The App Scavenger Hunt

The chapter focuses on projects designed to enhance student engagement with, and exploration of, mobile devices. Helping preservice teachers manage the often steep learning curve that goes hand in hand with connecting theory to practice is but one aspect of music teacher preparation. For the methods student and university professor alike, staying abreast of the current PK-12 school population’s musical needs poses unique conditions for curriculum development. Learning how to use technology while working with a diverse range of students presents challenges for all who are involved in teaching music with technology. The App Scavenger Hunt is an introductory project intended to foster collaboration by exploring the variety of apps available for later projects such as spontaneous musical jam sessions, group composition, and the (re)creation of cover tunes. These musicking experiences, in conjunction with field experiences in music methods classes, aided university students’ embrace of the potential for creative music making with mobile technology.

Advocating for Mobile Music Technology

The chapter reviews the benefits of implementing mobile technology in the music classroom. Matters relating to integrating mobile devices in the traditional music rehearsal setting and addressing new learning opportunities in music and media arts are presented. A detailed schedule of a class day with incorporating music technology is offered. Strategies for financing and maintaining mobile technology, as well as ways to avoid common implementation minefields, are given. A large selection of suggested apps useful in the rehearsal space is given. Further, the chapter includes practical, real-world strategies from the field to help teachers successfully adventure into the world of mobile technology in the music classroom.

Epilogue

The epilogue addresses the observations of the editors and authors of this volume regarding their observations of the pedagogical shifts needed to address music teaching and learning during a global pandemic such as the one unleashed by Covid-19. When a great deal of musicking, teaching, and learning needed to happen remotely, having access to technology and understanding how to employ it for supporting creative and collaborative music making and remote instruction was of paramount importance for many music teachers and musicians. Yet for too many students and school districts around the globe, the digital divide heightened the lack of educational equity in countless communities. While many districts merely focused on content delivery though whatever digital or non-digital means were available, the authors noted the crucial role that a focus on social-emotional learning plays in the lives of our students, with a particular emphasis on how music and the arts can support our emotional health and sense of connection.

Living at the Intersection of Tablets, Music, and Disability

The chapter considers potential possibilities and pitfalls encountered by music learners and scholar-practitioners when using tablet-based technologies for music making and learning. The authors address this question by providing a nuanced, anti-ableist, and balanced discussion of issues that arise at the intersection of adaptive and tablet-based technologies, music learning and making, and disability. First, the chapter highlights applications and approaches discussed elsewhere in the volume, addressing their potentials for fostering adaptive, inclusive, equitable, and meaningful music learning and making with and for disabled musickers/musickers with disabilities (DM/MwD) that can include tablets. Then the authors draw on theoretical perspectives indigenous to discourses about disability studies to problematize these resources, calling attention to potentially negative implications related to autonomy, extracurricular advancement, and othering rooted in and affirming ableism. The chapter concludes with questions and suggestions to assist music learners and scholar-practitioners in navigating the intersections and interactions of tablet-based technologies, use of apps, music learning and making, and disability.

Choosing Engaging Tools for the Music Classroom

Over the course of the past fifty years, countless software and hardware products have been introduced into music classrooms around the world with varying degrees of pedagogical success. The majority of these products were geared toward professional and amateur musicians and composers, only to be introduced to music teachers, either organically (teachers bringing real-world products into their classrooms) or through the efforts of manufacturers to obtain a new revenue stream for their products by selling them to schools. Knowing this, teachers often find it difficult to become aware of, identify, and choose these tools for use in their classroom instruction. The chapter presents key elements in successfully identifying and implementing creative, intuitive, and engaging tools for teaching, learning, and music making in the music classroom, as well as measuring their efficacy. Case studies focusing on the practices of several music educators are presented, including interviews with the software designers to illuminate the process behind innovative design. In addition to these case studies, a discussion of current products and their individual features and design ethos is given, with an emphasis on concepts instead of brands and devices.

With “App” Attention

The chapter addresses how teachers can guide the development of students’ musical capacities through creative projects in digital environments. Specific suggestions are tailored to suit the needs of student composers, performers, and listeners as they develop their individual musicianship skills. Students can be guided beyond simply exploring apps by focusing on feelingful intention, musical expression, and artistic craftsmanship as they create music of their own. Student performers in iPad ensembles can be helped to anticipate sonic possibilities and artistically interpret the music of others as sensitive expressions of feeling. Listening experiences become more purposeful when students attend to musical impressions through artistic perception and create a personally meaningful relationship with music. These capacities are available in all manner of musical media, but they especially can assist and focus student expressivity in technological environments. This allows students to more artistically engage their personal creativity. Whether working alone or in collaboration with others, students may use a variety of apps to broaden their conceptions of music and the role of technology in music. Teaching examples designed to develop role-specific musical capacities are provided for composition, performance, and listening activities.

Musical Creativity, Mobile Technology, and Middle School

The chapter focuses on examining musical creativity in middle school general music by the use of digital technology, from the perspective of a middle school music teacher who is working with digital natives. It provides practical lesson plans concerning the use of digital audio workstation (DAW) apps and Chrome Music Lab apps to compose music, music notation apps for notating compositions, and ScratchJr for creating music tutorials. Tablets and hand-held devices are morphed into tools for adolescents to express their creative musicianship, leading to a transformation of a middle school general music class.

Mobile Technology

The chapter defines the promise and possibilities of twenty-first-century digital musicianship, with musical creativity and engagement at the core of music education via the use of mobile devices. Through the intentional use of iPads, tablets, or other hand-held devices, students are presented with myriad ways to create, perform, listen to, and respond to music. The authors discuss the turnaround in their own thinking about mobile devices, their conceptions of creative musicking, and the changes in their pedagogical approaches to a more inclusive, constructivist, and informal approach to teaching with and through mobile technology. They explore the enormous potential of rather small technological devices to transform the music-making experiences of students of any age.

Digital Music Play in Early Childhood

The chapter describes how mobile technology is firmly planted in young children’s everyday lives as they watch YouTube videos and play with apps that entertain and educate. Yet the question remains, What is the role of mobile technology in early childhood music education? There is concern that technology will compromise the active, playful musicking of young children. Mobile devices, however, can be used to support music development, with digital music play working in tandem with traditional music play in the form of converged music play. This chapter describes the ways in which early childhood teachers can incorporate mobile technology into their practice, extending its use to young children’s musicking in early childhood music settings, at home and in play spaces.

iAssess

For many music teachers, assessment of student work holds several challenges: How to employ a concrete grading system for an inherently subjective, artistic experience; how to organize and present content for PK-5 grade levels so that learning is both meaningful and assessable; and how to design a music curriculum that ultimately encourages a powerful connection to music long after students have left the classroom. To help teachers face these challenges, the chapter demonstrates a music composition–based curriculum in which students use an iPad and other technologies to assess themselves and demonstrate their musical thinking, their progress, and development of compositional skills through self-reflective discussions of their work. Four sections describe iAssessment: (1) the background, context, and description of the music composition curriculum; (2) the techniques used to combine technology with composition effectively; (3) a description and analysis of student work that demonstrates the development of their musical thinking; and (4) thoughts and conclusions.