Present Wrapping
Believe it or not, in less than 60 days time, everybody's favourite pagan-festival-turned-Christian-holiday-turned-commercial-dollarfest will be upon us! I thought in the spirit of Christmas I'd do a little present wrapping myself. In this case though, what I'll be wrapping up are some ideas and insights that have been generated over the course of this semester through my class, Technology in Music Education.
Technology and Learning
Throughout the course of this semester, a frequent discussion point has been, "What is the role of technology in learning?" In music education, the possibilities are endless. They could include MOOCs, DAWs, notation software, synthesisers (both digital and physical), games, iPads, powerpoint, or the launchpad!
Something that I've realised throughout this semester is that all of these new technologies take time and effort to learn. While there are some transferable skills, you really do need to be prepared to sink some time into each new piece of technology you want to use in your classroom, so that you can get the best out of it, and so that you can help your students when they run into trouble. A couple of times during semester, James Humberstone mentioned that he was setting himself a project using a new piece of technology, as a way to force himself to learn how to use it effectively. I reckon that's a great model for learning new technology. Create a project, and then work on it with unfamiliar software in order to expand your skills and knowledge with it.
For many music educators (if not most or all of us), the reality is that we are time-poor, and so it may be that we need to think carefully about which software, programs or devices we spend time learning about and developing our skills in. Maybe a good way to think about technology, is rather than just getting excited by the novelty, we should look for ways that technology breaks down barriers to learning. If our definition of learning is too narrow (i.e. it must consist of an extensive knowledge of music theory and Western staff reading), we will actually get in the way of students having deep learning experiences through technology or other means. But it doesn't need to be this way.
Some Final Provocations
In this section, I'm just going to provide some links, as a way in which you can develop your own insights based on these provocative talks and ideas.
Technology in Early Learning
Are there limits to the effectiveness of technology? Are there times when it could be detrimental to use technology? Is there a best time of life to introduce technology to children? And could technology actually be harmful for children? Here are some thoughts from Dimitri Christakis:
Self-Organised Learning Principles
What would happen if you left a computer in a slum, with no one to teach children how to use it? Could they work out how to use the computer? Could they actually learn anything else? Would the learning be deep? Sugata Mitra has some startling research:
Schooling and Creativity
Here's Ken Robinson with the most-viewed TED talk of all time on how schooling kills creativity: