Books, Chapters & Articles

Here are some of the many publications that I have written about technology in the music classroom over the past 30 years.

  • Podcasting Across the Curriculum

    This article, written by Marjorie LoPresti, is from the Teachers Edition from In Tune Monthly, Volume 20, No. 4. It features an interview with yours truly, Lee Whitmore from Focusrite, and Dan Behar from Soundtrap. It’s all about the new podcasting curriculum that I wrote.

  • Podcasting Across the Curriculum

    Everything you need to teach podcasting from MusicFirst, Focusrite, and Soundtrap for Education

    We've partnered with our friends over at Soundtrap and Focusrite to curate a package of hardware, software, and content to provide everything you need to start teaching podcasting. We're thrilled to announce that "Podcasting Across the Curriculum," authored by Dr. Jim Frankel, is now live in the MusicFirst Classroom. This complete podcasting curriculum explores the history of podcasting, the elements of storytelling, audio recording & editing, podcast distribution and more!

    It includes:

    20 Lesson Plans

    20 Projects (across all subjects including: Mathematics, Poetry, Music, and more!)

    10 Extra Bonus Projects

    A full curriculum, which takes your students from "I don't know what podcasting is" to "I've got my 10-minute podcast fully produced on Spotify"

    This curriculum is designed to be used in conjunction with the Focusrite Vocaster Studio and Soundtrap for Education, and is now available in the MusicFirst Classroom!

  • Places and Purposes of Popular Music Education: Perspectives from the Field

    This book provides a variety of perspectives on popular music education. With a mixture of rants, manifestos, and punchy position pieces, the volume moves from scholarly essays replete with citations and references to descriptions of practice and straight-talking polemics. The writing is approachable in tone, and the chapters are intended to whet appetites, prime pumps, open eyes, and keep cogs turning for academics of all ages and stages.

    I wrote a chapter titled: Confessions of a Deadhead Music Educator, relating my personal musical experiences to music education.

  • Engaging Musical Practices: A Sourcebook for Middle School General Music 2nd Edition

    Inspire and involve your adolescent students in active music-making with this second edition of Engaging Musical Practices: A Sourcebook for Middle School General Music. A practical and accessible resource, fourteen chapters lay out pedagogically sound practices for preservice and inservice music teachers.This second edition of Engaging Musical Practices: A Sourcebook for Middle School General Music is a necessity for any practitioner who teaches music to adolescent students or as a text for secondary general music methods courses.

    I wrote a chapter on the integration of technology in a middle school general music curriculum.

  • Creative Music Making at Your Fingertips: A Mobile Technology Guide for Music Educators

    Creative Music Making at Your Fingertips features 11 chapters by music education scholars and practitioners that provide tried-and-true strategies for using mobile devices in a variety of contexts, from general music education to ensembles and from K-12 to college classrooms. Their practical advice on how pedagogy and mobile technologies can be aligned to increase students' creative engagement with music and help them realize their musical potential makes this book an invaluable resource for music educators who want to be at the forefront of pedagogical transformations made possible by 21st-century technologies.

    I wrote the chapter on developing apps for music education.

  • Critical Issues in Music Education: Contemporary Theory and Practice 2nd Edition

    Critical Issues in Music Education: Contemporary Theory and Practice provides a current introduction to key issues facing music educators. Designed as the main text for a Music Education Theory course or as a supplement for introductory courses on Music Education and Music Education Methods, this text presents a series of essays, written by key leaders in the field, each focusing on a single issue. It provides the most up-to-date, inclusive, and comprehensive introduction of any text on the market.

    I wrote the chapter on technology in the music classroom.

  • Dr. Jim Frankel: Meet the man behind MusicFirst, the resource that every music educator needs in 2020 (and beyond)

    This article appeared as the cover story in the October 2020 edition of SBO Magazine. This was a very proud moment for me and MusicFirst.

  • Making Music with GarageBand and Mixcraft

    MAKING MUSIC WITH GARAGEBAND AND MIXCRAFT provides music educators and self-learners with a comprehensive guide to music production using two of the most inexpensive and intuitive music software recording programs on the market today. Although easy to use, the tools included in GarageBand and Mixcraft are powerful enough to create music worthy of inclusion in professional productions, and their interfaces and workflows prepare users to work with professional studio-level digital audio workstation programs, such as Logic and Pro Tools. The book is far from a simple software guide.

    I wrote a few chapters for his fantastic book.

  • YouTube in Music Education

    The first complete music educators' guide to harnessing the power of YouTube for students, YouTube in Music Education teaches instructors how to tap into the excitement of YouTube with students by creating, posting, and promoting videos on the most popular media service in the world. Explaining how to record and edit videos, add effects, and upload content, Dr. Tom Rudolph and Dr. James Frankel describe everything from the basics of video production to advanced applications for use in the classroom. The authors explain how teachers can use YouTube privately with their students and integrate it with websites and blogs. Educators can use YouTube for applications that include creating instrument and software tutorials, evaluating group and individual performances, sharing content with students, and other uses.

  • The Teacher's Guide to Music, Media, and Copyright Law

    In this era of unprecedented access to information, teachers have a wealth of resources readily available for lesson planning – but determining what legally can and can't be used in the classroom is a difficult task. The Teacher's Guide to Music, Media, and Copyright Law helps explain in plain English just how information, images, video, and music can be incorporated into any kind of lesson plan without running afoul of copyright laws.

  • Spotlight on Technology in the Music Classroom

    Learn how to teach with technology, make the most of the Internet, buy and use hardware and software, enhance digital and audio recording, and improve classroom administration. This book can help music educators manage all aspects of technology in the music classroom. Each book in MENC's Spotlight series contains articles previously published in state MEA journals.

    A few of my articles are reprinted in this publication.

  • Strategies for Teaching Technology

    The purpose of the Strategies for Teaching series is to help music teachers implement the K-12 National Music Education Standards and MENC's Prekindergarten Standards. Hundreds of music teachers across the country participated in this project, the largest such participation in an MENC publishing endeavor. Each publication focuses on a specific curricular area and a particular level. Each includes teaching strategies based on the content and achievement standards, a preface and an introduction, and a resource list.

    About a dozen of my lesson plans appear in this publication.

  • Teaching Classroom Music in the Keyboard Lab

    This out-of-print publication was a guide to teaching music using a keyboard lab through the VH1 Save The Music Program.

  • An Evaluation of a Web-based Model of Assessment for the New Jersey State Core Curriculum Content Standards in Music

    This is a link to my doctoral dissertation that I successfully defended in 2002 at Teachers College Columbia University.