Designing for Beats

The 2020 global pandemic presented a challenge to the implementation of teacher professional development programs: how could they be adapted to a virtual environment while maintaining desired levels of engagement and effectiveness? Inspired by the Guthman Competition and Zoom performances by the Hamilton cast, the Designing for Beats project was created. We challenged teams of teachers to collaboratively design new musical instruments, add creativity and digital technology, and deliver a 5-minute video performance. Teachers had three weeks to complete this- all online. Their work was supplemented by daily virtual sessions in STEAM content and pedagogy. For the finale, teachers created innovative instruments and sounds, and utilized engineering, video production, and storytelling to create a symphony of STEAM. We will share how we designed the experience, examples of instruments, videos of performances, and how this project can be adapted to the virtual or face to face student classroom