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Augmenting Music Learning Settings

Contents

Expanding physical, blended, hybrid, and online music learning and teaching contexts.

Updated 3/1/2022

This set of resources began with a focus on ways of adding layers of experiences, content, and information to physical music learning and teaching settings, with a “blended” approach in mind. As we’ve shifted to online and hybrid settings, I also see many of these resources as helpful for enriching and expanding what occurs in these contexts.

For additional perspectives on augmenting music teaching and learning with technology and digital media, see this chapter I wrote for the Oxford Handbook on Technology and Music Education.

Whiteboards and Visual Collaboration Platforms


These apps and platforms augment or extend the classroom into collaborative spaces.

Mind Mapping Platforms

These apps and platforms support brainstorming and organizing ideas and information.

Student Support Platforms

I like the idea of having a simple way of keeping track of who needs assistance and what they need. I prefer a social approach where students can help other students. So, I might use platforms such as Slack, Google Docs, or other communication systems. However, dedicated systems might also be of interest to people:

Classroom Q

This site is simply a system for students to register that they need assistance, describe what they need help with, and to form a queue that the teacher can see.

Student Response and Dialogue Platforms

These platforms support real-time or asynchronous conversations. Some also function as learning management systems for organizing assignments and student work. Many of these platforms can create an extra layer to a physical in-person class, augment online classes, and or support conversations between class sessions.

Dialogue via Backchannel Systems

Reflection, Engagement, and Assessment Platforms

Annotation Systems

These tools support dialogue and meaning making with texts through text based, audio, or video annotations.

NowComment, Hypothes.is, and Perusall both support students annotating documents or videos with text comments. Now Comment allows for video comments and Hypothes.is and Perusall allow for including links and videos as part of a comment. Hypothesis supports social annotation of PDF files uploaded to the web as well as web-based texts.

In both platforms, the document or video is displayed on the left side of the screen and corresponding comments are displayed on the right side of the screen. Students can also comment on each other’s comments, leading to many opportunities for dialogue.

VoiceThread

VoiceThread is unique in that it allows people to create sets of slides with text, video, or audio in the middle of the slide and then invites people to comment on the slide. The platform places each comment (text, video, or audio) around the perimeter of the slide and invites people to comment on each other’s comments as well.

Portfolio and Learning Management Systems

Your school or organization may dictate the use of a particular platform, but for folks who have the opportunity to choose what platforms you use, here are some to consider:

Curated and Shared Bookmarking Platforms

Screenrecording Applications

While teachers might use advanced applications such as Screenflow or Camtasia to record their screens for explaining concepts or creating tutorial videos, plenty of free or low-cast alternatives exist for students to access. Student-created screencasts can range from creating tutorials or demonstrating their thinking and processes while creating or performing music to demonstrating understanding as a form of assessment.

When choosing a screen recording application to use in a learning or teaching context, make sure you are aware of what audio or video sources the app can capture and what audio or video sources the app cannot capture. Most of the web-based apps available cannot record audio from the computer, which is significant for some scenarios.