Workshop Presenter: Mike Reilly mreilly@lanierhs.org http://cdat.lanierhs.org
Time: 9:00am - 3:00pm Monday - Thursday, Friday 9:00am - 12:00pm
Location: Health Systems Institute (HSI), Room 207
Parking: We will have parking vouchers for you. Please for refer to the Parking and Driving Directions to HSI.
Workers: Megan and Morgan
Thanks to generous funding from the National Science Foundation and the Hudgens Foundation, a) there is no cost to attend the workshop for those who are accepted, and b) we are able to support travel expenses for accepted participants who live outside of the Atlanta metro area. All teachers will receive lunch. Parking will also be covered for those who drive to the workshop.
This workshop will prepare teachers to teach Python programming — in courses ranging from Beginning Programming and Intro to Digital Technology to CS Principles — through EarSketch. EarSketch is an integrated Python API, coding and music production environment, curriculum, audio loop library, and social sharing site that teaches programming concepts (e.g. variables, functions, loops, lists, and strings) in the context of music remixing. EarSketch enables students to write Python code to mix and layer audio loops in popular styles created by music industry veterans, to create rhythms and add effects to tracks, and to leverage computer science principles and devise algorithms to make and share personally expressive songs. Developed at Georgia Tech since 2011, EarSketch has been used in elementary, middle, and high school computing courses in Georgia and in college-level online courses, and it has been shown to effectively engage students (and particularly female students) in computing. The EarSketch website is http://earsketch.gatech.edu.
Educators should have some familiarity with a text-based programming language such as Java, Javascript, or Python. No background in music is expected.
Educators will be provided with workshop materials, lessons and handouts that they can readily put to use in the fall, as well as a free online version of the EarSketch software environment and curriculum.
Teachers will learn:
Hands-on activities for teaching programming using EarSketch and Python: variables, loops, conditionals, lists, strings, and functions
Basic musical concepts, such as tempo and meter, necessary to effectively make music with EarSketch
How digital audio workstation software (like GarageBand) works and how music production principles like tracks, effects, envelopes, and rhythms connect to CS concepts
How to use the EarSketch social media site to collect student work and facilitate student collaboration
Tentative Agenda
Monday
•Software setup
•Introduction, overview, and purpose for integrating music and programming into CS
•Elements of EarSketch
•Basic musical concepts and digital audio workstation concepts
•Handling musical tracks and samples in EarSketch and Python: fitMedia(), functions, constants, and variables
Tuesday
•Creating rhythms: makeBeat(), strings, loops
•Making a whole song: musical form, user-defined functions, repetition, and randomness
•Effects and effect envelopes
Wednesday
•Lists and their applications to multi-source beat strings and musical form
•Advanced topics: image sonification, nested loops, and multi-dimensional lists; audio analysis and conditional statements; recursion; and creating custom effects.
Thursday
•Exercises and assessments to facilitate student creativity, collaboration, and engagement
•Using the EarSketch social media site
•Supporting student-created audio loops
•Overview of teaching resources
•Curriculum mappings onto CS courses (e.g. CS Principles)
