More on RSS Feeds

Quick update on RSS.  A previous blog posted here showcased an "In Plain English" youtube vid which showed us what/why RSS feeds:

Previous blog

Here is a new, more informed web link from http://mustech.net/ shows a whole lot more!

http://feedpass.com/mustechentries

Seating Charts Made Easy-er!

A few posts-ago, I had bliggity blogged about using Word and Excel to help create large-scale seating charts.

http://bandroomtech.blogspot.com/2011/02/seating-charts-using-word-excel.html

Bands can be quite large after all.  Recently however, I came across Lucidchart, which basically has all the features that word does, but then ups the ante by being web-based and super fast and user friendly.

Above is an screenshot of a chart I made for my 7th grade band using the free account.  Now, Lucidchart says that it limits the user to about 60 objects per chart, but as you can see from the above image, there are over 90 students in the combined 7th grade band, so I must have misread something.  Regardless, it is super easy to make a seating chart and more importantly, FAST.  Try it out and see!

Escape from the MEAP

The following video needs a bit of an explanation before viewing.

I used to teach a music appreciation class.  Part of the assignment for students was to listen to music without lyrics, such as the 1812 Overture and see if they could tell where/how the story fits into the music.  This started with an assignment where students make a poster board size comic strip detailing the adventures of Napolean's army as it invades Russia.  Starting with the chorale section at the beginning of 1812 where Russian's are a peaceful people, the story goes on until the climactic war between the French and Ruskies, cannonball shooting and all.  (they liked drawing the cannonballs the most)

Then the process was reversed.  We would start with a tune, sometimes from a movie soundtrack.  They would then make their own story as we listened to the music as a class.  I would take notes as the class would brainstorm ideas in conjunction with where the music was taking them.  We would then hash out a plot based on what we heard.

The resulting video was titled, "Escape from the MEAP" (The MEAP is a Michigan standardized test) based off the music of John William's "March of the Slave Children".  Enjoy!

Screen Capture Greatness

Up until recently, my go-to app for screen capture has been Jing from techsmith.  But after a recent in-service day at school, I was exposed to http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/

This could be the most simplistic, FREE, user friendly tutorial video making online/offline software yet.  Finish your tutorial and save as .FLV, .AVI and MP4.  Jing makes you pay just to save it in .MP4 format!  The default for Jing is SWF, which is about as useful as a Laserdisc or floppy drive.

So for me, I'm going to let my useless subscription to jing expire, because there is a BETTER, FREE option.  Make mine screencast-o-matic.