Listening to Learn
Multimedia in Education: Music
Recently I have become a little obsessed with the idea of music as a companion to both literature and learning. Personally I find this new interest a bit puzzling, since I’m not a particularly musical person and I don’t know very much about music theory or history; I’m hoping that this is the start of a shift.
A few months ago I helped pull together some sources for an ELA teacher who was teaching the book The Things They Carried. She wanted her students to do a research project on the Vietnam War Era, and especially wanted to look at cultural elements like music. As I pulled together resources I realized this is an area that, despite loving history, I know woefully little about. It was also the first time I had realized podcasts and playlists might be great resources to include in a research guide! A few students in the class got very interested in the role of protest music. Secondly, for our summer reading guide we had a “playlist” theme, and suggested two songs to capture the mood of each book. I went down quite the rabbit hole. Many authors create and post playlists that capture the characters or events of a novel. A lot of the books we chose have music as a theme, mentioning specific songs or artists to evoke emotion, character, mood. My favorite rabbit hole was for the book I Must Betray You, by Ruta Sepetys, which takes place during the Romanian Revolution. I came across this blog post. Bruce Springsteen is mentioned in the book, and from that I learned about his concert in East Berlin in 1988 and the rousing political ramifications. This also reminded me of the social, emotional, and political role punk music has in MSLA nominee Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray. The book James, by Percival Everett, uses musical motifs and storylines to express both protest and oppression. This blog post analyzes the role of music in James, in a way that I found fascinating (and made me bump James even higher on my TBR!)
All this to say, I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of music in both politics and literature. I’ve been stopping to listen to a song if it’s mentioned in a book I’m reading, and have been itching to learn more about the history of both protest music and the influence of black music on American pop culture.
There’s something I’m circling around here about how music adds a unique element to our understanding of history, or to a novel, or really anything. If part of our job as librarians is to offer media that opens students to other experiences - the now library-famous mirrors, windows, and doors - we could do worse than to turn to music. Music is particularly good at expressing feelings that are hard to put into words, and for creating a shared emotional experience. It can support the development of empathy and emotional literacy. Pair that with literature? With learning about a historical period? Stories from another cultural context? Powerful!
So the question I’ve been noodling over is this: as librarians and educators, how do we incorporate a musical dimension into our practice?
Ideas include:
Including musical pieces in lessons on how to analyze primary sources.
Curated playlists around specific topics.
Sharing playlists for highlighted books (especially if there is a library bookclub!)
Play (quiet) music in the library.
This might be best done with instrumental pieces only, but we could also create playlists for particular events or around monthly themes.
Multimedia in Education: Podcasts
Podcasts are a medium that I have enjoyed personally for years, but it’s only been recently that I started thinking about their educational potential. The biggest barrier I can see to effective classroom use is how long they often are.
For me the best thing about podcasts is the same thing I love about audiobooks - I can listen and think about them while doing something else with my hands (driving, dishes, crafts).
Ideas for how to use podcasts:
Play while students finish working on a poster project.
Make related coloring sheets and visual note takers to doodle/draw/color while listening.
Homework, or “flipped classroom” situations.
As an option from a choiceboard or choose-your-own activity class.
Create your own podcast as a project assignment.
As a librarian, I love the idea of curating podcast lists for students to browse and listen on their own, or including them as resources on research guides alongside books and websites.
NYT podcasts
Halfway through last year, our district subscribed to expanded access to the New York Times. In addition to all the publications and apps, this means that teachers and students now have access to all of the New York Times podcasts. I have listened to a few episodes of the podcast 1619, and think it could be an excellent teaching resource.
To support students and teachers taking advantage of this opportunity, I have created a tutorial video walking them through how to activate their NYT account, and then how to subscribe to the podcasts.
To make this video I used screencastify. I haven’t this platform much, and while it has a lot to commend it — you can link the videos directly to google classroom, create assessments, etc. — for pure video creation I found it clunky, not very flexible, and slow.
At the risk of putting all my eggs in one basket, I think I’ll be sticking with canva in the future. To be honest, I would have re-done this video entirely but I had already had filmed many takes and sometimes done is better than good.
