GarageBand Composition Alternatives?

Posted on January 17, 2024 by in Coaching This post is public.

Our district's Digital Learning team is providing school-based cohort professional learning sessions for staff to get an overview of the apps and skills needed to achieve their Apple Teacher Certification. We meet for an hour for each badge area (e.g. iPad, Pages, Keynote, etc.) and provide an hour of independent work time to review materials, create a sample project, and take the quiz for each area.

We have 5 site-based cohorts rolling this year, we hope to expand the program to include all tenure-track teachers in addition to more site-based cohort groups.

This week, a teacher in one of our cohorts brought to our attention an issue with GarageBand: because of their religious beliefs, they are prohibited from composing music or playing instruments.

While we also showed the audio recording tools in GarageBand for projects like Podcasting, we know that there are also questions in the badge quiz around instrument usage and music composition.

I am super grateful that this teacher felt comfortable with sharing their beliefs with us, especially since we have planned to roll out this cohort-based professional learning opportunity to a wider audience next year and know that others share this belief.

What other types of resources or support would you provide staff that are not able to play instruments or compose music while still providing support for achieving the GarageBand badge and ultimately becoming Apple Teachers?

I know this group will help me with some ideas to make GarageBand accessible to all of our teachers!

Tagged in: Accessibility, Apple Teacher, GarageBand

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★ Helpful

Posted on January 17, 2024 in response to AmandaM In response to AmandaM

Because the GarageBand Apple teacher badge is specific to GarageBand, that is a tough one. What would it look like if those that are not able to play musical instruments could complete the quiz on their device while a leader of the cohort is modeling in GarageBand? Specifically the leader would model what the question is asking. This way they would have the concepts of GarageBand and the badge but not be playing instruments or composing music themselves.

For their classroom then I would suggest an alternative tool they could use for audio recordings such as voice memos. These can then be saved and imported into other apps with no musical instruments.

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★ Helpful

Posted on January 17, 2024 in response to AmandaM In response to AmandaM

Because the GarageBand Apple teacher badge is specific to GarageBand, that is a tough one. What would it look like if those that are not able to play musical instruments could complete the quiz on their device while a leader of the cohort is modeling in GarageBand? Specifically the leader would model what the question is asking. This way they would have the concepts of GarageBand and the badge but not be playing instruments or composing music themselves.

For their classroom then I would suggest an alternative tool they could use for audio recordings such as voice memos. These can then be saved and imported into other apps with no musical instruments.

Posted on January 17, 2024 in response to AmandaM In response to AmandaM

Hey Amanda!

Jennifer beat me to it. I agree that completing the program and quiz for GB would make it difficult without the musical piece. I was going to suggest a couple of things.

First was to have someone model for the teacher as Jenifer suggested. Second, I know our fellow ADE Donald Sorah could probably give you more insight into what he would do in this situation since he is so well-versed in GarageBand.

Sorry to not be of more help!

Posted on January 17, 2024 in response to Dragon_Coach In response to Dragon_Coach

Hello Amanda, Jennifer, and Megan -

This is a really interesting and intriguing dilemma, but do hope that Jennifer has provided a viable solution. I’ll await Amanda’s response to see if that approach might work for you. If not, I’ll look back at the quiz to see what the questions entail and if there is another way to subvert composition activities and still passively understand the application for what it can do without actively participating (if that would be allowed).

Worst case scenario - and I may be speaking out of turn - I wonder if the Apple Education Community would be able to grant an accommodation to these individuals based on religious justifications.

Thank you for posing this interesting question - something I hadn’t thought about!

Donnie

Posted on February 01, 2024 in response to AmandaM In response to AmandaM

I am interested in Jennifer's suggestion too, a leader modelling the use and working through questions could be a solution.

I'm thinking about students who this applies too as well, would using voices and body percussion (clapping, clicking fingers, tapping feet) be considered as composing music too? The Everyone Can Code teacher guides have body percussion resources and Voice Memos can be used to record this learning.

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