Free Tickets to Disneyland – For a Fundraiser

Image by Express Monorail via Flickr

Like every other music teacher in the world I am always looking for a great fundraiser idea. My ideof a great fundraiser is anything that makes me 100% profit. 

Well here are some links to amusement parks that offer tickets to schools that they can auction off for fundraisers.

I have currently only done the Disneyland one but it worked like a charm I have been told to expect them in the mail any day now.

Let me know if you have any luck with these as well.

Disneyland:

http://www.wdwpublicaffairs.com/HTMLContent.aspx?PageId=3a333824-3752-41ba-85ef-97d7a2af955e

Universal Studios:

http://www.universalstudioshollywood.com/tic_req.php

6 Flags:

http://www.sixflags.com/magicMountain/community/DonationRequests.aspxSea World:
http://www.seaworld.com/SitePage.aspx?PageID=159

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Sight Singing Assesments… ideas?

Image by Tiago Daniel via Flickr

Someone recently asked me how do I effectively assess my students’ ability to sight sing?

Well I must confess I don’t do any formal assessments but I definitely try to do in class assessments of my students abilities regularly. We have a sight singing book and some single line exercises from past regional auditions. Everyday we try to do a few examples before we get to the “meat” of the rehearsal.

The problem with the tests in my opinion is it takes too much time. After we have done an example as a class I try to have different students do the examples either by themselves in front of the class or if they are really struggling then with another student. So all the while I am assessing my students but not in any official way.

So I am asking for suggestions on a better way to do this and yet still not spend a ton of time on it either. All ideas are welcome 

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#stuffstudentssay

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Support the new twitter tag#stuffstudentssay

We all know that there are many times everyday that your students say something that you just want to share. So next time that happens jump on twitter, add the#stuffstudentssay tag and share it with all of us. Don’t use names of course but anonymous is good. 

Here  are a few twitter users/supporters

@dougbutchy @Zweibz7 @kgard @KFreesen

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Are Your Wireless Microphones Illegal?

Image by Neil Crosby via Flickr

According to the FCC there is a good chance you are going to be using illegalwireless microphones unless you have purchased them recently.

The  FCC has banned the use of certain wireless microphones as thegovernment clears the way for moremobile devices.

These mics use the 700 megahertz (MHz) frequency band and have until June 12 to change the radio frequencyor buy new equipment, according to a Jan. 15 ruling by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Go to the following article for more details: Wireless mic frequency change could affect schools

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Great Band Resource

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When I use Twitter I love it. (@kgardFollow me 
Recently I asked for help on finding good beginning level music and a couple people came to my aid.

@musicwms Sent me some great concert program she had done with some great options and also this link http://pdfbandmusic.com/ Check it out its got some great music on here and the song on the front page is FREE  Got to love that.

kylew pointed out a series called flex-band by Hal Leonard that is great for my small band that doesn’t always have the best instrumentation available.

Thanks for the great suggestions.

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ipad in Music Ed

Image by d!zzy via Flickr

So what does the new ipad mean for music educators. Right now nothing. But the possibilities are pretty cool and it is fun to speculate about. I can see the day where every student is assigned an ipad like device, whether it is an “ipad” who knows but for the sake of argument well say it is. We could basically do away with text booksand most of our paper products in general, including sheet music.

This could be good and bad I guess but since were just having fun lets stick to the good.

- Prices of music could come down cutting out material/delivery costs.

- You could have instant delivery of purchased music.

Image by Tom Raftery via Flickr

- Publishers could update their material wirelessly, preventing errors.

-You could have music attached to some sort of software that could play aurally the notes for students.

- Kids would have this resource with them at all time

- Could send sight-reading examples directly to each students ipad.

- Music theory worksheets with instant feed back and tutorials.

These are just a few of the ideas I had right off. What benefit could you see?

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High Speed Rail and Music Ed.

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It may not at first sight look to have anything to do with music ed. But in my opinion this could be a pretty big deal. In my district the biggest cuts I have seen for me have been travel cuts.

I lived in Europe for 2 years where I did not own a car or bike or any other form of transportation besides my feet and guess what? I was able to get all over the cities  and even country I lived in whenever I wanted for very cheap compared to owning a car.

I am not a huge “we all need to go green” fan but I do think we should take care of our environment and if we can save a buck or two along the way then sign me up.

I know embarking on the unknown is always a tricky thing but when it comes topublic transportation we only need to look across the ocean. They don’t have it perfect but they have already done the testing for us. No we can take what they have learned and build an even better system that will help us cut costs here.

So in 20 years when I take my music tour I hope we are loading into a high-speed train to carry us to our destination.

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