Teaching+Using+Spotify

=SPOTIFYis a program that allows students to play music tracks and create/share playlists from a comprehensive archive of music tracks. It takes place in a completely legal environment supported by ads, (mostly promoting the platform itself) with an optional subscription element. Educators now have the opportunity leverage the appeal of music and the social aspect of Spotify to create engaging lessons and meaningful social interactions between students.=



USES OF SPOTIFY FOR EDUCATORS/GUIDING QUESTIONS

 * Listening to music**: How can having students listen to music create or augment a standards aligned learning experience? Can we use appropriate musical cues to “prime” student learning before we teach? How can students learn from listening to and analyzing music tracks?


 * Creating a playlist:** How can choosing a set of songs lead to a greater understanding of a topic or an idea? How can curating a soundtrack become evidence for understanding of class concept?


 * Sharing with peers:** How can we use the fun, social aspect of music to promote interpersonal learning? How can we have students broaden each others' taste in music, or realize what they have in common?


 * Creating a new avenue for student creativity:** How can we make Spotify the backbone of a new creative experience not usually connected with our field?


 * Conscientious consumption of music:** How can we make students aware that __this__ model is different, and more ethical, than downloading songs illegally?

ENGLISH

 * Listening to music:** Play ambient/instrumental music during do now's and writing prompts (creative or otherwise) to stimulate thinking.

Have students choose a song and analyze the style conventions of the textual lyrics as a way to prepare for explicating poetry in a more familiar and accessible context.


 * Creating a playlist:** Have students curate a movie soundtrack for a work of literature being covered in class. Soundtracks will include selections for protagonist theme, antagonist theme, setting theme, love story/romantic interest theme, etc. Students not only have to choose a song, but provide a rationale as to why it was chosen based on a defensible link to the text or its themes.

Have students create their list of “ALL TIME FAVORITE SONGS, (chosen using parts of speech & other terms that makes Mr. Vergara happy)” that asks them to list their favorite songs while applying English-classroom terminology to song titles. For example:

Favorite song whose title is a NOUN Favorite song whose title contains a PRONOUN Favorite song whose title contains an ADVERB Favorite song whose title is a DECLARATIVE STATEMENT Favorite song whose title is an INTERROGATIVE STATEMENT Favorite song whose title is a COMPLETE SENTENCE Favorite song whose title is written in the PRESENT PARTICIPLE Favorite song whose title is a SIMILE

CHALLENGE: Find a song whose title is a COMPOUND SENTENCE


 * Creating a New Avenue for Student Creativity** Have students select a song that they feel is emblematic of the class' essential question. Combine each student's entry into a class playlist and choose 2 or 3 really good ones to make a “trailer” for the unit/essential question in Photostory or iMovie. Make both the playlist and YouTube available and easily accessible online for future reference when next year's class comes to this unit. Show it to them in anticipation of the next unit.


 * Sharing with Peers:** As practice in writing in a mode other than critical lens, students can pair up and create individual 3-song mixtapes, exchange them, then respond and critique one another's playlist in a review. The teacher can elucidate how this process mirrors writing a critical lens essay. A generalization about the playlist is akin to one's thesis or position; in paragraphs a more focused assertion is made about the playlist and the point is argued through analyzing the music instead of text. Responding back to the criticism gracefully in a follow-up assignment can show them how to respect someone's dissenting point-of-view, thus preventing the creation of a future internet troll.

HISTORY

 * Listening to music:** Play period-appropriate music during unit introductions in order to present students with a living cultural artifact that represents the time and place. Ex: playing drum and fife music before a Revolutionary War lesson, jazz music before a Harlem Renaissance unit, etc.

Play music that tells a story about a historic event before learning about that event as a way of receiving “one side of the story”. Ex: Bob Dylan's - //The Hurricane// and the story of Reuben Carter; Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's - //Ohio// and the Kent State shootings.

Have students select one phrase from Billy Joel's - //We Didn't Start the Fire// to become an expert on during your class' coverage of the era that the song refers to.

Play music that interprets a historical figure's experience to help students understand the point-of-view of that person. Billy Joel - //Goodnight Saigon// and soldiers in Vietnam; The Band - //The Night they Drove Ol' Dixie Down// and the fall of the South; The Band - //Acadian Driftwood// and the experience of displaced people who later became Cajuns; The Clash – //Spanish Bombs// and the Spanish Civil War


 * Creating a Playlist:** Have students create a playlist of protest songs from the Civil-Rights/Vietnam Era as a way of understanding 1) popular opinion about these historic events; 2) the arts (specifically music) as a force that mobilizes the populace into action.


