Last week my Sydney Conservatorium of Music Technology in Music Education (#SCMtech) students handed in their main project, worth 50% of the course marks. It’s an interactive iBook, designed for elementary or middle school music education, but also you’ll find they’ve shared equivalent resources to be printed or burned onto CD for schools that don’t have iBooks programs. The marking rubric puts the focus on content, but rewards design and presentation as well as innovative use of the technology.
The students are sharing the iBooks and other resources from their websites, also created as part of the course. You can download them for free and use them in your own teaching or to teach yourself/your students at their own pace. The following list represents hundreds of hours of work so please reward these talented students by posting feedback on their pages if you like their work.
Genre-based resources
Introduction to Rock Music by Lachlan
Introduction to 12 Bar Blues by Jay
Piano Music – Romantic to Pop by Merinda
Playing Guitar and the Blues by Edward
Jazz for year 8s, based on Summertime by Annabelle
Instrument-based resources
Guitar for beginners by Jordan
Introduction to Drums by Johnny
Playing Guitar and the Blues by Edward
Repertoire-based resources
Antarctica by Nigel Westlake, by Erin
Coldplay’s Viva La Vida by Tyler
Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds by Joel
The Lord of the Rings soundtrack by Tom
Disclaimer: As part of this course students learn about copyright, creative commons, correctly crediting authors and school licensing. The legal “hard-lines” are explained, and the “grey areas” too. Therefore there shouldn’t be any use of copyright material in the following resources, but if there is, it is the responsibility of the student who has published it, and educational use is assumed.
James Humberstone 
6 responses to “#SCMtech educational iBooks go live – download them free!”
You say at the beginning of this article that these iBooks can be viewed in other formats.
When it comes to Apple (iPod, iPad, Mac), I have no knowledge. I do not use any of these platforms.
So….how can I convert them to cd so that I may use them in my classroom?
Is there some simple way I am not privy to?
We do not have internet access in my classroom, so reading them on the cloud is not an option.
Thank you!
Gayle
Hi Gayle,
On each of the websites there is a link to other resources in addition to the iBook. These are typically PDF or Word documents, and in some cases students have also provided videos and audio files that they have made.
All of these resources can be downloaded, printed out and so on. In the case of audio and video you’ll need to burn them onto a CD or DVD.
Don’t try to do anything with the iBook files themselves, because those can only be opened on an iPad. But all of the content is available in the other documents, apart from any interactive contents that is unique to the iPad.
If there is any particular content you’re having problem with, let me know and I’ll try to help. It may be worth trying a few website first.
Best,
James
Wow – this is a great inspiration. I’ll pass the link on to some of my collegues working with teacher education.
Thanks so much Eldar! Yes, please spread the message…
Great examples – The New Music book is great fun. I wonder if Liz has heard the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s piece played on rubbish bins? It’s one of her activities. Enjoyed the flow of the book and examples such as improvisations on “Bird’s” Ornithology.
Yes, Liz’s work is incredible isn’t it? I’m amazing how the students responded to this challenge – it’s all about the content of course, but it looks great too!