This week has been nuts. With so many things to do I didn’t even realize it was Friday until today when my students in 4th grade had an amazing time talking to the William Howard School in England for a Skype call. They did fantastic and I was proud to show off my tech skills. A majority of this week I have held our netbook cart hostage for my older grades so they can get acquainted or re-acquainted to www.quavermusic.com so we will be all set for future projects and webquests.

 With so many laws out there for children on the internet, many websites require individual login information that is unique to each student. Now this would be much easier for a class of 15-20 students only, but being a music teacher finding time to organize 600 student usernames and passwords proves to be much of a challenge. This week I had over 160 successful logins to the Quaver kids portion of the website using a few tricks. I now have all of my 3rd-5th graders all set and use to logging in for future projects.

  One trick is always to have the right tools.  With index card boxes purchase from Staples I have halved index cards each student and they are responsible for writing their information down with their name and class. The index cards look like this: 

    I have pencils and require each student to write down one card to leave here with me just incase they have trouble logging in next time so I can help them. With email at home a tricky subject in my poverty-low income school area it is hard to do password recovery through email and that is sometimes the only recovery system most websites have. I tell my students “I don’t have a magic reset your password button, you need to be responsible for leaving me your information so I can help you.” Students are allowed to write out another copy of their information to take home. Especially with a site like www.quavermusic.com my students who have computers at home love to take a copy of their account info home with them so they can play Quaver anywhere.

   I have each class set of cards bound and separated by tabs. Each class has their own set of cards that I use a paperclip to bind them together and then as I put them into the index card case I separate each class by tab for easy and quick access for later. When I need them I take the class set out and place them on a desk for students who need their information to come up and grab their card. We always talk about how it is not nice to sign into someone elses account and that all cards need to be returned at the end of each class. I have yet to have a problem with hacking or lost cards.

   When setting up accounts a lot of students have trouble getting creative with usernames and passwords. I always tell them:

• There are NO spaces in a user name or password
• Get creative with your username! Somebody already has “butterfly” or “football”. When stumped just use your favorite animal and number!
• If you have trouble remembering your username or password make them the same!

   Remember to always be diligent when a class is logging in as well, a lot of students will have issues regardless of how much prep you have done or how organized, patience with them is a virtue!

My card box all filled and organized!

How do you help your students log in  so they can create music?