GarageBand: Ideas for the Classroom

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There are countless ways to use GarageBand in your classroom! Here is just a small list of ideas:
  • Cross-curricular topics
  • Collaborate with other communities to gather data and information
  • Create iBooks
  • How-to Videos
  • Create and print books to donate to other communities/countries - research the culture of whatever you are reporting on and compose music that matches
  • Compose music to go along with any presentation 
  • Teach math when talking about beats and measures, and patterns
  • Relate time signatures to fractions
  • Music Theory - chords, timing, rhythm, notes, major vs minor, time/key signatures, effects, instruments
  • Teach rests in music by looking for the points in the audio recordings where the rests are (where they don't see the sound waves)
  • Create music that expresses a work of art, color, or shapes
  • Compose movie soundtracks
  • Work in cooperative groups
  • Record nursery rhymes
  • Create book projects
  • Science sound lessons (wave length)
  • Grade-level program rehearsal (record accompaniment with a USB piano keyboard)
  • Podcasts
  • Record interviews
  • Record reading fluency
  • Create song parodies - For example: History Teachers on YouTube, Rockstar Camp, Diane Main
  • Record song vocals with background music or karaoke tracks (be careful with copyright)

Uses:

1.  Songwriting
2.  Soundtrack creation
3.  Podcasting and digital storytelling

Limitations:

1.  GarageBand only runs on Apple operating systems.
2.  GarageBand projects are difficult to change to .mov file format.

Documentation:

GarageBand: Mac OS vs. iOS
GarageBand User Guide

Links:

GarageBand Resources:Song Parody Examples & Resources:
Last edited by:Katie Blunt