 * Sharing with Peers:** Have students create a “time-capsule” of music and pictures that they believe will be useful in understanding their generation 20 years from now, as a way of understanding how we process information about earlier generations in the same way.

MATH/SCIENCE:

 * Listening to Music:** Have the whole class divide up and analyze the top 50 songs in the country for characteristics such as genre, age of performer, gender of the performer, individual performer or band, musical instruments used, beats per minute, record label, weeks on the chart, etc. Divide up the work of graphing this information in different ways (bar graphs, pie charts, line graphs) and use the resulting graphs and charts to answer questions such as these the next day:


 * 1) I want to have a child that sings for a living and makes plenty of money for my retirement— according to our data, I should cross my fingers for a BOY or GIRL (circle one).
 * 2) If singing doesn't work out, would bass lessons be a good idea for trying to find them work?
 * 3) I want to start a successful music group, but have to choose between hiring a keyboardist or a sax player. According to statistics, I should hire___ first.
 * 4) My songwriter is trying to sell me a slow ballad (about 67 beats per minute). Have a lot of songs that slow (under 70) broken the top ten lately? How many are there now?
 * 5) It's my first day out in Hollywood and I've already been approached by 6 major record labels! I'm all about the music and I just wanna sign with one of the middle-of-the-road record labels because I hear they're more receptive to my input as an //artiste.// Based on the data that you've collected, could you refer me to one such record label?
 * 6) I only want to go on tour with acts that are relevant NOW. Which of these stats weed out acts that are stuck in last month, or that will be played out by the time our tour begins?

For a physics class, the teacher can have students compare an acoustic track to a studio-produced track to help explain how sound-waves can be converted into electronic information and then manipulated to create a different sounding, more sustained, note.


 * Creating a New Avenue for Student Creativity:** Using karaoke tracks that are abundant on Spotify, students can create educational song parodies in the style of Bill Nye the Science Guy ca. 1993. Lyrics for songs can be refit to help teach a concept or a process in science, or serve as a mnemonic device for some of the information in math classes that needs to be memorized by students.

SPANISH/FOREIGN LANGUAGE:

 * Listening to Music:** Music can be used to express the diversity of the Spanish speaking world. //Salsa// music made by //Nuyorique// //ñ// //os// is different from //Merengue// from the Dominican Republic. Pop music from Spain is different from more traditional //Flamenco// music in the same way that our top 20 artists are different from the Boston Pops. By showing students the multiplicity of genres of Spanish music, they will be shown that there are a multiplicity of unique cultures and that use the Spanish language. One suggestion, finding covers of the same song in different styles. For example, hearing The Gipsy Kings' Spanish-language (the band is technically French though) //Flamenco// version of the Eagles' //Hotel California// and Marc Anthony's //Salsa// infused English version can really highlight the difference amongst both Spanish musical styles as well as our own music. This is a more multi-modal alternative to traditional cultural awareness lessons that are usually only textual/visual.


 * Sharing with Peers:** Students can use the exchange and critique of one another's playlists as an opportunity to practice asking for and giving one another's opinions in a foreign language, and using nouns and adjectives related to music in conversation.

//Por ejemplo://

//Alicia: Gregorio, Que te parece como este cancion?// [plays metal song] //Gregorio: Este cancion es muy fuerte y demasiado rapido-- y, para mi, los miembros no pueden cantar. No me gusta!//

CONTENT MANAGEMENT
Spotify (being as comprehensive as it is) has quite a lot of content on it that is inappropriate for the school setting—a meeting with administration about mitigating the risk of students sharing music containing adult themes and vulgarity would have to happen. There are 2 basic approaches to this problem: alert parents and students of the possibility of running into some objectionable content and get their permission before their child could participate in the Spotify lesson; OR you could manage the inappropriate content on the student side by establishing a student contract delineating what kind of content will not be tolerated (violence, abuse, racism, misogyny, explicit sexual lyrics) and the contexts under which limited profanity will be allowed. The contract can explicitly state that //“...the administration is being very trusting towards grades 7-12 by allowing us to teach using Spotify—but they will not tolerate any misuse of the program. Abuse of this privilege by violating any of these stated rules, or opening Spotify on a school computer during unauthorized times will result in the ENTIRE district losing their opportunity to have fun sharing their musical tastes with their classmates. Spotify will be wiped from school computers.”// This manages student behavior by holding them accountable for the rest of their peers in addition to themselves. You wouldn't want it to get out that you ruined Spotify projects for the entire school district, would you? The safest way to handle this, perhaps, would be to use both approaches--delineating and enforcing student consequences, and securing parental support.