JamsBio is a new site with a cool idea — users pick from the millions of tracks in its database (actually, excerpts from the songs) and develop a timeline of their lives. The timelines contain the song and written comments you make about them.

This would be a great site to use for English Language Learners. Their tracks include just about every song I’ve used in class, and, in addition to timelines, students could just pick their favorites and explain why they like them. Collections can be embedded or just connected by a link.

The big problem for classroom use, though, is that, even with just containing excerpts, you can find lyrics inappropriate for classroom use. That wouldn’t really be an issue for my ESL classes — they’d have to search real hard to find them, even if they wanted to (which the vast majority aren’t going to do, anyway).

However, it is a risk, and it is not beyond imagining that a risk like this could prompt over-reactions that could limit access to a lot of other good sites.