The basic concept of an escape room is that students work in teams to solve puzzles or answer questions to discover a secret code - or series of codes - which will allow them to “escape” the room or solve a mystery.  And they only have 30 minutes to do it! If you’ve ever been interested in setting up your own escape room for your music students, this episode will help you get started.

At this time of year, I often see an increase in student art projects shared on social media. Creating artwork that represents student learning can be a great project in any subject.  Something I saw a music teacher share years ago was soundwave art - a visual representation of a soundwave that had been printed out and added to a picture, but the best part was that it wasn’t any old random soundwave - it was an actual picture of a recording of the student’s voice.  Find out how you can do this fun project with your students!

Continuing with our accessibility theme, I’ve invited Phil Heeley on to the podcast to talk about his work with his business Inclusive Music.  Phil has worked with students of all abilities over his 30 year career including the elderly, those with special needs and disabilities, and he also works in mainstream UK education with primary-aged students right through to university age.

Our current theme on the blog and podcast is accessibility and today I have a guest on - a music educator named Alex Rees from the UK - to talk about what he has been doing with special needs students. 

Alex is a freelance music and sound technologist, a music producer and education consultant from Wales who manages creative learning projects both in and out of schools. He works with a range of young people with different backgrounds and abilities, using technology to create adaptable music projects. 

The next few podcast episodes and blog posts on MidnightMusic.com.au fall into our Accessibility theme.  

In addition to sharing apps, software and other tech gear, I’ll be talking to a couple of music educators about their experiences working with special needs students and students with learning difficulties. 

I know many of you are looking for ideas in this area and the good thing is that the resources that are out there are super-useful for almost all of your students - they are not just for special needs students. 

Today’s episode is the final one in our productivity series and it’s all about templates.  I love templates for many reasons and they can truly increase your productivity! I share the benefits of using templates, some ideas for places you can incorporate templates into your everyday life and give some tips on how to save them.

Over the past few years I’ve tried very hard to be more productive.  We all have the same amount of time in a day, a week, a year - but it comes down to how you use that time.  Today’s episode is another productivity-related one and it’s all about making use of unexpected pockets of time in your day.

A member of the Midnight Music Community recently asked -  how can I manage ALL of my links, resources, ideas, and videos so I can find them easily? I ended up running a live training session to explain some of the ways that I manage to organise my digital “stuff” and I thought it would also be of interest to teachers listening to this podcast. 

If you’re a member of the Midnight Music Community you can watch a recording of that training - you’ll see me show everything and you can get a PD certificate for the training time.

Google Calendar is one of my most frequently-used tech tools.  Do you want to learn some tips for using calendar more efficiently and effectively? 

In the first podcast episode for our Productivity themed month, I share some of the Google Calendar shortcuts and hidden features that you might not have yet  discovered.

For the final episode in Back to Basics month I share 3 apps that your students can use to create digital portfolios.