STEAM in the Music Room: StikBots

Scientific and technological innovations continue to become increasingly important in our every day lives. To succeed in our new information-based and highly technological society, students need to develop their capabilities so much more than what was considered acceptable in the past.  As schools around the world focus on STEM initiatives, forward thinkers are looking to the arts to strengthen this focus to STEAM.

As music educators, how to we incorporate the idea of career readiness and technological proficiency in our lessons?  How do we provide problem solving, project based learning activities when we see our students one time a week for 50 minutes?  I must admit that I don't know all of the answers.  I'm about to embark on a STEAM journey and am inviting you to join me.  I'll be sharing some of my ideas for incorporating science, technology, engineering and math into my classroom.

I picked up my first set of StikBots at Target months and months ago.  I had a few ideas about what I wanted to do with them and then life happened and they just sat on a shelf looking at me with their half-smiles, waiting for me to pick them up.  When I did, I was delighted with how easy they were to use!

The studio pack comes with two StikBots, a simple tripod and a green screen stage.  I sat it up in just a few minutes and downloaded the app for my phone.  I was creating my first stop animation video before I knew it!  If you would rather not just jump in, you might like to watch this Stikbot tutorial I found on YouTube.

Although the StikBot figures are an obvious choice for creating your videos, you can actually use anything!  Barbies, figurines, LOL dolls, stuffed animals, action figures are great.  Be creative!  Try salt shakers, rocks, Play Dough blobs, shoes or whatever you want!

For class I chose to use the Stikbots because it eliminated one of the decisions that that students would need to make and it created the same experience for each group. Due to limited time, I had to plan for students to be able to find success in creating a video with as few choices as they could.  With more time, allowing them to choose different characters or even creating their own would be an excellent addition to these lessons. 

I had enough sets of the studio packs to divide my students into several groups.  I also had enough old phones with wifi that I could bring in on the days we worked with StikBots.  I've sent out a few requests to friends and family members for old phone donations.  I hope to get enough so that I don't have to bring mine in each time I want to use them.  If your students are allowed to use their own phones at school you may have a student volunteer to use their phone and just message or email their video to you when they are finished.

With minimal instruction, here's a video my 6 year old daughter made in just a few minutes.


When using Stikbots with students, their first experience with them is learning how to use them.  They can create any kind of video with them.  We take enough shots for a 9-15 second video.  This doesn't sound like much, but it takes quite a few photos of slightly different moves to create a video of this length.  I want students to understand how much they need to move the Stikbots and I want them to experiment and make mistakes.  Sometimes the best way to gain understanding is to make many mistakes and keep going!

After students have taken all of the shots they need, they can view their video and discuss things that need improving and things that worked well.  The next project that they do, they can include a background and music.  There are several different backgrounds included and there are also a few music tracks that work well with a variety of scenes.

This video uses one of the Stikbot animal characters and a picture of the elementary school outside my front window.

So, what can students use Stikbots for in music class?  Here are a few ideas:
1.  Demonstration of an original dance they have created.
2.  Demonstration of movement concepts like time, space, flow, shape, levels, pathways and more.
3.  Demonstration of a folk dance or play party game.
4.  Choreography for a song they are working on in class.
5.  Commercial and jingle for a teacher given scenario.  (Create a commercial and jingle to sell product X.)
6.  Music advocacy videos for promoting MIOSM
7.  Composer interviews.  (You can purchase sticker packs for the Stikbots or add your own details to them to create the composer of your choice.)
8.  Tips on performance posture.
9.  Music Theory Hour -discuss an element of music.
10.  Write a parody and create a video for it.  (Try this parody writing kit.)

There are SO many possibilities for using Stikbots in music class.  If you've tried it, I would love to learn how you are using them!

Like these ideas?  PIN THEM for later!