Ok... go!

OkGo Sandbox is a website with several music videos by the band OkGo and accompanying videos, activities, and educator resources to expand learning in the classroom. The music group OkGo is known for their extravagant and visually stunning music videos. Many of these videos have a wide variety of STEAM-based learning applications that can be brought into the classroom to enhance student learning.

In the video for OkGo's song This Too Shall Pass, the camera follows an incredibly elaborate chain reaction machine as it completes a set of actions and tasks in time with the music, and even plays some of the instruments included in the song. This video is a great way to introduce a culminating task for the Grade 4 Science unit Understanding Structures and Mechanisms: Pulleys and Gears and to build off of the knowledge gleaned in Grade 3 regarding simple machines and is a primer for what students will be learning in Grade 5 about how forces act on structures and mechanisms. My lesson activity idea is to have students build their own chain reaction machines using recycled and reusable materials. Each machine should have a specific task they the students are trying to accomplish. It would be an interesting pedagogical experiment to pair up grade 4 students with grade 5 students and have them work collaboratively on their machines.

The benefits to utilizing this resource in the classroom is that, first and foremost, it is compelling and will keep students engaged. These videos are all incredibly dynamic and fun. For my specific activity, during the first part of the lesson students will have fun just watching the music video for the first time, then they will get to watch it again and look for different simple machines at work. Plus, they get to listen to a cool song at the same time! Students will very likely be in awe of the size of the chain reaction machine in the video and how well it goes along with the accompanying music. It is age appropriate and students get to be scientific investigators. The fact that it goes well with grade 4 and 5 of the Ontario science curriculum requirements means that there is a real opportunity for cross-grade collaborative learning. I think that this provides a great opportunity for students to come together and try to create something almost magical together.

I think it's an exciting, real world way to not only jump off into science, technology, engineering, arts, and math but also to discuss with students why a band would choose to make this type of music video, what goes into music video production, what types of jobs are involved within the music industry, why do people want to become musicians, etc. The class could talk about song writing, about how to send a message using prose, about linear versus non-linear songwriting.

There are a lot of benefits to using resources that are a little outside of the norm!