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Music educators: How might you imagine using our resources?

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This post was originally written by John Fenn of the American Folklife Center (AFC) for Folklife Today.

Photograph of Ledward Kaapana playing ukulele during a 2017 appearance in Coolidge Auditorium for a Homegrown concert. Kaapana is a 2011 NEA Heritage Fellow from Hawaii. Photo by Steve Winick.
Ledward Kaapana, Hawaiian slack key guitar and ukulele master, performs in the Coolidge Auditorium for the 2017 Homegrown concert series. Kaapana was a 2011 NEA National Heritage Fellow. Photo by Steve Winick.

Back in December 2017, a colleague of ours here at the Library published a short piece in the Music Educator’s Journal highlighting the many video recordings of musical performances at the Library of Congress hosted on the Library’s YouTube channel. Focusing on videos documenting the American Folklife Center’s Homegrown concert series, Lee Ann Potter (Director, Educational Outreach) noted that these resources offer great value to teachers and students. What is that value, and how can we here at the AFC help realize it?

Following up on her invitation in that article, we are asking for input and suggestions. We’d love to hear from readers—especially music educators—about the ways you imagine using such video resources in classrooms or other education settings. Going one step further, we’d love to hear about ways that educators have actually used videos of Homegrown concerts!