Integrating Technology into Music Education! By Jeff Cloyd

Case study for Technology based Courses This article talked about the use and results of a music technology class being used on students in Was very clear that the teacher wanted this new technology even though the integration was generally slow.

Purpose The overall purpose of this case study was to update all previous work on this subject. Also this study was used as evidence for other music educators to persuade their administration.

Method of Study The creation of a class of selected students were to use an experimental group To gather the data for this study, interviews were given to the students to ask about the success of the technology used in their eyes.

The Setting The high school band program used was one with band, two choirs, and two levels of theory classes in its curriculum. Participating Students in Classes: 60 in Band 120 in Choir 10 in Theory

Findings The teacher of the class used a lot of his own ideas about musical technology in the class. He was considered a “self-taught technology teacher”. One of the programs he was interested in the most was the notation software Sibalius. Also the use of Garage Band being used.

Enthusiasm Something that the teachers noticed a lot was the fact that the technology actually drew more non music students into the world of music. They said that by tapping into the students interest in technology, the teacher found success in expanding his music classes.

Staffing Problems The teacher in this study had a lot of problems with the fact that his classes were expanding in that he could not be everywhere at once. To fix this, he would have the students do group projects instead of constantly doing lessons every single day. The students would work on these projects for days at a time and even take up other class times.

Discussion The writer of the article gave a metaphorical result saying that it was like hitting the jackpot at the slots in Atlantic city. The administrators, budget, space, and staffing all came up in “lucky sevens”. Also with this class having technology being a focus, the teacher always kept the core of the class to be primarily music.

Advocacy Something that this article made a point of mentioning is that like everything in the music education world. Integrating technology in a music class would take a lot of work from the educator to advocate the usefulness of the said technology.

Thoughts and Reflection Something that I really drew from this article was that the technology used was drawing more student into studying music. Another interesting fact was the issues with advocating for the use of technology in the schools.

Bibliography Dammers, Richard J.. “A Case Study of the Creation of a Technology- based Music Course”.Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education 186 (2010): 55–65. Web...