It's All About The Music-SFSKIDS

I sometimes wonder if we realize the role music plays in our everyday lives; especially for children.  It seems as if they are wired to notice a rhythm, a beat, in everything.  On April 29, 2014 Larry Ferlazzo, educator, author and blogger at Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... featured the updated website of the San Francisco Symphony for children, SFSKIDS.  

At the home page for SFSKIDS a navigation bar offers users the following choices:

• Discover
• Listen
• Play
• Perform
• Conduct and
• Compose.

A search box is located at the far right of this list.  Beneath this is a welcome paragraph with an invitation to start.

Deciding to start before exploring the navigation bar, I clicked Let's Start!  You arrive at the Discover Music, Sea of Knowledge page.  In the lower right-hand corner you have the choice to visit the previous location, advance to the next location or enter the Sea of Knowledge.  Off to the Sea of Knowledge it is!

Here you learn about instruments, music and composers.  (This is the same page you can access by clicking on the Discover button at the top.) Your next window showcases three large bubbles with smaller bubbles attached.  The larger bubbles contain the most information (knowledge); the smaller bubbles show the links between the larger bubbles.  Once you select a larger bubble, more bubbles and links appear as shown in the images below.  I started with instruments.

The language used is easily understood but the depth, bubbles leading to other bubbles, is fantastic.  During your exploration of the Sea of Knowledge you can hear, softly in the backward, the roll of waves.  There are many opportunities to listen to music during the journey.

When you get to an actual picture of an instrument a short example of it being played begins.  You can zoom in on parts of each instrument.  If you select music or composers you can access a timeline.  Choosing a specific period will give you certain musical pieces.  A short history is given for each. 

Moving to Listen, you hear the sound of a babbling brook at the Music Streams page.  You can make a choice from the list of the music library or by category.  The categories are music by themes and music by composers.  For individual works you are given a time length, the ability to see and hear more on the theme and from that composer.  You can also return to the music library.

Under the Play category, Musical Skies, you have two games, Star Catcher and Mood Journey.  If you like a musical piece, click on it again.  You can use that music to play either of the games.  In the former you try to catch stars according to the beat of the music (your cursor is a conductor rabbit.) In the later words appear on the screen which may or may not reflect your mood as you listen to the music.  Click on any which are true for you.

Tweeting birds invite you to the Music Garden at the Perform page.  From a list of thirteen you pick an instrument. In play the scale a new window opens with a scale.  You click on the individual notes.  You are instructed how to play the instrument in feel the instrument.  With a combination of using your mouse and pressing number keys you pretend to play.  (It's really nifty how they do this.)

With sounds of an orchestra warming up, you are ready to Conduct at the Symphony Hall page.  After clicking on Let's Start! you are once again at the music library ready to learn.  You are first given a right hand beat pattern and a left hand gesture lesson.  Then you can follow or lead the conducting of a piece of music.  (This is great practice for hand/eye coordination and using the computer keyboard.)  Points are given for correctly following the beat.

Selecting the Compose tab takes you to Music Mountain.  When you click on Let's Start! for the first time, they advise you to do the Music Lessons first.  Then you can move on to Starting Tunes, Quick Start and Building a Staff.  The lessons taken in order are:

• The Basics
• Pitches
• Notes
• Rests
• Rhythm
• Tempo
• Instrumentation
• Dynamics
• More Dynamics and
• More Symbols.

Here is what the first page looks like.  Simple one sentence instructions pop up on the window guiding the user.  You are actually allowed to drag notes to the scale to create your own composition.  Then you have the ability to change options (music options) such as instrument, tempo and time signature.  Even at this early point you can share your newly created music giving it a name and your name as composer.  A URL link is supplied.  Here is the link to my first composition.  If you click on the down arrow by more additional choices appear.

I feel so fortunate that I discovered this website through a tweet appearing in my feed from Larry Ferlazzo.  The designers and developers of these pages did a marvelous job of providing step-by-step instructions, offering help when necessary and making the learning of all things music interesting and fun.  I highly recommend use of this website, SFSKIDS.

