EdTech Should More Google Maps and Less MapQuest
As a young kid, I remember my dad had one of those big road atlases shoved behind the driver's side seat that I would pull out and flip through on road trips. The road atlas is how you got from point A to point B back in the day. Of course, nobody uses road atlases...
Moosiko Launches Ukulele for General Music Classes
The #1 online learning platform for K12 music classes now supports ukulele for school general music classes. Using the same core Moosiko learning principles of deliberate practice, fun/relevant songs for students, and skill tracking and assessment tools for teachers,...
How to Use Title IV-A Funds to Pay for Music Resources
Title IV-A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, a statute that provides $1.6B (billion) in funds for primary and secondary education, provides districts with funds to “build capacity and ensure that all students have access to a high quality educational...
Adaptive Teaching for Guitar (Special Needs)
This article is written by Sarah Fard, a music educator in Massachusetts with degrees from University of New Hampshire, Boston University, and the Boston Conservatory at Berklee in Music and Autism. Learn more about Sarah here. The guitar is a wonderfully diverse...
The First Moosiko Success Story
I consider January 10th our birthday, because this is the day back in 2015 where we had our first Moosiko customer. Her name was Nandini. Watch the video below to hear our story. I was teaching guitar at the time in New Haven and a Yale med student wanted to learn...
SmartMusic vs Moosiko
Many school's music departments use SmartMusic as a learning resource for their music classes. While SmartMusic is a great tool for general band and orchestra, it isn’t very good at helping learn specific instruments like guitar and ukulele. Moosiko is designed...
9 Ways to Get Parents More Involved in Virtual Learning
Virtual learning is becoming more and more prevalent in today’s society, thrust into the spotlight with a global pandemic. While students are responsible for acclimating to this new learning environment, parents may play a bigger role in virtual learning than they may...
Teaching Tab vs Standard Notation
This blog is written by Joe Sweet, a guitar teacher at Lane Technical College Preparatory High School in Chicago. Joe has created a ton of great guitar teacher resources here. "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire" W.B. Yeats When asked...
Student Video Recordings
Video-based assessment has been the only way to grade music classes this year. But collecting, organizing, and keeping secure hundreds or thousands of videos is a pain. This is why we've built student video recording and teacher feedback directly into the app for a...
How Moosiko Supports CASEL SEL Framework
Social and emotional learning (SEL) plays a vital part in education and human development. CASEL.org, a thought leader in SEL implementation, defines the subject as “the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and...
Moosiko Partners with California EDU to Support Guitar Instruction
SALEM, MA (Thursday, November 5, 2020) – East Side Union High School District (ESUHSD) in San Jose, California, initiated a partnership with Moosiko today. Through this new collaboration, seven schools will be using Moosiko’s innovative and adaptive online practice...
Book Review: The Music Advantage
I just finished reading The Music Advantage by Dr. Anita Collins. Dr. Collins is a leading neuromusical researcher studying the benefits that learning music has on growing children and adults. I first heard of her when her 2014 TEDx talk went viral and have been...
Laxed (Siren Beat) Sheet Music
What is Laxed (Siren Beat)? Laxed (Siren Beat), by Jawsh 685, is the most viral song on the social media app TikTok. It was created by a 17 year old in New Zealand. The song has a specific dance and was originally used to show off different cultures. Nobody knows...
It’s the Music that Makes Us Cry
I kept it together for the majority of my wedding. Throughout the ceremony, the vows, the speeches, and the first dance...no tears. But what got me was when 'You've Got a Friend in Me' started playing as my groomsman and I walked down the aisle. Tears came streaming...
The Basics of Sound, Through Music
Before we can learn about music, we must first learn about sound. But diving into the world of sound opens up an array of disciplines that would take a long time to cover: physics, fluid dynamics, anatomy, psychology, and a bit of philosophy. To save you some time, we...
Zoom & Google Meet Best Practices for Guitar Teachers
Here are some tips, resources, and best practices for using Zoom or Google Meet to teach your virtual guitar class. General Video Best Practices Use a separate webcam to display left and right hands while playing. Here are 7 best webcams for online teaching. On Zoom,...
TrueSpeed™ Autoscroll
All we've ever wanted to do was play guitar hands-free. We hated stopping to turn the page, stopping to scroll down the lyrics, or hitting those stupid "+/-" buttons because current autoscrolls are either too slow or too fast. So we took to the drawing board and we're...
Guitar Class Rubrics & Assessment
One of the best things about working for Moosiko is that I get to talk with a lot of school guitar teachers. Since many guitar teachers are either new to guitar or new to the K12 education environment, the most common question they ask me is, "What kind of rubric...
Guitar Germ Hand Washing Experiment
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Moosiko ran a number of experiments to determine how germs spread from students to guitars. You can read about our first experiment here. In our second experiment with glo germ and a UV flashlight, we wanted to test how effective washing...
Guitar Germ Cleaning Experiment
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted an experiment with glo germ and a UV flashlight to see how germs spread to a guitar after playing. We tried a few different cleaning techniques to see which was most effective. Our research helped hundreds of guitar teachers...