Nicole thompson
Orchestra, Taylor Road Middle School
Fulton County Public Schools
Nicole was a national finalist for the 2017 GRAMMY Music Educator Award. In 2014, she was the Georgia American String Teachers Association Educator (GaASTA) of the Year and the 2010 Teacher of the Year at Taylor Road Middle School. Nicole conducted the Metropolitan Youth Symphony Orchestras of Atlanta String Orchestra for 6 years and has served as an adjudicator and clinician for Georgia Music Educators Association (GMEA) since 2008. In 2015, Nicole served on a committee for Fulton County to create relevant standardized testing for students. As State Orchestra Chair, she served as a liaison between the orchestra teachers in Georgia and the GMEA Executive Board. Under her direction, the Taylor Road Middle School orchestras have consistently earned superior ratings at GMEA’s Large Group Performance Evaluation and were selected to perform at 2006 and 2011 GMEA Conferences. Nicole has conducted orchestras at the ASTA conferences in Dallas and Reno. She earned her Master of Music Education and Specialist in Education Degrees at the University of Georgia.
Project:
express yourself! Animate Music!
‘Express Yourself! Animate Music!’ will educate children and provide them with a creative outlet to improve the quality of life for assisted-living residents. This project will increase collaboration among science, technology, art, and music. Through Stikbot animation (an application that uses pose-able robot figures for filming short movies) and music performance, the project will promote creativity, problem solving, and technology use.
Orchestra students will be given the opportunity to select three musical pieces to learn and perform for the collaboration. Then, science and art students will be invited to create an animated short film using Stikbot animation to represent their interpretation of the music the orchestra students selected to perform. Once students complete the final projects, they will come together to present and perform for the local assisted-living residents.