Garageband Can Make You Young Again

In the past week, I’ve thoroughly been enjoying my freedom to learn and explore whatever the heck I want. I’m excited and inspired by the start of the new school year, a feeling I wish for every educator. Below is a roundup of resources that got my wheels spinning.

• ISTE Atlanta (Favorites include EdHack, Playgrounds, Posters, Ignite Sessions)
• My 2nd and 3rd E-books “Reinventing Writing” and “Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering and Engineering in The Classroom
• The fact that our superintendent picked “Think Like a Freak” for the leadership book club following last year’s “Drive“
• The idea of using individualized Exploration Plans to guide and differentiate teacher support
• Jane Bluestein’s Talk on creating Win-Win Classrooms (phraseology and choices for students)

Tonight I spent the night tinkering on the iPad app Garageband. As I played around, here are some of the things that ran through my mind.

…Is that me making that music? How can this be? Wow.

…This is so fun.

…What if kids had this kind of fun at school?

…What if teachers had this kind of fun, at school?

This kind of fun comes from the delight of discovery. There are no expectations, no agendas, no grades, just thinking and Ahas! Inspired by ISTE and Garageband, the 2014-15 school year will see Playgrounds for PD.

Here are classroom applications I thought of during my playtime.

Use Garageband to:

• establish mood or tone of historical figures, places, or time periods, characters, settings
•  act as background music for a story, comic, or movie

Thanks to Spotify for keeping me going after my Garageband jam session. Also, thank you for keeping me focused on the massive chasm between learners’ personal world and what the world looks like in school. My job is to help bridge the gap.