MUSIC ADVOCACY: Caring Enough to Put the Student First
July 2, 2009
FOCUS ON STUDENTS: Music Education Advocacy For the Digital Generation
Ask any veteran music teacher, and they will most likely agree: students in our classrooms are very different than those ten or twenty years ago. Many authors have called them “Digital Natives”* or the “Net Generation,”** and neuroscientists believe that their brains are wired differently than ours.
They were “Born Digital” and there is no turning back.
Advocates for standards-based public school music education programs must grasp this and understand how technology can help create diverse and relevant classroom learning opportunities. Technology in a music curriculum engages students more fully because it is already a part of their identity and will remain so throughout their lives.
Outside of school, students are constantly using technology, frequently in very musical ways. They text on their cell phones while listening to tunes on their iPods. They spend hours surfing the Internet, simultaneously conversing via instant messages and updating their Facebook status or playing video games. Browse YouTube and you’ll find countless students performing music, often at a very high level.
Connecting music education with students’ digital lives helps contextualize music fundamentals in more meaningful ways, while fostering critical thinking, literacy skills and digital citizenship. Web 2.0 applications - blogging, podcasting, even wiki editing - offer students a pedagogically relevant way to use these familiar tools.
Web 2.0 Interactivity and Video Gaming as Music Education Tools
While I was still teaching music, I asked two 8th grade general music classes to write a critique of a recording of Guillaume Dufay’s L’Homme Armee. One class wrote on paper; the other posted critiques to a blog. The contrast was astonishing. The former used incomplete, short sentences, and exerted little or no effort in writing a well thought out critique. The bloggers wrote well-crafted critiques, utilized good grammar and musical vocabulary, and referenced other student responses posted to the blog. Why such a discrepancy? The blogging environment was familiar: its ‘citizens’ value qualities such as maturity and sophistication, and students knew that other students would read their critiques. The blog is online at http://fams.musiced.net
Some teachers are wary of the effects of GuitarHero, RockBand, and Wii Music on student interest in traditional music making, but future classrooms may have video gaming consoles as standard equipment. Music video games offer a fun, interactive and easy music making experience: try playing one and consider using it to create teachable moments within your curriculum.
Music Hardware, Software and Competing in the Global Economy
Traditional software and hardware also provide many opportunities to make the music curriculum more exciting, address learning styles and encourage student creativity. Multimedia presentations and integrating the latest software can help teachers amplify basic musical concepts, performance skills, music theory, composition and how to produce digital audio.
MENC’s National Standards for Music Education <http://www.menc.org/resources/view/national-standards-for-music-education> require students to have meaningful composition experiences in their formal music education. Notation and sequencing software offer extremely effective ways to get kids composing. In A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future, Daniel Pink says today’s students need to be highly creative to compete in an increasingly global economy.*** Providing opportunities to compose film scores, commercial jingles, multimedia presentations, music for video games, remixes and mash-ups of popular music, and more helps prepare students for their future.
It’s Time To Get Up To Speed
How can teachers who are unfamiliar with technology in the music classroom get started?
• Start small with PowerPoint or Keynote presentations for your students. • Use websites to illustrate aspects of music. • Incorporate one piece of music software each year. Try a notation program, a sequencer, or software that teaches musical concepts. • Recruit students to help you learn. They often know far more about technology than any teacher in the school. • Take a TI:ME course <http://www.ti-me.org/> or graduate course on teaching music with technology. • Search the Internet for other music educators who utilize technology in their teaching. • Attend conferences or visit schools with music technology labs to learn what others are doing. • Ask questions!
Be An Advocate for Music Technology
Technology is an integral part of music instruction and no longer an option. We need to teach students with the instructional tools they will use in the technology-driven, media-rich 21st century workplace. Talk to students, teachers and administrators about which music technology options – ranging from one computer with a digital whiteboard to a cutting-edge lab – are most viable for your district.
School board members set district policies and make decisions about funding allocations, so you may need to prepare a presentation about how student learning in your district will be enhanced by using technology in the music curriculum.
Use the SupportMusic Community Action Kit <http://www.supportmusic.com/kit/> and these resources to build your case with key stakeholders:
For more information on how to incorporate technology in your music curriculum, please visit my blog at http://jamesfrankel.musiced.net.
-- Dr. James Frankel is the Managing Director of SoundTree and an adjunct faculty member at Teachers College Columbia University where he teaches courses on music technology. Previously, he was a music educator in the New Jersey Public Schools for 15 years.
References:
*Prensky, Mark (2006). Don’t Bother Me Mom – I’m Learning! Paragon House Publishers, St. Paul, Minnesota.
**Tapscott, Don (2008). Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World MacGraw-Hill, New York, NY
***Pink, Daniel (2006). A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future Riverhead Trade, New York, NY.
