Technology-Assisted Music Learning Reflections

This week's information was valuable to me as a future private lesson teacher. This summer, I am opening my business,  Pittsburgh Music House . I state my goal clearly on my website: "Pittsburgh Music House focuses on helping students achieve musical growth through a flexible, adaptable, and accessible lesson model. We fill in the gaps that many private lesson studios leave by teaching students to play by ear, compose, improvise, and perform music expressively and creatively. We know that not all students learn best from a method book, and every student has unlimited creative potential. Therefore, we encourage ALL students to seek out music lessons, including students with physical, intellectual, mental, and sensory disabilities." Because I aim to create such an individualized experience for my students, I will use a substantial number of technology resources in creative ways to help my students reach their goals. Bauer (2020) reminds readers that there are many more appl...

This week opened my eyes to technologies that assist students in creating musical compositions. The reading from Bauer (2020) reminded me of a heated debate that I observed in my undergraduate studies that argued sound versus sight for music learning. I believe in sound-before-sight pedagogy, which strengthens students' audiation and allows them to think more musically and less rigidly. Having strong audiation enables students to "think in music" and become fluent, capable musicians before learning standard notation. While composition software has the potential to support musical literacy, teachers must ensure that their lessons use technology to enhance concepts and further student growth rather than create shortcuts that inhibit musicality.  For example, suppose students do not have strong audiation skills before exploring some of the technologies mentioned in the chapter. In that case, they may not be able to use technology to compose high-quality, coherent musical wor...

This week, our course material discussed the processes teacher can use to engage students in creative music-making, including technologies that help facilitate these creative experiences. In particular, Bauer's (2020) text focused on improvisation. Bauer asserts that becoming fluent musically follows similar processes to becoming fluent in a language. First, teachers must give students small doses of improvisatory activities to build students' confidence and mitigate their fear of failure. Activities should begin with listening activities and simple echo patterns. Then, teachers should progress through various scaffolds like question-and-answer form, improvising variations, creating transcriptions, and group improvisation before students should be expected to improvise freely. While leading students through these scaffolds, teachers must emphasize the importance of learning by trial and error. Failure in the creative process is an inevitable and necessary step toward gaining im...

  I enjoyed exploring Noteflight. It was relatively user-friendly and straightforward to learn independently. However, while using the free version, I experienced a few glitches. First, inputting lyrics and indicating how long words should be held became finicky and challenging to control. In one instance, I spent several minutes unsuccessfully trying to remove a dash from a rest. Additionally, formatting options with the free version are relatively limited, and I found the shortcuts on Musescore to be more effective for inputting note values and pitches. However, I think Noteflight can be quite effective as an educational tool. At our school, our students have one-to-one Chromebooks. Because this is a free online platform and not a program that must be downloaded, this technology is accessible to every single one of my students. With a simple five-minute tutorial, my third to sixth-grade students could easily input melodies, participate in dictation exercises, and compose their ow...

Technology is part of the fabric of our modern-day lives. It allows people to connect with one another globally to share knowledge, experiences, and relationships, provides tools to add convenience to everyday tasks, and serves as a source of entertainment for people of all ages. Our students are often described as digital natives  who grew up in our modern world of apps, streaming, and browsing. However, Bauer (2020) reminds us that while our students are fluent in the technology they use daily to play and communicate, they still need help navigating technology used for educational purposes. As teachers who recognize the prevalence of technology in our society, we must carefully evaluate the technological tools we decide to employ in our classrooms. We must ensure they support our students' specific needs in our unique school communities within the guidelines set by our curricula. Because of the individual needs of each classroom, teachers must be adaptable and creative when explo...