I have just started University of Sydney’s online course, Music Education in the 21st Century. I will be adding my reflections on the coursework here, along with considerations on my own pedagogy. The course began with an introduction to Northern Beaches Christian School in New South Wales. This school is renowned for its innovation in the building of spaces, in student-centred learning, and its integration of technology.
I couldn’t help but feel envious of the teachers and students at the school after visiting their music building. The beautifully designed spaces and the seemingly limitless technology budget at this school enable students to be self-directed in their learning, freeing up music teachers to act more as facilitators, working alongside students instead of constantly directing their work. The teachers here understand music-making as a social activity and therefore students work in groups of seven in the creation of music.
Initially, when I consider how I could possibly work in this manner in my own primary music classroom, I immediately feel frustrated by my lack of access to spaces. I do have one iPad per student in my classroom and I believe I can utilise this technology fairly productively, however, without acoustically designed break-out spaces for group work I am struggling to see how I can enable students to work in groups on a variety of different projects. So how can I design student-directed learning experiences in music with classes of up to 27 students in one space? As I write this I realise I already am!
I have used Padlet to post a variety of songs with ukulele chords, arranged in levels from easiest to hardest. Students can access the website on iPads and learn a song of their choosing on ukulele. An example of a resource they can access is this ukulele play along.
They can choose to work solo or in a group of up to four students. They have opportunities to perform every lesson (optional for them) and their final performance (assessment task) will be recorded and posted on Seesaw for parents to access. As ukuleles are fairly quiet instruments, it is possible for a large class to work in the one classroom together on this task. I will consider how I can facilitate this type of learning using other, louder, classroom instruments.
The computer software used by the students at Northern Beaches Christian school allows students to walk into the classroom and begin work as soon as they are ready, as opposed to when the teacher is ready. The technology guides them through music making processes and they do not need the teachers to tell them what stage they are up to. Although, again, I don’t quite have the resources to work in this way with my students I am going to take this on board to try to figure out ways in which music lessons may begin without the students needing to be addressed by the teacher. This could certainly ease a lot of management issues I face in my classroom at the beginning of lessons. Watch this space.
Gingermore Music 