Jack And The Giant Would Be Surprised---Been for Education

Six weeks ago Heather Moorefield, Education Librarian at Virginia Tech and chairperson for the American Association of School Librarians Best Websites for Teaching & Learning mentioned on Twitter (this woman is tireless in her efforts to provide her followers with the most up-to-date news) about a newly launched application.  This free service allows users to create collections of web-based information.  When I initially looked at the site I felt it might not be appropriate in an educational setting.  Imagine my surprise when looking at it last week to see a new sister site for K-12 educators.  It was released on March 18, 2014!

In Been for Education (to shorten the features' section):

• a safe, dynamic way for your students to discover and share in collaborative learning is provided
• classes become social networks...wrapped in its own protective "bubble"
• Beens are unique based upon the creator(s) or collaborators, teacher(s) and students
• Beens are instantly adaptable to a single user or multiple classrooms; you decide how many will participate and
• you choose the right form of collaboration; a student can go at their own pace, multiple students can chat together or by using the Surfing Together option students can go to the same page at the same time.

When going to the home page you can first view four short video introductions about Been, This is a Been, Create a Been, Gather Together and Surf Together.

Beneath these videos you can access even more information in the form of Tour, Get Started, About, Blog, Get Been, FAQ, Contact, Privacy Policy and Terms.  At this point I would like to note the excellent support given by the Been team, particularly Dave Yoon.  I had several questions during my exploration of the site. Through a series of emails all my queries received replies in mere minutes.  This is a huge plus!  The FAQ section is extremely beneficial.

To begin using the application click on Sign Up Now located in the upper right-hand corner of the home page. This brings you to the registration window.  If you are signing up as an educator, make sure to select that button.  It will take you to another window. All the fields (5) plus the two check boxes need to be filled-in.  My account was quickly activated.

The next step is to acquire the Been add-on for the browser of your choice.  I use Google Chrome exclusively at this time.  A tiny icon, Been, appeared in the upper right-hand corner of my tool bar and in the lower right-hand area of any web page I access.

Each generated Been can be for your own use, to use with colleagues or to use with students.  When you log in you are taken to your profile (home) page. At this page you can (1) view your account, (2) view your Beens, (3) go to other created Beens, searching by keyword, nineteen categories and sort by members, pages and age, (4) search Been, (5) check messages (this takes you to your account page) and (6) add a new Been.  I like the note which popped up advising me I could drag and drop pages from one Been to another.

Before creating a Been let's look over the Account page.  It's where you can manage your Beens and activities related to them.  Any of your Messages can be deleted by clicking on Actions.  You have the choice to make your Comment public or not.  For each comment it shows From, To, Page, Comment and Date. (Comments are added to pages in your Been.) In the Contact section you list their username, first and last name, educator status and whether they can initiate a surf together action. (You control your students' ability to do this.) There is also a tab to Create/Add Students. Within Settings you control the basics of your account. At this point I am not sure what the Cookie Been is.  

When you click on the Add New Been icon an additional smaller screen appears.  This asks you to give your Been a name, select a Been design, import (upload) student files and create your Been.  Your new Been is shown above the Add New Been icon. My newest Been is titled Mock Caldecott 2015 Illustrators.

Begin adding pages to your Been by going to websites.  A green Been hovers in all your accessed websites. (It's a faint gray with a question mark if you are not logged in.)  Click on it to see all your Beens.  Mousing over a particular Been will give you the option to see any pages in that Been (arrow on top) or to go to the management page for that particular Been (tiny magnifying glass). You can enable other members to add pages to this Been. (Invite)  If invited members are on the same page at the same time they can comment as if they are chatting.  When you do this, the icon changes to little people.  (The title of your Been also appears.) 

Management page for my Mock Caldecott 2015 Illustrators Been

When I selected my Been for Mock Caldecott 2015 Illustrators at a web page I wanted to add, a comment window appeared.  After typing in the comment, choose the enter key to complete the task.  A small yellow square indicates comments are available.

These next two images show (1) all the web pages added to my Been and (2) the newly added comments on the Been's management page. When you mouse over the pages (1) the URL and comment can be viewed.  You can also delete the page here.  From the comments page (2) you can access any of the web pages or delete the comment. 

