Technology can be an invaluable resource to today’s music teacher, both in the flexibility and intentionality of instructional methods. This week’s module focused on the role of technology in music performance, and how teachers can use it to improve the education of their students.
As students develop psychomotor skills, it is imperative that they practice their developing skill sets in order to achieve musical success (p 81). This necessity should cause teachers to consider the best way to instruct and motivate their students toward more quality practice time, and the extent to which technology can aid that end.
Two such examples are programs called Music Prodigy, and Musicfirst. Using these tools, teachers can track student practice time and listen to practice recordings from their students. This allows teachers and students to track student growth over time - a factor that can positively impact motivation to practice.
There are a seemingly infinite number of technology tools teachers can use to increase the quality of instruction. These include digital tuners, digital metronomes, videos, audio, music notation software, and interactive whiteboards.
For example, the average band director works tirelessly to accomplish proficiency on each wind and percussion instrument he or she teaches. However, in most circumstances it is unreasonable to expect this teacher to achieve a performance level of someone who has studied one primary instrument as a professional career. We know that people learn well through modeling, that is, the observation and imitation of others (p. 85). The use of videos of professional players and audio of ideal tone quality can serve as a pedagogical tool teachers can use to increase the value of instructional time. This collection of videos from MS Band Director is one such resource.
In the choral world, teachers often need to model an appropriate sound they are physically incapable of producing (for example, a female conductor of a high school men’s ensemble or a male director of a children’s chorus). These physical incapabilities need not hinder the use of modeling as an effective instructional strategy. Through the use of technology, a female conductor of a men’s chorus can show a YouTube video of a choir on the other side of the world modeling the sound she wants her group to emulate. A male children’s chorus director can play an audio track from a music publishing site such as JW Pepper while his students follow along in the score. In this example, the use of technology improves music performance as well as reading skills.
This week in my choral ensemble, I showed the video to a new piece of music called Bone Aba by Victor C. Johnson. Students listened to the piece and followed along in their scores. However, one problem I was having with this young ensemble was the challenge of following a two part score. Students were continuously struggling to follow the score systems, measures, parts, and page numbers. This is a lot of visual information for young musicians to analyze, and students were getting lost in the the score. Instead of simply listening to an audio example, I used this YouTube video from the Lorenz Corporation that shows the sheet music in real time with the audio.
Some students continued to use their physical copy, but some opted to watch the video of the sheet music instead. This approach allowed students to self-differentiate based on their unique comfort level with following a musical score.
Teachers can also implement technology such as SmartMusic to improve reading skills, or notation software such as MuseScore to quickly individualize a score for their particular ensemble needs. The use of audio and video recordings can also increase the quality of assessment by allowing the teacher to give personalized, detailed comments to a students’ submissions.
As a result of this module, I have discussed a variety of technologies with my music colleagues at my school. As a team we are now looking at programs such as SmartMusic, Music Prodigy, and MusicFirst to see which would be the best fit for our instructional needs. I love the practical application of this module and how it has inspired me to use more technology to assist my pedagogy.
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