When my friend and colleague, Brianne Schildberg, who is our elementary music teacher at Van Meter, wanted some ideas and help for creating a place to share musical resources for continuous learning, I suggested a choice board which allows you to share links to different resources in a visual and fun way. We jumped on into a Google Meet and I should her a little example I made and the easy steps to make one. Let me show you too! I love creating choice boards in Google Slides. It is super easy to create, publish online and share with others to use and collaborate on with you. First, open up a new Google Slide presentation. For this one, I added squares but you can add any shape you would like. You can find shapes by going to Insert, down to Shape and then over to find a large selection. I then filled them in with black but you can choose any color and even outline them with another color. I added all of the squares first so I could get them all organized evenly on the slide. Next, I added the text with a text box on each one. You can choose any color and font you'd like. Then, I added the images. In Google Slides, there are lots of options for adding Images. You can Upload from computer, Search the web, pull from Drive, Photos, by URL and even use Camera. For all of the images I used, I uploaded from my laptop little screenshots I took or found them by searching the web. After I had all of the images and text added, I went back and linked each resource (website, Symbaloo, Collection, etc...) to the box. That way when they click anywhere on the box, it will take the students to that resource. At the very top, a title was added and simple directions. And a link to the Music Symbaloo too. Now it is time to share. I love how Google Slides can be published online and shared either through a link or by being embedded. Here is how you do this with a Google Presentation. Go to File and... ...down to Publish to the web. Click on Publish to the web. When this box pops up, there are a few things you can do. You can choose if you want to Auto-advance slides and when you want to start and restart. Then click on Publish. It gives you a link that you can copy or share in email or social. Notice that you can also publish to the web through an Embed code on this pop-up. Here is what they look like once published on the web. Brianne got these all ready with amazing resources to share with the students and families. You will find her published Musical Choice Board here and... ...the Song Playlists here. I then took them and added them to our Continuous Learning Google Site on the Related Arts page so everyone can find and use them easily. I can't wait to hear how excited the kids are to see and use all of these musical resources that Brianne put together for them. It will be so much fun. And I am excited to create choice boards for other subjects and resources too.
