Fin

So our Google projects are now over.  For the last two days of class people presented what they have been working on for the last few months.  I thought that the presentations went very well.  Everyone had creative projects and I definitely learned new things (about the topics and the people presenting).  I especially liked how well the class received everyone projects.  The audience was always respectful:  listening and asking questions.  No one made it seem like anyone else's project was bad in any way. 

For my final presentation I played Moon River on the ukulele.  It is not a very lively song but I chose it because I felt that it contains several different challenges.  Most of the songs I found online were pop songs that involved difficult chords and didn't sound like anything without singing (and I was not going to sing) or else they involved a lot of difficult finger picking that would have taken forever to learn.  To play Moon River I had to learn how to read tabs.  This was not too difficult.  Once I figured out that the top string on the paper was my bottom string, it just took some coordination to learn.  What I really liked about this arrangement was that it contains the melody but also adds in some harmony so the song doesn't sound too sparse by itself. 

Overall, I thought that the Google projects were a very good experience.  It was amazing to see how creative people were and how much time they put into their projects.  I think that this project should be continued every year, although I can see why it would have to be limited to the fall as it is quite a big time commitment.  I am sure that in the future, the projects would continue to be more creative and productive every year as students learn of how much they are capable.  It would also be very interesting to see what people could do, continuing the same project over several years.