Our pupils have created video tutorials kinect quizzes and demonstrations in our recording studio. The group also produced tutorials on how to use the software using Microsoft Screen Recorder. These tutorials show best practice of how to record vocals, drums and guitars. These videos have been added to the school network, our youtube channel and department website.

The purpose of this activity is not only to help with pupils work but also supporting a long term project ‘Willows Waves’ – our school podcast station and the creation of a new School album called ‘Belong, Believe, Achieve’. The pupils learnt the skills required by interacting with the kinect quizzes and watching and creating tutorials. Each year 10 music technology pupil takes on the responsibility of running Willows Waves and these new and fun resources will help the pupils learn the required skills to produce the shows. The videos and sound bites have also been added to a PowerPoint plex presentation which can be shown and navigated thorough an interactive whiteboard using a wii controller or the kinect managed by the pupils. Some of the tutorials made by the pupils have received over 13,500 hits on youtube.



For pupils to develop a series of interactive resources and video tutorials
-To share and support the learning of the lower school pupils
-To motivate pupils and to enhance their enjoyment of music and music technology using a variety of ICT skills and tools and by giving pupils the opportunity to be creative
-Create rich learning resources using the kinect SDK
-To share the success of students work with parents, other schools, local community and others
-We have developed this website www.askthemusicteacher.co.uk to showcase pupils work
-To leave a legacy of fun learning videos for future pupils
-Pupils to learn from the kinect resources and video tutorials to create a new album of pupils work to be shared on the net and the school community


Each year 10 music technology pupil takes on the responsibility of running Willows Waves, our podcast station. These new and fun resources will help the pupils learn the required skills to produce the shows. The videos and sound bites have also been added to a PowerPoint plex presentation which can be shown and navigated thorough an interactive whiteboard using wii controller managed by the pupils.

Design of the Learning Environment

All pupils planned their tutorials, researched it thoroughly and recorded and edited them. Lessons were very innovative using the kinect to pass on knowledge. Please visit this link to see the pupils using the kinect to learn the key words for music tech production. Pupils also looked at innovative ways of creating sound. Please see this tutorial created by a pupil that shows how to create sound on an ipad. This tutorial has received over 13,500 hits. The pupils were in charge of their own learning. They researched the topic, created an interactive resource around that topic and if it was a video tutorial hosted it on YouTube for a global audience. The pupils are using cutting edge technology in the classroom. They instantly become engaged. They worked together to aid problem solving, they were becoming very innvative and when you watch the tutorials and the end result of their projects you will be astonished at the quality they produced. They collaborated with other pupils and teachers from other schools to find out what their needs were and what support they needed, the pupils then made resources for the kinect and made tutorials to help others learn.


Songsmith, Photostory 3, Movie Maker, PowerPoint (with PPT Plex), Microsoft Screen Recorder, Cubase, Sony  Vegas, Audacity, Camtasia

  • Enhance motivation and enjoyment of Music Technology through a wide choice of ICT tools and by giving freedom to the children to be creative with ICT and with their ideas
  • Develop more independent and interdependent learners by giving children ownership over their own learning and responsibility for the learning of others.
  • To explore the wide variety of different technologies available to them.


Due to the success of the Music Technology course at Willows, numbers have grown over the past three years. This year has seen the biggest take up, because of this I have a few disaffected pupils who found the prospect of being sat down and listening to me talk at them frightening.  I believed that if I found an activity that would give them the power to learn about the recording process in ways they found naturally engaging, I would not only succeed in raising their motivation, but also they would understand the concepts of audio recording far better than being sat down and talked at. I told them that their videos and tutorials would help others learn in a fun and interactive way and would leave a legacy to pupils that would follow in future years. This gave them a purpose. The tutorials will help pupis with the running of the school podcast station Willows Waves.


The part of the curriculum our project covered was

  • P1 identify different forms of audio recording equipment and technology
  • M1 compare different forms of audio recording equipment and technology
  • D1 analyse different forms of audio recording equipment and technology
  • P2 explain the planning and organisation of recording sessions, within health and safety requirements
  • M2 explain, in detail, the planning and organisation of recording sessions, within health and safety requirements
  • D2 analyse the planning and organisation of recording sessions, within health and safety requirements.

