how this teacher chose to do this so instead of just writing it out now you're gonna get to

[00:29:51] talk to them again they're gonna get to hear your voice and here's how this teacher chose to to respond to this recording hi Khayyam you're off to a good start with this song most of your notes are correct you're going to want to check the first note in the third measure you're reading that note as a G and it's actually an A and it happens a few more times in the song you're going to need to work on the rhythm a little bit go back and listen to this song and maybe count and clap okay the learning

[00:30:23] target for this piece of music is I can perform an accent so the notes that have the visa bub and below them need to be Tong more strongly so that the notes are emphasized and they sound a little different than the notes that are not accented I put a short video in resources explaining accents better if you want to use that as a resource or you can sign it for a zoom lesson with me I'll be happy to help you with accents so first you're gonna master the notes and rhythms of Mexican clapping

[00:30:52] song you can take out the metronome so that you can go slower and then go ahead and start working on adding accents okay keep going yeah so just you know just her positive voice by the way that's Terry little she's a teacher in the Elm Brook School District here in Wisconsin and she she just just has a nice Pleasant way about her and she's given that kids some great information and you know that goes a long way instead of seeing that information written hearing it can be important and then she's also referring

[00:31:25] to like videos that she's posted about certain things and then encouraging him to sign up for a zoom lesson so you know it's there's just a lot of things you can do with that Terry's Terry's I know uses EEI and has used EE Ike for quite some time and she's really got a lot a good good knack of how to how to use this resource so it's kind of kind of awesome she also is actually presenting a clinic at Midwest this coming December assuming that that goes on across our fingers hope that

[00:31:50] Midwest happens but she does a great job using a lot of different things in EE but you see how powerful this can be how important and powerful this audio feedback can be because yeah you can give that verbal comments that you just did you can again and we didn't play the student recording just out of respect for you know that the student and the privacy type of stuff but you could play that recording and and then pause and then talk about what a kid played and then play some more of it and then talk

[00:32:15] more and talk while they're doing it you could model for the student you could play an instrument you can play back to them what they should sound like or give them an example you know to kind of have them understand what they need to do and then you can also just give them that genuine praise you know writing good job or writing nice nice job in the comment section is great but if they can hear you and you you know you're able to give them that praise especially right now especially where you're not seeing them

[00:32:41] on a daily basis but if you can change that and put that in there and get your your voice in there it's it's really really helpful there's there's probably a million other ideas that that's one thing we love about EEI is we put it out there as one way for people to use it and then people come back with so many different ways that they're using this and it's and a lot of the ideas we're presenting in this are from teachers saying hey this is how I do this so really helpful and some of the comments

[00:33:06] we've had today have been talking about how people use this so it's really it's really kind of cool to see how the has grown but again students need to hear your voice and this is a great way for them to do this and I've had some teachers that we put this out there and they're like oh my gosh this I enjoy doing this so much more than typing so I will you know we do have a two minute time limit on there so I will say I know myself as a teacher I was a little bit wordy so you're gonna have to be

[00:33:30] efficient with your words but I do have an another teacher who posts it on there on our AEI teacher Facebook group which is a great resource by the way if you're not on that just google or go to go to Facebook and look for the EEI teacher Facebook group and apply for that and we will let you be a part of that group but a person posted you know I feel like I'm giving live feedback to the kids they're playing for me and I'm responding to them and talking to them and its really been it's really been a great addition

[00:33:55] to what we've been doing now further engagement ideas so with this you know we're kind of pinging back and forth on this because you kind of you want to kind of keep the kids engaged in a lot of different ways but you know you can have a time where students suggest videos so you could have an assignment where you say hey go out and find a really great video for your instrument and and let me know what it is and then you can share that to everybody and you can say hey this is so-and-so is

[00:34:21] instrument so you're letting the students contribute to what everyone is watching you're letting them contribute to this so for example you could have a student come in and give you a video and say I really like this video so here is Amy S and she did this you know Susan Malan she found this video and she loves how this person sounds and so now Amy is sharing this video with her friends you know so it's just a way to allow the students to be a part of this and you're gonna get some really interesting takes

[00:34:56] on that you're gonna get some interesting videos that people are gonna send to you so let them come and be a part of this let them let them provide their insight as to what type of music they're listening to and and let them share it with with your friends I mean definitely you want to like make sure you watch the whole video before you share it just to make sure obviously it's the right kind of video but at the same time if you can you know you can put a little that and trust that they're

[00:35:21] gonna they're gonna send you good stuff that can be a helpful thing trust it but verify that it's a good it's a good thing the other thing about these videos is you also want to add a little bit of you into this bring them into your world a little bit you know they're they're kind of coming into your house right now with how your your teaching but again I bring them back to this your students are gonna miss you so if you can provide something that's it's engaging and and

[00:35:45] fun for them like I just made this video so if they get in the by the way this is the student account this is what the student would look like so they get in there they have you can see it right there they have like you know there's you've got a reminder to them that there's a zoom call coming up there's a saxman zoom call on Monday this is their new weekly video so I've put it in there a weekly video and this is kind of for everybody and so they're gonna come in and I got my Monday greeting and I'm

Experimentation — new content for kids

[00:36:08] just gonna come in and click on this and then just make it fun make it enjoyable hey everyone I hope you're having a great day you know I just wanted to say hi and check in and see how you're doing it today we have a special guest Owen come here Owen wanted to say hi say hi you the kiddos can I get a kiss no no well Owen really wants you guys to have a really good day so he's saying hi Owen do you miss the kiddies there it is all right well Owens hoping you have a great day and I do as well so check for your

