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I have been working with teachers over the last fortnight to look at how ICT can be embedded into all of the foundation subjects. One thing we looked at was how to use ICT to support a topic on musical rounds. We looked at how Audacity could be used to record a single track of the round (e.g. Londons Burning) and then by copying it and sliding it on multiple tracks it could be used to create a round.

As we worked through the process it actually highlighted certain technical elements of the round itself. (e.g. London’s Burning London’s Burning needs to take the same amount of time as ‘Fetch the Engines Fetch the Engines’) The recording provided a visual representation of the need for these sections to be the same length of time.

Implementing the idea in a lesson.

There are many different ways of introducing this idea, but we decided that as the pupils hadn’t seen the software or done much recording before, we would use the projector as a display and record the whole class singing the single track. The Audacity file would then be saved for the class to access over the school network.

Finally, pupils would be shown how to copy the sound onto additional tracks, realign the tracks to form ‘a round’ and how to delete sections of unwanted sound.

The pupils would then open the file and try to produce their versions of the round.

Feedback

I am interested to know if anyone has used this type of software in a similar way before and if it has been successful etc. I am also interested to know if small numbers of computers have been used at any one time, or if all of the class have worked on the project at once.

Any comments will be gratefully received.

I will let you all know how the lesson goes.