Arts+Alive

=http://www.artsalive.ca/en/mus/index.asp=

AUTHORITY
This site is sponsored by the National Arts Centre (NAC) in Ottawa, Canada. ArtsAlive.ca was developed by the music education department of the NAC. Questions and feedback are encouraged and contact information is easily accessible.

INSTRUCTIONAL CONTENT
This review will focus on the music portion of the website, but it should be noted that ArtsAlive.ca also features dance and theater sections. The website has music resources, a virtual instrument lab where students can look at and listen to orchestral instruments, a composer biographical section, National Arts Centre Orchestra interviews, games, and section with tour information for the National Arts Centre Orchestra. The music resource section is the most impressive. Visitors to this site can easily navigate through the large amount of information which is organized by interest. Teachers who visit the site have access to lesson plans, parents can look at common questions about children starting an instrument, and students can ask professional musicians specific questions which are answered on the site. There are links to a variety of additional resources, including listening links and video links. The lesson plans are dated.

National Standards that may be addressed by this site:

6) Listening to, analyzing, and describing music 7) Evaluating music and music performances 8) Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts 9) Understanding music in relation to history and culture

PURPOSE, VIEWPOINT
This page was created to share information about music and spread resources to students, parents, and teachers. It is an excellent site for arts advocacy. It is sponsored by the National Arts Centre, the Department of Canadian Heritage, and Telus. The Department of Canadian Heritage’s sponsorship is part of a program called the Canadian Culture Online Program (CCOP). More information on this project is available [|here.]

There are a number of links to other music education resources, including the advocacy section of the MENC website. I did not see any signs of bias, unless you call arts advocacy a bias. Responses to parent and student inquiries were very clear and honest.

REPUTATION
Most of the links that I found to this site came from music educators’ web pages designed as references for their students. It looks like the site was created in 2005, so I assume that more sites will link to ArtsAlive as time passes.

OVERALL EVALUATION
This site is an excellent tool for music educators, parents, and students. It is extremely professional looking and is very easy to navigate with many organizational menus and icons. The lesson plans that are provided on the website are in pdf format and are very well organized. The instrument lab is a terrific tool for elementary recruitment. It allows young students to see a picture of an instrument that they can actually rotate and listen to short recordings to hear how the different instruments sound.

Music educators should definitely use ArtsAlive.ca as a resource for their students!

Rating ++++

//Reviewed by Stacey Kolthammer, April 10, 2006//