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My Pop Studio In Action: Girls Rock Philly

Girls Rock Philly! is a week long day camp to develop young aspiring musicians.  My Pop Studio was brought in as a one-hour session in this camp--read the case study if you'd like more details.

  • Setting:  Day Camp - held at a middle school
  • Time Frame:  1 day, 2 one hour sessions with different age groups
  • Computer Access:  One computer in the room
Girls at the week long specialty day camp Girls Rock Philly! attended a one-hour session on the behind the scenes of the music business by exploring My Pop Studio's Music Studio.  Girls were broken down by age range into two separate sessions:  older girls (13-15) and younger girls (10-12).  The session was led by Media Education Lab director Sherri Hope Culver

The hour-long workshop covered these three lessons:
1.  Musicians create an "image" that helps to sell their music, and different music promotes different value messages.  For instance, they were shown the many choices a producer could make about her star's look, song, and lyrics in
PopStar Producer, and then engaged in a discussion about how image helps to sell a star's music. 
2.  Truth or Rumor!  Girls looked through a variety of music magazines and filled out the Truth or Rumor! written activity from the My Pop Studio Lesson Plans. Media, such as magazines, help to construct a musician's image.  It is difficult to tell if something is truth or rumor in the media.  How can you tell?  What should you look for, in magazines?  What are credible sources?  What is the agenda of the message maker?  These and other questions were discussed with girls.
3.  There are many decision makers in producing media.  There are many roles played by different key players for a musician to be able to put on a concert, and many choices are made in how a concert is produced.  The moderator led a brainstorm discussion getting girls to think about what decisions must be made, and what steps they would have to go through, if they were to put on a concert for the community.  Girls learned that there is more to putting on a concert than just the musicians!

Although the camp was focused on music-making, the comments and discussion generated by the girls indicated they enjoyed thinking about the "behind the scenes" of the music industry, and delving deeper into understanding how a "star" is made.   You can
learn more details about this experience in the case study and see how My Pop Studio was incorporated into Girls Rock Philly!