Random access: doing the little things - Professional Resources

During the last decade and a half, it has been my pleasure and good fortune to assist a large number of teachers and music schools with their efforts to implement new technologies effectively into their curricula. Recently, as I reflected on many of these experiences, I found myself recalling the implied wisdom of a poem I first encountered in childhood. It goes something like this:

   For want of a nail, a shoe was lost.
   For want of a shoe, a horse was lost.
   For want of a horse, a rider was lost.
   For want of a rider, an army was lost.
   For want of an army, a battle was lost.
   For want of a battle, the war was lost.
   For want of the war, the kingdom was lost.
   All for the want of a horseshoe nail!

Making effective use of technology in one's teaching often involves overcoming one or more significant and obvious hurdles. Many times, though, a school or a teacher will overcome the biggest challenges and still not reach the point where the technology is serving them or their students very well. In these cases, it is a good idea to look for the missing "horseshoe nail."

The Big Battles

The first major hurdle we usually confront is a conceptual hurdle: Have we decided that the adoption of some piece of technology is a good idea?

Getting over the conceptual hurdle may involve doing lots of research into the matter, observing the teaching of others and even setting aside time to take a class on the use of new equipment. These things generally are necessary to convince ourselves we should proceed with the adoption of new technology.

Alternatively, we can make a leap of faith and choose to adopt a new technology-based approach in our teaching. This leap of faith is an act that is not as easy to undertake as it sounds. Nonetheless, some of us take that leap and spare ourselves a significant amount of angst.

The second big hurdle is just as significant and involves the cost issue. The cost of a MIDI instrument, a personal computer or music software is not insignificant. Sure, there are often special deals available to teachers and schools. But even if we take advantage of every academic discount we can find, the costs do add up.

In the case of a school, the solution to the cost issue may involve writing grants or engaging in fundraising, short-changing another line item on the annual budget or soliciting special favors from the administration. In the case of a private teacher, we usually have to take a good hard look at the concept of amortizing the costs over an appropriate period of time, counting the savings that will be realized at tax time, and finding additional fees (such as a lab fee) to charge students.

Once we have overcome these problems, we make our purchases and install our new technologies. At this point, many of us would like to think we have won the war, that our new technology-based acquisitions are now ready to serve us. After all, we have made it through the big battles and triumphed.

Don't I wish this were the case!

Those Pesky Horseshoe Nails

Let me give you some examples of missing horseshoe nails I have found. None of these situations is an isolated incident. I have seen all of these scenarios trip up teachers and music schools numerous times.

Scenario #1

A school finds a way to obtain a number of MIDI keyboards, such as digital pianos or acoustic pianos with MIDI. These instruments have many useful features, including the ability to record and play back MIDI files.

How can these instruments be used? For starters, piano students can use them to record and play back their performances, thereby enabling them to hear themselves objectively. Vocalists and instrumentalists can use them to provide accompaniment if a live accompanist is not available which probably is most of the time.

Given these facts, where should the instruments be located: teaching studios, faculty offices or practice rooms?

In a remarkable number of situations, I have found these instruments located in the teaching studios and faculty offices. Often, faculty members are too busy to learn how to use the instruments or they use them sparingly. Alternatively, if these instruments were placed in practice rooms, they might be used by students nearly every hour the building is open.

Why is student access so limited? The "missing horseshoe nail" may be a result of any of the following:

* There is a concern over possible theft from rooms left open to students.

* The instruments are a loan from a local dealer unwilling to let them be used heavily.

* Teachers have not made enough use of the instrument features to know just how useful they could be to their students.

Are there answers to these problems? Of course, and they are pretty simple. What is missing is the vision and determination to get these tools into students' hands. Scenario #2

A school or studio has invested in an expensive digital piano lab. In addition, personal computers have been added to the keyboards. Large numbers of students use the room to take classes in beginning piano, piano proficiency for nonpiano majors and music theory.