[00:36:51] assignments and we'll talk to you soon bye so again that's a video and now when I just sent to everybody and so they're gonna get that but the more you can put yourself into that the better it's gonna be you know and then the last part about this is just experiment with things there are a lot of things that I put out there that you're like I don't know I'm not sure I would be comfortable doing that are that might seem like you know I'm not sure that would be worth it try

[00:37:18] some things not everything's gonna work and when I say that I mean like not every every you know the websites gonna be great the website functions really well and we're working on things to make it even better but you know you're gonna try some different things you may put a video out there and you're like yeah that's not really that didn't really get the result that I wanted to or you're gonna try you know certain assignments you're gonna be like oh that didn't

[00:37:40] quite go like it needed to a lot of it is gonna go well but it's okay to try things and if things don't go well that's fine model for your student to willingness to try and fail and then try again that's part about it's part of this you know technology to everything I bet I bet we all have stories about how we tried something and it didn't work the first time but we came back to it and that and we made it work and it was and it was great and then we also have things where we tried it and it didn't

[00:38:04] quite work but just enjoy the freedom right now it's you know there's there's you've got a lot of leeway you've got a lot of ability to try some things and then because we're in this different environment keep what you want and then and then kind of move move forward from there speaking of trying things I just want to put some things that are out there that a Howlin it actually has to offer there's all these things are actually offering free trials and a lot of people

[00:38:28] are offering free trials but um if you if you teach any kind of Muse elementary type music essential elements music class interactive is a new site that's out there ee music class comm you can kind of look on there and there's a there's a handout in the in the handout section that has information and all of these type of things but a music class interactive is out there no flight online music writing software music writing website and they have no flight and no flight learn there's some content libraries where

[00:38:56] there's some music that kids can kind of kind of use and that you can use but check that out no flight and then sheet music direct sheet music direct is a really great place it's it's actually like Apple music for sheet music and I'm not sure if you haven't heard of sheet music direct you should definitely try that they have a 30-day trial to what's called seat music direct pass which again like I said it's like Apple music for sheet music almost everything that how Lenore publishes is in there you

[00:39:20] know piano yeah instrumental charge you've got you know pop tunes you've got you know a lot of different a lot of different things in there and actually recently within the past couple of weeks we've actually put a lot of band and orchestra music in there and there's PDFs that students can get in there and play along with so definitely check that out see music direct.com note flight comm EE music class comm all of that information is in your is in your handout section and just to kind of show

[00:39:49] you you know like my son I couldn't maybe you know my son I'm getting to watch him play cello and trumpet here at home during all of this and he's been working through a lot of different things he does that and he plays piano as well but we've started using sheet music for him just to play fun things he wanted to learn viva la vida so this is actually him playing Viva la Vida off of sheet music direct this is a picture of it but it's a chance to kind of do some some more fun things and kind of step

[00:40:15] out of your comfort zone and get kids to kind of find some new music in there so sheet music direct comas is a fun place always check I block we have a lot of ideas a lot of things that we're posting up there from time to time and we're gonna try to start posting even more or lessons especially coming out of this webinar we a lot of things we're gonna can share with you guys but yeah I blog comm is a great resource as well but for this embrace the new and and search for things to keep don't think of this as

[00:40:44] just for now think of this as how can we be better after this you know there's a lot of things that that you know obvious there's a lot of us that we don't want to carry forward but this could end up making this all better if this is if this is pushing you I know it's actually pushed me and it's actually pushed a lot of companies and pushed a lot of a lot of people to figure some things out that maybe they were a little slow to to move to move towards so you know if you're a

[00:41:11] little nervous about moving into the tech world and moving into this or you thought it took away from the you know the teaching please you know try and find those things that you're like you know actually I really do like this you may not keep all of this but you're doing let's just talk specifically about EEI you're using a central it's interactive right now but moving forward into the fall you might you might want to still keep that end right and try and continue using it and

[00:41:36] use it as a supplement or maybe use it even more if you really enjoyed it we're gonna have a survey coming out here in the next couple of weeks and especially for those of you who are just diving in we really want to know what you think and what things you like about it maybe some things that you wish were in it and we're gonna you know we really are working towards we're constantly working to make the website better so if you've been in there and you really want to kind of you know offer suggestions we

Wrap-up

[00:42:02] love getting suggestions and some of them we can jump on some of them we put them on the list but it's a great thing about the site as we have the ability to make things better in fact the audio feedback was actually a comment that was put out there by a couple of a couple of different teachers and we were able to make that happen so we are constantly looking for ways to improve the site so thank you for being here thank you for using EEE I thank you for coming today but most importantly thank you for all that you do for your

[00:42:30] students you matter you're it's this time is crazy but I know I know I speak personally for myself as a music educator but also as a parent I just watched my kid do is zoom class with his fifth grade teacher and I you know I just I wanted to give a teacher a hug through through this through the computer she's engaging those kids and and it's just incredible what you guys are doing right now this is not an easy thing we're here to try and help as much as we can but just more more than

[00:42:58] anything just understand how much of a difference you're making you make a huge difference when you're at school and the kids are there and you're making you know you're making a huge difference now as well so thank you so much for everything that you do and and again like I said I really appreciate you guys coming today don't forget to get the handouts and download those and take those with you and we all have some more things for you as well so again thanks for joining us and really appreciate all

[00:43:33] the people that participated in the webinar your comments I really look forward to kind of looking at those and seeing what came out of this webinar and hoping this isn't the last time that we communicate together as you have ideas and questions and things of that nature please reach out to us either through the website contact us section or just Judas an email at e at Hal intercom we're here to help and again as you start working with your students and working through EEI to work with your students just realize that

[00:44:00] we're all in this together and we're and we're happy to help you in any way that we can please stay safe and thanks so much for joining us and have a great rest of your rest of your day you