In addition to inviting others to comment along with you on the same page, Been for Education allows members to Surf Together.  This is an amazing feature.  It is best explained by this video created by the developers.  

After a Been is made the portal page also shows thumbnails of each added web page, allows someone to comment (write a note) about the entire Been by choosing About (1) or you can send your Been to someone via email (2). Here is the link to my Been, Mock Caldecott 2015 Illustrators.  

Been for Education is a very impressive website.  The services available for educators are outstanding in every respect.  The past six hours have flown by as I tried all the elements.  I highly recommend this website.  

A Singular Presence On The Web--Striking.ly

Making The Best Web 2.0 Applications for Education in 2012 list by Larry Ferlazzo, educator and blogger at Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... and receiving a recommendation on Twitter by Heather Moorefield-Lang, Education Librarian at Virginia Tech and former and new chair of the American Association of School Librarians Best Websites for Teaching and Learning, plus favorable reviews in notable tech news, Striking.ly is a web 2.0 application designed to create

gorgeous, mobile-optimized sites in minutes. 

It features ease of use with one screen for all your work and a simple click for editing.  Other options are:

• search engine optimized so your site can be easily found
• your page can be quickly connected to social media
• page analytics and
• comment form and email form to your page.

To register for this free service enter in your email address, a password and your first name. Click on the green GET STARTED. IT'S FREE! green button.  You are then taken to a new screen, your Striking.ly dashboard.

On the left-hand side of your dashboard,  the column allows you to view your sites, go to your account (edit profile, change email/password, view invoices, change plan and close account, upgrade ($8.00 and $16.00 per month plans), rewards (ways to go Pro for a week by promoting Striking.ly in social media) and logout.  In the center are three categories from which to chose your template for your site; Your Business or Project, Your Personal Site and Your Portfolio.  In the far right lower corner is a small question mark where you can access help in the form of browsing articles, browse ideas and sending a message or feedback.  

The first category on the left contains five templates, the next, three and the final one, four.  For educational (classroom), professional purposes, the personal site or the portfolio site templates appear to have the most potential.  But for personal use, creating a presence quickly, they would both work well.  The personal site templates could be used to create a biographical page for a person from history.  To keep track of or showcase books read during a specific time period, I can see using one of the portfolio templates.

To experiment with the application I decided to use one of the portfolio templates for some of my favorite picture books (potential Mock Caldecott candidates) read to date.  When you mouse over a template the design name is shown, you can immediately begin to edit or see an example.  Upon clicking edit, you are taken to your work space.

On the left is your toolbar. At the top you have the choices of save, publish, exit or settings. You have the option to preview your site on the screen, tablet or phone.  Beneath this you can alter section by section; renaming them or deciding to hide them from the web site header on the upper right.  A new section can be added to the template along with a link to a blog or other links.  Every item in the template, when moused over, can be edited. 

When I moused over and clicked on the Echo Rocket logo and clicked Edit, my options were to upload, effects, remove, add link and add description.  Upon selecting Upload, a new screen appeared with eleven places from which to obtain images.  The Effects tab yielded a similar array of choices for altering the selected image.  At this point I am beginning to be amazed at the sharp-looking single web page which can be created using this application.  I added a link and a description to the image I choose.

When you mouse over and click edit for any of the text portions, you can make it bold, italics or underlined, add or remove a link, use two types of bulleted text and justify your margins four different ways.  You can choose to have heading or text font size.  Continue editing the template until you have the site you desire.  Make sure to save and preview before you publish.

Clicking the Publish button gives you a chance to share on Facebook or Twitter, and copy the URL link.  You can always change the last portion of the link to make it more personal.  When finished here click exit to go back to your dashboard.


Striking.ly has enough options within the templates to personalize a single page site.  The design and layout of all the templates within the three categories are clean and sophisticated.  Once you have the elements you wish to add to your chosen template, the page can be created quickly with ease.  I highly recommend this new web 2.0 application.

Here is a screen capture of a portion of my page after editing the Echo Rocket template shown above.

Here is a link to my created web page for Mock Caldecott 2014.  By clicking on the images they can be enlarged and scrolled through as if in a slide show.

Follow this link to my review of Tackk which lists links to all the other web page creation tools I have reviewed.