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Bach Google Doodle screen shot
Did you see the Google doodle on Thursday and Friday? To celebrate Johann Sebastian Bach’s birthday, Google had an app for writing music.
I come from a musical background. My mother has her masters in piano and taught lessons for many years. My brother got the talent in his fingers and still makes a living as a professional musician.
Me? I gave up piano after high school, but I can still read music and sing in the church choir. But I’ve never written music before. That is, until Thursday.
In my last group of students, Madison and I played around with the doodle and discovered we could save a link and return to the song we created. Of course, we also had to write words to go with our songs, all of which proved to be harder than you would think.
I introduced this idea to my first group on Friday morning. We had to borrow headphones from the computer lab because all that composing going on in one room was enough to drive you crazy.
I was fascinated by how challenging this was for my kids. They spent at least an hour on it and would have gone longer, but it was a gorgeous spring day, so I shooed them out for recess.
Here is a link to a tune I created for the words “When I sing this lovely song, I feel a sense of pride.
My students posted theirs on our kidblog site here.
Who would think that you could build a whole class activity around a Google Doodle? Technology never ceases to amaze me.
Reflections on the Teche 