February 27, 2014

NPR 6 Songs
You need to do the above assignment. What is your life story in six songs?

If you are stuck, then you can answer the following questions to help guide you. I need the reasons for these as well. The reasons need to be posted to the blog by the beginning of class on Thursday.

You can either make another grooveshark playlist OR embed the songs in your post. I'm posting an example below. I've only answered the first question. You need to answer ALL of them.

1. What was the first song you ever bought (downloaded, whatever)?
2. What song gets you dancing (or maybe pumped up/thinking about dancing)?
3.  What song takes you back to your childhood?
4. What is the perfect love song?
5. What song would you want at your funeral? (I know that it's morbid.)
6. What song makes you "you"?

When I was a kid you didn't buy songs. Well, I guess you did, but they were called singles and were like five bucks. You could get cassette singles of top ten music, but that's not the kind of music I listened to. I loved classic rock, and though my taste eventually became more eclectic,  it was the only kind of music worth listening to. It makes complete sense that the first album I purchased was Led Zeppelin's runes album (Led Zeppelin IV). I hated "Stairway to Heaven" but the rest of the album was and still is amazing. My favorite song on the album (at the time) was Black Dog. While this doesn't hold true for me anymore, it's at least a little bizarre that this was my favorite song at the age of 11. This is a time when boy band music was just building toward it's eventual pinnacle (thank god) at the end of the late nineties.

February 12, 2014

You've got your songs organized and ready to go (see assignment from last class).
Today you will do the following:

1. create a grooveshark account
2. create a playlist of your songs on grooveshark.
3. make sure the songs are in the right order
4. click on share (upper right corner?)
5. change the colors of the player and such
6. click on embed
7. copy the ENTIRE html
8. go to blogger
9. create a new post
10. click on html (upper left corner--next to the word compose)
11. paste the html from grooveshark into the box
12. click save
13. click publish
14. view blog (to make sure it works)

15.  I want you to also post the reasons you have for selecting the songs. You can start this in class, but we'll be working on it on Friday as well. Don't just "save as a draft." I want you to publish so I can see your progress. If you're having trouble posting, then make sure you write it on your blog entry.

February 10, 2014

Mixtapes, Break-ups, and Make-ups

Today we're going to listen to a portion of a radio show titled This American Life. The piece is about the perfect break-up song. While the voices are annoying to some, there is lots of good "stuff" in here. Listen to the first 20minutes or so (if you aren't in class while we listen).

This American Life

What is the perfect break up song?

Classwork today (due at the end of class): Find the perfect break up song (or one of them) and tell me what makes it so perfect.


HOMEWORK FOR WEDNESDAY: Complete the first three things on the following list.
#1. The Perfect Recipient
#2. The Perfect Message
#3. The Perfect Songs
#4. The Perfect Order
#5. The Perfect Title

Mixtape Assignment

You need to create your own "mixtape" but you are going to use grooveshark to make a playlist. 

February 5, 2014

Your post is going to be about a significant (or insignificant) memory where music plays a role. There are lots of directions you could go with this. I'll list a few topics that I could write about. My brother was six years younger than me and couldn't pronounce the "sh" sound. He always replaced it with a "t." Thus shoes became tues and our chevy was a tevy. He went through a phase (it lasted years actually) where he would do anything we asked him to. Spit at the birds, dance, whatever. At this point in his life singing was what we asked him to do the most. His sweet little baby voice singing "you can't be twenty on tugar mountain" is a really vivid memory for me. While my mother was the Neil Young fan in our house, he had been introduced to the song by my father. We all had.

Dad didn't love music with the same exuberance as my mother. She was a singer in a local band and sang constantly. In the grocery store she hummed, unless there was a song playing that she knew, then she belted it out. People would tell her she had a lovely voice. I would always watch these conversations from a distance. As soon as I was old enough to wander on my own I did. My mom would sing Elton John, Billy Joel, and Annie Lennox all with the same gusto and I wanted none of it, at least outwardly. On the inside I think I was a bit jealous of the fact that she could more than carry a tune and she and the rest of my siblings could have formed an even more youthful Partridge Family band. Mom would sing, Uriah would play the trumpet, Annah would play guitar, and Isaiah would just hang out on the drums or whatever.

Beginning of the Course "Stuff" (February 4th)

Some Basics

Before we go any further, I'd like to make you aware of a few expectations I have for this class (and all of my classes really).

1. Be present

I'm not just talking about being in the classroom, because we all know that we can be in a room and our minds can be elsewhere. To be present you need to turn off your phones and screens (unless you are truly only typing) and be here. Be in these moments. I plan on making them as engaging as possible and I need you to be present in order for this to work.

2. Late work

Any work handed in late (not emailed to me...actually handed in) will not exceed the standard.

I will not accept late work after two weeks.

I will have Academic Initiative AI grades.

• on time and amazing (super polished)  = 100
• on time and good (maybe a few errors) = 85. 
• one class period late = 65
• more than one class period late =50
• more than two weeks late (no credit for AI)

3. Respect

Be safe.

Be kind.

Be gentle. 

This is my mantra with my children and also in my classroom. Be kind to each other. Be gentle with your words and your actions. I sure hope I don't need to review safety :)

4. Work hard

If you work hard, then you will do fine.

Today we looked at the superbowl halftime show AND commercials. We looked for patterns in advertisements (effective or not) and came up with the following (there are more):

• funny
• kids
• animals
• emotional appeal
• music
• nostalgia
• celebrities

Your homework is to write a blog post about commercials or the halftime show. You need to include at least one link in your post. We also generated some ideas for this on the board. 

• look at the history of advertisements with a specific product
• discuss why an ad was/was not successful
• discuss the "hype" or "backlash" from an ad