1. The idea for the website

This is a blog about a website I am building. It's aimed at children about 9 to 14 years old. I will post regularly as I design and build the site, to show something of the process, and if I get comments, I might include them in the final site.

My first idea for this project was this:

Imagine as kids came into primary school in the morning and were spending a few minutes chatting and sitting down, that you could play some music from a random country in the world. Children could listen, dance or ignore it, and then you could have a brief chat about the music, and where it came from, how it made them feel and so on. 

Though I've spent some time in class, I'm not a teacher, so I don't know if this would work, but I thought that the principle was, a teacher could use something like this as a conversation-starter, and it could tie in loosely with pretty much all other subjects, if the 'music' aspect was expanded to include other aspects of that country, as long as they were presented in an engaging and immersive way.

The goal is pretty straightforward, to get children to engage with and explore different cultures in a bite-size, fun way, outside of a structured lesson.

Here's some music from Senegal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxumKErHl50

Here's some music from Japan (+Ireland): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6YV76CnsKM