the staff room

Gigajam, available to all Scottish teachers and learners through Glow, provides exciting new ways to learn how to play musical instruments. Watch the videos below for an introduction to this new technology.

Essential Drum Skills

An introduction to the drums and how to use Gigajam’s lessons and software. If you are new to Gigajam or to the drums, watch Drum Skills Part One and Drum Skills Part Two

Essential Guitar Skills

An introduction to the keyboard and how to use Gigajam’s lessons and software. If you are new to Gigajam or to the guitar, watch Guitar Skills Part One and Guitar Skills Part Two

Essential Keyboard Skills

An introduction to the keyboard and how to use Gigajam’s lessons and software. If you are new to Gigajam or to the keyboard, watch Keyboard Skills Part One and Keyboard Skills Part Two

Essential Base Skills

An introduction to the bass guitar and how to use Gigajam’s lessons and software. If you are new to Gigajam or to the bass guitar, watch Base Skills Part One and Base Skills Part Two

Pandora

Admin — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 00:01:47 +0000

The Musicology Show

Hosted by ‘PANDORA’, part of the ‘Music Genome Project’. A not too heavy look at music theory, in a contemporary setting. Categories include Composition, Instruments, Singing and Style, with downloadable mp3’s and mp4’s!

Unfortunately some of the links are restricted for users in the UK, but here’s a sample from the podcast.

electric guitar effects

Their 2008 season is now available every fortnight starting Wednesday 5th March.

To listen to other samples from the show visit miniGlow, or look on the side bar for the most recent podcast. You can also subscribe in iTunes once on the podcast site.

100 ways to use an iPod in the classroom

Neil — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:36:39 +0000

I found this link on another site and thought it might be useful. Lots of good deas and where to find downloads, lesson plans, study guides etc. Enjoy…

http://oedb.org/library/beginning-online-learning/100-ways-to-use-your-ipod-to-learn-and-study-better

Sketchcast

Admin — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:24:42 +0000

Creating a Sketchcast on the SMART Board from James Hollis on Vimeo.

del.icio.us

Admin — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 22:11:53 +0000

http://del.icio.us/

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website — the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders.

You can also use del.icio.us to see the interesting links that your friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return. You can even browse and search del.icio.us to discover the cool and useful bookmarks that everyone else has saved — which is made easy with tags.

What are tags?

Tags are one-word descriptors that you can assign to your bookmarks on del.icio.us. They’re a little bit like keywords but non-hierarchical. You can assign as many tags to a bookmark as you like and easily rename or delete them later. Tagging can be a lot easier and more flexible than fitting your information into preconceived categories or folders.

Collaboration - Friends, co-workers, and other groups can use a shared account, special tag, or their del.icio.us networks to collect and organize bookmarks that are relevant — and useful — to the entire group. Here for example is my own del.icio.us collection for auchenharvie http://del.icio.us/auchenharvie/ and here only the articles tagged with smartboard http://del.icio.us/auchenharvie/smartboard/ .

Gadget by LabPixies.com

Now the clever bit - you find a great link and want to share it with auchenharvie ? When you come to save the link in your del.icio.us account include ‘for:auchenharvie’ along with your other tags.

The most popular tags on del.icio.us

Here’s a neat place to start exploring tags: a cloud of frequently-used tags on del.icio.us.

Find out more about tags, including some examples and ideas about how you can use them.

OK, what do I do next?

Here’s how to get started with del.icio.us.

Resources

Admin — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:53:42 +0000

The Resources page has news and information about Glow, the new name for The Scottish Schools Digital Network, and advice on using the SMART Board interactive whiteboard.

A link to miniGlow provides a place to share information or lessons.

The page will also have links to websites which staff have found to be a useful learning and teaching resource.

Please contribute to this resource by submitting a comment.

Worth a look

Admin — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 23:31:23 +0000

Have you ever been ’surfing the internet’ and thought “Hey, that’s interesting, amusing, clever, novel, (or maybe even useful!)

The page entitled Worth a look has links to some sites which are worthy of this description.

Please help to extend the list by submitting a comment.