A Conceptual Framework for Technology-Assisted Music Learning

Digital technology has allowed the expansion of our immediate worlds. The evolution of internet (from phone line-based internet to the most current 3G and 4G) have allowed us to develop networks that are increasingly easy to monitor. For that and many other reasons, new digital technologies have become highly pervasive in our lives (at least in most urban settings).

We use digital technologies often in our spare time to socialize and for entertainment, but we also use it to organize our work, to expand our networks, and for education purposes improving our access to information and educational software. Making technology an integral part of the learning process afford the students more control over the way that they learn and therefore more adaptability to individual’s needs (Rusell & Sorge, 1999, as cited in Bauer, 2014, p. 7). Digital technology has also have considerable impact on music, facilitating the development of new synthetic instruments, digital audio recording and processing technics and software, and distribution.

Though technology, pedagogy, and content are fields of knowledge in their own right, educators must understand how they intersect.  This intersection point is referred by Mishra and Koehler (2006)  as Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) (as cited in Bauer, 2014, p. 12). An educator must know the content of the subject being taught, educational strategies based on learning theories, and how to use technology in general, but all of this fields interact as the teacher must realize which strategies suit better certain contents and ways of learning, and the affordances technology provides for education, and ultimately, the affordances technology provides us with for the learning of the specific subject matter, in our case music.

The following video is an introduction to the TPACK model:

Let us say that a music teacher is trying for the students to learn music notation. A traditional approach is to directly teach the values of rhythmic figures and the place of notes in the staff. The teacher must understand that not all students learn in the same ways, and some students might need more visual stimuli to associate with the synesthetic implications of traditional music notation (e.g. pitch is associated with height, time is read from left to right) and to understand elements that are not necessarily conveyed literally in a score (e.g. rhythmic figures remain isochronal independently of their relative placement within the left-to-right time framework).

A strategy might be to directly use visual and kinesthetic elements, such as body movement to perform rhythmic patterns and use relative levels of height in relation to the floor either to suggest pitch or dynamic levels. A more technological approach can integrate software that blend sound with a graphic interface. Many computer programs use MIDI protocol to inform the generation of sound and have a graphic interface to make the manipulation of sound parameters an intuitive process. Software like Fruity Loops and Cakewalk provide a graphic environment fairly intuitive.

But technology afford us much more specific tools. Pixel Tune (Punto y Tono), for instance, is a small application that features drawing and painting tools, which one can use in a type of canvas, and translates this bit map into MIDI data which is interpreted by the sound card in your computer to produce sound. Pixel Tune can be used for students to explore and internalize the ways sound can be conveyed graphically into notation. Additionally, the use of such a software can foster creativity and encourage the use of mixed media which can be artistically valuable in both visual and musical ways.  To recognize how technology can have a substantial impact as a pedagogic strategy for teaching the specific topic of conventional and unconventional music notation, plus additional affordances provided by the technological tools regarding the subject matter, constitute an example of the TPACK of a music educator. 

Additionally, the connective capabilities of internet, thanks to social media applications and websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, and so on, allow the development of networks that we can use to inform our work, obtain and provide feedback, and interact as participants in long distance and/or culturally diverse projects.