Virtual history of music

Prepare your distance learning activities through researching digital tools that may best suit lesson content and fit your teaching attitude/style; record your lessons or shorter clips in order to provide students video resources to study and integrate the synchronous lesson.

Pay attention to the fact that in distance learning much less material can be processed and more subdivisions of topics and themes are to be made.

• Take the students on a virtual visit to the violin museum in Cremona. You can browse the official page of the Museum or you can rely upon online tools such as https://www.violinteachingresources.com/ and the Google Arts & Culture page. After the visit, divide them into groups of three or four students.
  
• Assign them a research task in the form of question or challenge: they have to investigate and find out which is the most successful Cremona violin maker and why, among the famous luthiers Stradivari, Amati or Guarneri. This is going to raise their engagement and curiosity.
• Ask students to make presentations on their findings. They have to arrange weekly meetings online using Google Meet to collaborate and create the presentation. They can record videos of their presentations. A video screen recorder such as the extension for Chrome Screen Recorder can help do this.
• Ask them to present it to the class during a video lesson on Meet; let them know in advance that they are going to evaluate the presentation of everyone using a Google Form. Make sure to share in advance with the students the criteria of assessment and show them the form itself. 

It may be useful to upload a Google Spreadsheet in the Google Classroom and to fill in an evaluation rubric accordingly, taking into account what you want evaluate.