Future

Manifesto (for The Place of Music in 21st Century Education)

I teach K – Year 6. In the younger years I teach through singing and playing classroom percussion instruments. Technology does not play much of a part in this learning, playing excerpts from YouTube has been the extent of it. Recently our school has taken portfolios on line so there is now more but it was not easy to do. K has just started using an app called See Saw and this seems to be working better – they can use it without much help. This will become part of my teaching tools.

Years 2, 3, 4, and 5 have a very strong instrumental program. Years 2, 3 and 4 get an extra 30 minutes of classroom music and I do use technology for year 3 and 4. GarageBand is used as a compositional tool. It would be good to link with this with a notational tool so that they can play what they compose. I would like to look into this more.

In year 5, while most of the time is instrumental playing, there are opportunities to explore and understand current musical elements/concepts like structure and form through GarageBand on their iPads.

Year 6 have the most opportunity with technology. GarageBand on computers, I don’t know so this is a skill I will have to learn.

There are other musical apps we have explored over time – some the students discover and share with me.

I like the idea from musical futures where the students are asked to create their version of a song that they like, teaching themselves the chords, rhythms, melodies.

In year 6 I have also explored musical coding with Scratch (and Makey Makey’s) and Hopscotch. This has been very successful. This was a skill I had to learn and I have to maintain. There were definitely times when the boys were teaching me and themselves.

 

I think what I would like to do is keep exploring and growing with technology but also having the roots of their musical learning in the singing and playing of more traditional instruments. To physically play the instruments is important but so is the ability to use technology. There needs to be a happy medium.

 

I have and will always have an interest in Anita Collins investigations into how playing a musical instrument helps brain development. The physical co-ordination, the understanding and representation of musical notation and pitch modulation in singing is not found through technology. There is more and more research being done in this area (using technology).

 

My plan/action will be to look at the Musical Futures in more detail. Explore this for the older years. I would like to encourage the students to understand how music is put together and for them to enter through their musical interest a little more.

 

I am lucky that the school I teach at values music and the students that start in kindergarten with me have a strong value of music. It is the students that enter later that I need to encourage and connect with through music.