ALA Instructional Days Jan. 20, 25

The plans for these two days included introductions into the Sound editing software ScreenBlast Acid Pro. Gabe was the point person here, and the two days away at the ALA were set up so he could teach a litle and then give the students freedom to explore the musical world. The software enables the students to go into a large array of sounds and beats and instruments and put them all together, creating a new original piece of music. The students are also able to use existing pieces of music insdie the program to remix, cut, splice, and explore their own interests. THe students were shown how to explore the software, create a rudimentary piece of work, and also how to extract a piece of music from a cd into the software itself. Thursday's group was wonderfully engaged in the activity, as was tuesday's group. The tuesday group seemed a bit on the excitable side, but everyone took to the learning of the program well. By the end of the time given the students were wanting to continue their exploration. Gabe did an amazing job showing the students how to navigate through the software, and it's amazing to see the students' interaction with each other as well as the facilitators as we are learning alongside of them.