Music and Lyrics

Music is a powerful tool to use as part of your teaching as it relates to students’ interests and provides a different learning medium. The song that I have downloaded (legally!) is a well-known Australian song “I’ve been everywhere man” by Geoff Mack. In the context of a Year 9 or 10 SOSE/Geography subject, we would listen to the song in class and students would have to list down 8 town names featured in the song. Using their Atlas, students would then have to go ahead and locate these towns, write down the state or territory it resides in and locate its’ longitude and latitudinal coordinates. This would be an effective activity when aiming to develop the students’ spatial knowledge.

Using music as an e-learning tool in this context of learning, it fits in with Oliver’s ICT Learning Design theory as music can be identified as an ICT ‘learning resource’ and used in this context would form the focus of a ‘learning task’ (Oliver, 1999).

Reference:
Oliver, R 1999, Learning Design: The Learning Design Construct, viewed 9 August 2009, http://www.learningdesigns.uow.edu.au/project/learn_design.htm.