All that jazz! Extending Early Learning Opportunities with Alexa
While facilitating “Introduction to Voice Assistants to Early Learning Environments” I use the book “Before John was a Jazz Giant” by Carole Boston Weatherford, Sean Qualls (Illustrator) to demonstrate ways to integrate technology to your early learning experience.
Here are a few of my favorite ways to play with technology in early learning.
Share the Goodreads overview reads with families via newsletter, text or print.
Goodreads is an excellent platform to share what your reading with your families. An account is free, social sharing plug-ins are available and you can check to see if your local library has a copy of the book.
Young John Coltrane was all ears. And there was a lot to hear growing up in the South in the 1930s: preachers praying, music on the radio, the bustling of the household. These vivid noises shaped John’s own sound as a musician. Carole Boston Weatherford and Sean Qualls have composed an amazingly rich hymn to the childhood of jazz legend John Coltrane. – Before John was a Jazz Giant, Goodreads
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Use your voice assistant to plan a field trip using mass transit.
When John Coltrane was a jazz giant he would visit the Crawford Grill in the Historic Hill District neighborhood of the City of Pittsburgh, PA.
Plan a field trip to visit the Teenie Harris collection at the Carnegie Museum of Art, I recently visited and learned about the “Rise & Fall of the Crawford Grill”.
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Use a voice assistant to ask questions about people and places.
Alexa, tell me about The Crawford Grill.
“A center of Black social life, located in the Hill District, where musicians such as Art Blakey, Mary Lou Williams, John Coltrane drew a racially mixed, international clientele. Owned by William “Gus” Greenlee, a powerful figure politics and sports in Pittsburgh’s African-American community, who owned the Pittsburgh Crawfords, the city’s Negro League baseball team.” – Underground Railroad, Visit Pittsburgh
Hey, Google! Who was Teenie Harris?
Promotes learning standard AL.1 PK.A | Explore and ask questions to seek meaningful information about a growing range of topics, ideas, and tasks.
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Use your Hoopla Digital account to explore other works by Carole Boston Weatherford.
I was ecstatic to learn Hoopla Digital released a skill on Alexa, now I can list to my audiobooks and music via my compatible Amazon Echo products. Weatherford has three audiobooks available on Hoopla Digital, I borrowed “Freedom In Congo Square”.
As slaves relentlessly toiled in an unjust system in 19th century Louisiana, they all counted down the days until Sunday, when, at least for half a day, they were briefly able to congregate in Congo Square in New Orleans. There, they were free to set up an open market, sing, dance, and play music. They were free to forget their cares, their struggles, and their oppression. This poetic, nonfiction story about this little-known piece of African American history chronicles the daily duties of such slaves-from chopping logs on Mondays, to baking bread on Wednesdays, to plucking hens on Saturday-and builds to the freedom of Sundays and the special experience of an afternoon spent in Congo Square. Capturing humanity’s capacity to find hope and joy even in the most difficult of circumstances and demonstrating how New Orleans’ Congo Square was truly freedom’s heart – Schomburg overview on Hoopla Digital
Promotes learning standard 9.2 PK.D | Explain that instruments or art forms represent cultural perspectives.