This is taken directly from the Edexcel assignment brief aimed at producing a musical recording or podcast.


The group had access to the recording studio where we have Cubase 5 and Logic installed. Using the studio the group were able to experiment with different microphone types. By doing this they were able to find the best microphones for the sound to be captured. We used a variety of software such as songsmith for the Podcast news bed, Movie maker for our video tutorials, our willows waves podcast web site for broadcasting, Photostory 3 and PowerPoint Plex for delivering the presentation to the other classes. I know that pupils, parents and people from the wider community now regularly log on to willowswaves.co.uk to keep up to date with news and music produced by the pupils.


We decided as a group that we were going to create a bank of video tutorials that would help other pupils understand how best to record a variety of sound sources. We chose to concentrate recording drums, vocals and guitars. This would enable the group to have a clear understanding of recording a band as well as a single vocal line for a podcast. We developed a great variety of activities by simply brainstorming our ideas. The pupils then planned how they were going to create their resources and present them.

These are a few samples of the work produced by the pupils. I never could have imagined the outcomes we had. Below you will find two links to some videos, one of the groups who were involved in the project formed a band called Flowdem after seeing what the other pupils were producing. This group have now been signed by a major record label and have played some of the biggest venues in the UK. They got through to the semi final of Sky 1 ‘must be the music’ and have worked with some of the UK’s biggest grime artists. Their inspiration was the use of technology that switched them on while in school.

Guitar Tutorial

Drum Tutorial

Vocal Tutorial

IPAD MIDI Tutorial

Feedback

Parent Interview

Kinect Keyboard

Kinect Quiz

Kinect Spelling Test

Kinect PowerPoint Control

Kinect in the Classroom – Pupil’s Thoughts

Songsmith Tutorial


The impact the project had on the pupil’s


Interview with Flowdem


Music Video written and performed by pupil’s

Interview with pupil’s who gained 6 GCSE’s form Music Technoogy and gained 13 GCSE’s in total


BBC News Story on success of pupils

Click to read the News Story in the BBC Web Site

As a result of this project Flowdem are now signed to a record deal, they also won a European competition by making a music video about diversity, this would have been possible without the teaching resources and video tutorials they made.

Pupil’s winning Music Video about Diversity

Knowledge Building & Critical Thinking

When the pupils saw they were making good progress and that their work was going to be helping others they clearly become more engaged because they felt they were doing something worthwhile by producing these video tutorials. Some of these pupils were so disaffected that two of them had only just returned to school from exclusion. The group worked solidly on this project and after talking to their parents it was obvious how much they enjoyed it. They were working at home just as hard as they were working in school. The group was constantly in the studio and on the computers planning and editing. They found the concept of using a wii controller to their PowerPoint Plex presentation exciting. It gave it the wow factor.

Pupils demonstrated to be able to work interdependently and showed degrees of organization and collaboration I had not experienced before with this class.

Pupils and parents became more involved in their education and took responsibility for the learning of others. In fact, they produced a resource that, even when used by students from other classes, was very effective as a revision tool. The GCSE results of the pupils were the highest they achieved compared to any other subject in the school.

Extended Learning Beyond the Classroom

We used Edmodo to communicate out of the classroom, we live streamed their videos to classrooms around the world, all videos are hosted on YouTube and on the www.askthemusicteacher.co.uk web site.

Its also had an impact on the community, the music the pupils recorded has been taken into the local community and performed, hundreds of copies of our album ‘Believe, Belong, Achieve’ have been given out to all residents of our school community.

The project has changed these pupils lives in so many ways, one group of pupils have become big in the music world, signed to a label and appearing regularly on TV, the year 11 class that have only just left achieved 6 GCSE from Music Technology and are now studying in the most respected College in Cardiff.

Our New Album

‘Belong, Believe, Achieve’ by ritzertech

The School and the Community

My Classroom