Week 4 Reflection - Using Technology to enhance the music classroom

I came into this class expecting this chapter to be the focal point, goal and outcome of this class. I wanted to have a my question answered; "How can I use technology to enhance my music teaching?" Most of the software, hardware and other technologies we have used during this class have been completely new to me which is both exciting and overwhelming. This week I finally felt like I was on somewhat familiar ground.

As I read Chapter 4, I was a bit surprised that Bauer went into so much detail about music teaching methods. These were all things that I had to actually take classes on to get my teaching license, and yet it was refreshing to have a reminder given from the viewpoint of music teaching - because let's face it, most of us were taught "how to teach" by someone who was not musical at all. I particularly related to the idea that musicians are often already intrinsically motivated by music. As music educators, we work so hard to find new ways to motivate students, and not that we can stop doing that, but sometimes I forget that these students are generally in music because they want to be. This idea really helped me relate back to one of our first weeks in class; one music teacher on the lecture video pointed out that our job is to teach music effectively, but if we can do it better with technology, then it is our job to "do it better." That is what this chapter emulated to me.

I also enjoyed working with the software we got to explore this week. SmartMusic was one of the few programs we have worked with in this class that I am somewhat familiar with. I have certainly enjoyed and benefited from learning about new technologies, but it is encouraging to be on familiar ground. I wrote fairly expansively on my experience with SmartMusic in my other blog post this week, but I have included a bit of a recap as it is an essential piece of what I focused on this week.
      SmartMusic would be a bit more difficult to implement in the classroom because there is the cost factor, needing to have computers available for student use and/or requiring students to obtain their own microphone and software for home use. There is also a fair amount of setup work that has to be done by the teacher, such as setting up assignments, finding the correct books to align with the class method book, etc. However, once the footwork has been done to prepare to use SmartMusic, I always felt it was an incredibly easy program to use. Students can simply select their assignment or an exercise out of a book and play along. The program provides immediate feedback in green and red not only notating if the student made a mistake, but what that mistake was (was it the wrong note? the wrong rhythm? etc.) and notates it in red to make it easy to see and correct (see screen shot below from the SmartMusic website). As a teacher, although the computer grades it automatically, I can still override the grading system. SmartMusic also allows me to see how long it took a student to complete the exercise, record their playing, and store recordings on my iPad or tablet for use at parent conferences or lessons with the student. As students grow "out of" the method books, smart accompaniments become available which has really helped my high school students rehearse for solo/ensemble contests. These accompaniments listen to the player as a real accompanist would and will match the tempo of the performer. I think this is an incredibly powerful teaching and learning tool and, in my experience, is something the kids enjoy using! It makes practicing much more appealing and provides educators with tangible progress proof, taking away some of the subjectivity of grading performances. 

This week has really gotten me excited to get back in a music classroom next year and begin to implement not only these new technologies I am learning about each week, but building/scaffolding on the music teaching methods and technologies I am already familiar with.