This week I’ve just started to work on a new World Music project  which will consist of  teaching resources fact sheets, whiteboard presentations, fun worksheets lesson ideas and resources  for teaching music of other cultures from around the world. The whole resource pack is set to be launched on Thursday 3rd March, 2011. However, in the process of looking at some facts about Indonesian Music, I found a site that could be really useful to you and I would love to know what you think of it.

The website is called WSC Music which stands for Wells Cathedral School and is Based in the UK. The Wells Cathedral School is a specialist Music School offering a pre-professional training to highly gifted young musicians, and world music is part of this training.

They have created an interactive computer program featuring a virtual Indonesian Javanese style Gamelan which you can download and some tutorials of how to play it. Although I had a few challenges as first downloading and installing it, once I got it going I thought that this could be a very useful teaching resource to use in the computer lab or on interactive whiteboards.

You can download the materials at:

http://www.wcsmusic.org.uk/modulegamelan.asp

But now I want to hear from you!  Tell me what resources you need most in teaching about World Music. Has anyone used this virtual Gamelan download  in the music classroom before? How does it work best? How do you teach about Gamelan? What tips, tricks and words of wisdom would you like to share with the wider Music Teaching community on teaching about World Music?